The School of Greatness - 871 Jocko Willink on Extreme Leadership and The Power of Self-Discipline

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

BE MILITARY MINDED. A lot of people think that leadership means having all the answers. Barking orders at your team, hoping they stay in line and obey. Pretending to know it all even when you don’t. True leadership is understanding human nature. What if leaders accepted responsibility for any mistakes made on their teams? We have to stop thinking of leadership as a destination. It is a journey where we listen, learn, and strategize with our teams, not for them. It’s not about ego; it’s about humility, balance, accountability, and execution. In today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about the art of leadership with a retired Navy SEAL officer and a business consultant: Jocko Willink. Jocko Willink is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, author of the book ‘Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win,’ and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he is a leadership instructor, speaker, and executive coach. Jocko spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams, starting as an enlisted SEAL and rising the ranks to become a SEAL officer. As commander of SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser during the battle of Ramadi, he orchestrated SEAL operations that helped the “Ready First” Brigade of the U.S. Army’s First Armored Division bring stability to the violent, war-torn city. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated Special Operations Unit of the Iraq War. Jocko returned from Iraq to serve as Officer-In-Charge of Training for all West Coast SEAL Teams. There he spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally instructed and mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders who have continued to perform with great success on the battlefield. In 2010, Jocko retired from the Navy and launched Echelon Front with Leif Babin, where he teaches the leadership principles he learned on the battlefield to help others lead and win. Jocko has put together leadership principles that will help you become a successful leader. So get ready to learn the art of strategy and leadership on Episode 871. Some Questions I Ask: What did you learn when you took on the leadership role as a Navy SEAL? (09:00) How do you make sure that your intent is felt all of the way down the chain of command? (17:30) Do you have a mission and mantra for your company? (23:00) Is there a connection between leadership and human nature? (36:30) How important is feedback from your team? (52:00) What’s the most important relationship we have in our lives? (1:10:30) In This Episode You Will Learn: The toughest challenges when becoming a Navy SEAL leader. (9:00) The most humbling moment on the battlefield. (11:45) How to take responsibility when you’re in a big organization. (19:30) Why leadership is about understanding human nature. (36:30) Two things leaders can do to improve immediately. (54:00) How to handle yourself when your ego wants to respond. (01:00:10) How to take ownership of your decisions in life. (1:02:30) If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/871 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

This is episode number 871 with number one New York Times best-selling author, Jocko Willink. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Ernest Hemingway said, there is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man.

True nobility is being superior to your former self. Welcome to the School of Greatness. I am pumped. We've got Jocko Willink in the house. He's a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and co-author of the number one New York Times bestseller, Extreme Ownership, How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, and the host of a top-ranked podcast, Jocko Podcast.

And Jocko spent 20 years in the SEAL teams, starting as an enlisted SEAL and rising through the ranks to become a SEAL officer. He's the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and numerous other personal and unit awards. And upon retiring from the Navy, he co-founded and is CEO of Echelon Front, a premier leadership consulting company where he teaches the leadership principles he learned on the battlefield to help others lead and win. And Jocko also authored the New York Times bestseller, Discipline Equals Freedom, Field Manual, and the bestselling children's book series, Way of the Warrior Kid. And on his podcast, he talks about leadership in business, war, relationships, and everyday life.

And I'll tell you what, this is probably one of the most disciplined human beings I've ever met. I was a little intimidated when I met him just because he was so focused, and I tried to ask him some different questions that he's never been asked, And he was curious about my questions that I had for him. So there's going to be some moments where we get some different stuff out of Jocko. And we take it down a different path. So I hope you enjoy my questioning. And I hope you enjoy the responses that Jocko gives in this interview.

