The Resilient Mind - You Are More Powerful Than Your Excuses - Jocko Willink

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

John Gretton "Jocko" Willink is a retired United States Navy officer who served in the Navy SEALs and is a former member of SEAL Team 3. Jocko was honored with the Silver Star and Bronze Star Medal for his service. He achieved the rank of lieutenant commander. Jocko also co-authored the books Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership.Download Mindset App for free and listen to 5000+ of the World's Greatest Motivational Speakers and Thought Leaders: https://bit.ly/mindsetxTheResilientMind Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠Subscribe to Steven Bartlett for more inspiring videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to You Are More Powerful than Your Excuses with Jocko Willink. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Will you keep going? In the face off. Whatever. 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. 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. You're going to struggle. You're going to go through some hardship. 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. Okay. I'm going to go forward. There's no, 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. 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? But the vast majority of people, they quit. They don't usually say that. And even in their mind, they probably don't believe it. They probably believe, well, you know, it was my leg. And once my leg was hurting, I knew I was going to have 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 my leg. You're talking there about people making excuses. What have you come to learn about the nature of excuses? Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you if you left them. 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. When the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, it hurts, but is also unbelievably empowering because if these problems are being,

because of me, then I'm capable of fixing these problems. I was a little kid. I wanted to be some kind of soldier. I wanted to be some kind of commando. So I collected little plastic soldiers. I had different military units. 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 inflatable boats and I thought to myself that's what I want to do 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 the closest thing that I found was being in the Navy and being in the SEAL teams

I have to ask a very dumb question here which is what is a Navy SEAL? So a Navy SEAL is it part of the Navy but you're the special operations component of the Navy? 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.

Well, they call one of the weeks hell week, don't they? So they try and simulate hell. Yeah, they try and simulate hell. 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. I would say most of the people that quit, probably 80% of the quitters quit in that week. 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 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 that thing to either make you come out the other side or make you quit. One of the things they do is they'll line you up,

and they say interlock arms, and you get arm and arm and 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. Did you have some kind of innate advantage or can we all become joker? 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 the same thing, you go back to like, if you ever met anyone that was a prisoner of war, there's some people that had a will that they were not going to die. I'm not going to die. I'm going to keep going. And if you didn't have that will to carry on, you die. 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. 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. change your perspective, make some kind of progress. And worst case scenario, you figure out that you walk the wrong direction. Okay.

Now you can 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. If you frame things right in your life, 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 hard are actually very positive components of your existence and they're going to make you better. And you're going to have to push through it. When the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, it's also liberating because now you have control over your fate and over your destiny, and that is a glorious thing.

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 win. And that's life. Life without those challenges, it's existence. Don't just exist. go live eventually inaction will cost you but your default setting should be i'm going to do something just get up move towards that challenge and go attack it go do something that's hard struggle sucks depends on how you frame it if you want freedom in your life you have to have

discipline move towards that challenge whatever that challenge is 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 because 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. Embrace those emotions, but don't let those emotions embrace you. Keep pushing through things that suck. This is a very difficult thing to do

because it hurts. I'm going to go forward. I'm not going to quit, so I'm going to go forward, bring it on. 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 happens to the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people that don't make it through seal training, they didn't make it through because they quit. Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you if you let them. 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. 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 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. Because when you look around at your life and you look around at your job and your financial situation and your relationship and your relationship and your. 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 of 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. When the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, it hurts, but is also unbelievably empowering 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. 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. If you have discipline, you will attain freedom. 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. And if you don't have that kind of discipline and you don't work hard and you don't exercise and you don't apply yourself, you're going to end up shackled. 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. But standing there, and not doing anything is just waiting to die, waiting to starve to death. Don't let that happen. I think it's really important because as men, we don't get conflicting messages about emotion and how to express it and what that looks like.

And there's a lot of men struggling right now. Every human faces challenges and you don't know what they've been through. It's suppressing them isn't going to help. And nor is letting them run your life. 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 hate with those waves. And that's okay. 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 a lot of the moment. letting my emotions run my life and I'm making a bunch of bad decisions and my excuse is well you know I lost from 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 guess what it's time to carry on remember don't dwell I'm in control this is my life if you are in the problem you won't see the solution to the problem take a step back

detach from the chaos, detached from the mayhem, detach from your emotions, detached from your ego, and be able to assess the best way to execute that is the job of a leader. 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. Is it good to have no emotions whatsoever? No, that's called a sociopath. is it good 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?

I want to be balanced. It's much easier to be extreme. It's much easier to say, oh, no emotions, cool, and turn them off. That's easier. Or a 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 hard to find balance. but you have to be balanced. So be balanced. You're going to be okay. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.