The Resilient Mind - Your Excuses Are Stealing Everything You Want - Jocko Willink

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

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.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're going to fail, and you're going to fail, and you're going to fail, and then you're going to wait. And that's life. Life without those challenges, it's existence. Don't just exist. Go live. 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. 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. All the what ifs and the scenarios that you create inside your own mind that are way worse than anything that is actually going to happen, they all disappear when you go. So just take action and start moving forward. If you're a dude and you're 22 years old and you feel like you're directionless, get your shit together, man,

and go start making things happen. motivation is a feeling that comes and goes and it doesn't matter whether it's there or not discipline is infinitely more important so no matter how you feel get up and do what you're supposed to do that's it and that's discipline it's not motivation if you only did what you were supposed to do when you were motivated to do it that's leaving it to chance but if you're disciplined you go to what you're supposed to do that's the way it works i saw a lot of people that didn't have any sense of urgency in their life and when you don't have a sense of urgency, things aren't going to happen. You need to make things happen as we already discussed. They're not just going to happen for you. You're not

going to become a good fighter unless you make it happen. And you're not going to do anything in life unless you make it happen. So if you feel like right now you're looking around with and you're lost or direction list, I would take about 15 minutes and figure out what the hell you want to do with your life and I always start getting after it. If you want freedom in your life, you have have to have discipline. Discipline isn't just, oh, this person is, quote, more disciplined than this other person. It's like, no, this person is choosing discipline. This person is not. That's the way it is. So I think that's an important thing to remember. You have the option of being disciplined. You don't have the option of being born six, four, right? You don't have that

option. You either are or you're not. But you do have the option of choosing discipline or So disciplined, not necessarily something that you're born with? I don't think so at all. I think maybe there's some small percentage of it. Maybe this person's a little bit more innately disciplined than this other person, but I think it's a choice. 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 Doritas away. Get rid of it. Go do some push-ups. go spend $12 at the hardware store and hang up a pull-up bar in your room. They 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 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're 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. 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 terrible are actually very positive components of your existence, and they're going to make you better.

If someone's trying to build confidence from a work perspective, we do the same thing, whether it's a business 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, trained. study, work, practice, train, study, work, practice. Train, study, work, practice. And eventually, you will increase your confidence. 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 walk 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. 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. There's going to be things in your life that you don't have control over. EO, like for instance, someone gets a terrible disease. And no, there's nothing you can do about that. What you can take ownership, though, is how you respond to that situation. And so that's what you have to do.

There's things that you can control. There's things you can't control. Now I will tell you that human beings can control a lot more than they think they can. And oftentimes, it's pretty easy just to say, oh, that's not me. That's not on me. And I think that's the whole genesis of the idea of extreme ownership is most of the time, or much of the time, people say that's not my fault.

There's nothing I can do about that. And more often than people think, there is something you can do about it. And it is your fault. 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, 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 are, you. ego rejects that and makes excuses and lies. And then we don't have to change anything. And then nothing changes.

There's a term, 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. 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 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. 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. Because people say 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. 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. Where does confidence come from, in your opinion? I think, well, clearly some of it comes from experience, but I think one of the most profound things that you can do to become more confident

is to become okay with saying, yeah, I'm not exactly sure what to do right now. If you can say that, all of a sudden, the world becomes just a lot easier. And, you know, if we're in a meeting and we've got some project that we're going to get started on and it's something I've never done before and I'm the boss and I say, hey, Chris, I'm not really sure what to do right now. Well, that's okay. And you go, well, actually, at my old company, we did the same thing. So let's make this move. And I go, okay, that sounds like a good place to start anyways.

And so now we get started. Whereas if I come in and I'm like, I don't want Chris to know that I don't know how to do this or I'm not sure of my. myself right now or I'm lacking confidence, so I'm going to pretend to be confident. I think that's problematic. So I think, look, no one knows everything. No one makes all perfect decisions. No one understands every element of the world. So I think a good way to gain confidence quickly is to admit the fact that you don't know everything and just be okay with saying, yeah, I'm not really sure what to do here. I'm a hard worker. 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 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 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.

if you give up a little bit today, like you can't get it back. Like if you skip a workout today, you can't you, there's no possible way to get that back. When you let something go, it's gone. And Rome wasn't built in the day, but Rome didn't fall apart on the day either. It didn't fall out, fall apart because of one thing. It falls apart just a little bit at a time. Yeah, nobody gets fit overnight. Nobody gets fat overnight.

Exactly. And so you can't, you know, you can't submit. You have to get in there and keep it going. And I know the results of not doing the thing are not good. And I enjoy doing the thing. So in order to keep doing the thing, you got to do the thing. Every day that you don't do work, you're going backwards. And it definitely will hurt you and it'll show up.

You can't get away with what you got away with when you were 23. It doesn't work. You have to stay ahead of it. What would you say to someone who's going through a bad month or a string of bad months and doesn't see any light at the end of the tunnel? What are your options? You know, like, okay, you're upside down financially,

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

And you got to say, okay, I got to start with solving that problem. And you got to start to going back to the, I think it was the initial thing that we talked about, take action. You've got to take action and move forward. and if you don't the downward spiral doesn't end and if you allow it to continue to go down that's where it's going to end up and so you just have to what are my options abandon the whole thing like no that's not the option that is not the option what can i make better right now and start to reassemble things and putting them back together 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 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 you curl up into a ball and complain about it, that's not going to help you. And if you say, okay, cool, good.

Here's some adjustments I can make to move forward. that's going to be a better move than cowering. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.