He is one of the most disciplined individuals and he's also so open-minded. I love the way he thinks. I love the way he prepares himself. And I love the way he acknowledges when he doesn't have the answers and he wants to learn. It's one of the characteristics of a great leader is always looking for more wisdom, always looking for more

knowledge to grow and become better to win the mission, whatever that mission might be. And if you're enjoying this, make sure to share with a friend while you're listening. You can send the link lewishouse.com slash 871 to a friend that you think would enjoy learning about extreme leadership, about designing your mission, becoming more disciplined, and the power of true self-discipline. So again, you can copy and paste the link on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this, or just send the link lewishouse.com slash 871,

text it to a couple of friends, and ask them to listen along with you. All right, get ready, guys. One of the most disciplined individuals I've ever met, text it to a couple of friends and ask them to listen along with you. All right, get ready, guys. One of the most disciplined individuals I've ever met. A little intimidating, but inspiring nonetheless. Give it up for the one and only Jocko Willink. Welcome to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Jocko in the house, my man.

Thank you for coming here, being a part of this. Thanks for having me. We're talking a little bit about your Navy SEAL training and how you say it actually isn't that hard, isn't that big a deal. But a lot of people seem to quit through the process. And you're saying, you were giving me context, that it's not as hard as going to war and actually being in that real-life experience. Yeah, I don't want to make it sound like it's not hard because it certainly is hard.

Especially for someone like myself, I wasn't the best athlete. I was like an average high school athlete. So physically, I had to go hard in order to pass all the evolutions. Yeah I mean compared to when you look at someone that was in the SEAL teams for a long time, they're not sitting there harking back to the days of, remember how hard this training was. No, they're thinking about their deployments overseas and the things that they had to do .

That's the real hard stuff. I was with a SEAL this weekend, his name's Chad, and he was saying that... I said, what was the day where most people quit? Because it's a self-eliminating process, right? Don't you quit yourself? They don't fire you from SEAL training. You give up. I would say 98% of the time, it's, well, yeah, it's a really high percentage of people that quit.

But there's also people that fail. Really? So if you fail, when I went through, and things change a little bit. But when I went through, if you a little bit but when I went through if you failed one run they were watching you if you failed another run you would get moved back to the neck last to the next class then if you failed another one you were out so what I mean a run so a time for mile timed run gotcha four mile timed run or and that's one example because you have a four mile timed run you you have swims that are timed, you have obstacle courses that are timed, and then you have other,

we call them evolutions, but you have underwater not tying. Life-saving. So life-saving is a good one because what it is is you have to go and rescue these SEAL instructors in the water. So it's sort of like what a lifeguard would do, but it's pretty funny because they're trying to drown you. Like they're attacking you. When you jump into, they're trying to drag you down to the bottom of the pool. So if you fail that once, then you'll get another try.

If you fail it again, you'll get rolled to the next class. And if you fail there, then you're out. But you could fail, if you failed one run, one swim, one obstacle course, you could do that. And I did that. You know, I failed a run. I failed a swim. I failed an obstacle course. I don't know if I failed any. Oh, I failed one water evolution called pool competency. I failed that one time. one water evolution called pool competency. I failed that one time. So I was like a gray man in terms of, it was actually good. I wasn't great at anything, but I wasn't horrible at anything either. Yeah. You were consistent. So that was a good place to be. Sure. That's great. He told me, I don't know if this is too graphic, but I said, what was the hardest day where most people

quit? When most people gave up in the six months of training. He said towards the end of training, it's not as difficult. They're not trying to break you every day as in the first, I guess, two to four weeks. But I said, what was the hardest day for most people? And he said, I was in shock because it was when they played a video over and over. They made us watch a video. I'm not sure if it was the same video that you had to watch at your time. They didn't even have videos. I don't know. they made us watch a video. I'm not sure if it was the same video that you had to watch at your time. They didn't even have videos. Right, right.

So I don't know. He said there was a video, and this might be too graphic to talk about, but he said there was a video where an enemy was using a knife to cut off the head of an American. And they made you watch it over and over again. And they said, this is very real. If you get captured,

they'll probably do something like this. They were trying to psychologically break you down or train you to be afraid if this is it. And he said for him, he got angry watching the video, whereas a lot of other people got afraid and they quit that day. Right afterwards, they all went and not all of them, but a lot of them quit. How much of it was for you psychologically challenging versus physically challenging? And were there those moments that made you angry or more excited to dive in? Or were there any moments that made you question being a SEAL? There was not any question for me. I knew what I wanted to do. I never thought about quitting at any moment in time. It's interesting that the video concept, like I concept, we didn't,

like I said, we didn't have, there wasn't videos like that that we could watch. But I think one, I think that's actually good that they show that video because these days you can get kids that they see, they see the SEAL teams and they think these guys are out, whatever, running around on the beach. And the fact of the matter is when you're in the SEAL teams, your mission and your job is to go and kill the enemy. And part of that job is putting yourself at risk with your friends of getting killed or wounded yourself. So that's good that they show them that because that's a good wake up call.

If you're going in the SEAL teams because you think you're gonna go to the bar and strut around with your chest out, like that's not what the SEAL teams is. The SEAL teams is going to war. That's what we do. Was there ever a time you were truly afraid, whether it be in training or in war? Yeah. The biggest, the biggest amount of fear that I felt was absolutely without question when I was on my last deployment to Ramadi and the feeling that you have, especially when you're in a leadership position is you're afraid that something's going to happen to one of your guys, one of your guys is going to get

wounded or killed. And so when you're, that's the fear that I felt. And part of that is because some people, myself included, and this is not uncommon for guys to think, probably nothing's going to happen to me. And so I had some of that, for sure. But I also had just that fear. There's nothing worse than thinking about one of your guys, one of your friends, one of your brothers getting wounded or killed. And that's what I was afraid of. Did you ever think anything would happen to you?

Were you like, maybe this is the mission where some random bullet hits me? If I did think that, I didn't really care. You know, I think at some point you realize that there's a chance you can die and that's what you signed up for and that's what you dedicated your life to and that's what you believe in is that you're doing the right thing.

So sure, you get the feeling, hey, today could be the day. Wow. But there's also the fact that there's nothing you can do to, there's nothing you can do to really control that. So beyond what you've already done, which is you've trained hard, you've prepared hard, you've planned to the best of your ability, you've mitigated as much risk as you can through your operational planning process, through your standard operating procedures. And on top of all those things, you're at war. And so there's a chance that a bullet is going to be,

is going to have your name on it. And the fact of the matter is bullets don't have your name on it. Bullets say to whom it may concern and the bullet doesn't care who you are. They don't care how much training you've had. They don't care how well prepared you are. And if it's your day, it's your day. And so I think once you get to a point where you recognize and accept the fact that you could die, then you can move past that. And, I mean, I felt like that for a long time. Really? You know, I felt like that for a long time, that that was my job, and I didn't really care. So whether I thought about it on a daily basis or anything, I would say I didn't.

It was just part of my world that I accepted. You know, you might die. I mean, you played football. part of my world that I accepted. You might die. You played football. You must have realized that you could get injured, right? Sure. Break your neck or paralyzed. Yeah, you can't be out there being worried about that.

It might be in the back of your mind somewhere, but I don't know if you agree with this, but if that's what your primary concern is, your chances of that happening to you are probably greater than if you just say, put that in the back of your mind and go out and play aggressive ball. Same thing on the battlefield. You go out and you play aggressive, that to me increases your probability of survival, not so much for yourself,

but more importantly for your troops. Yeah. What did you learn when you took on that leadership role? Because I'm assuming you weren't leading teams your first two years as a Navy SEAL, but then the more you were in the program, you were then leading groups of guys for many years, right? Yeah.

What was the biggest challenge for you from going as a, I wouldn't say a follower, but as a team member into then transitioning into a leadership role of leading the team? What was the biggest challenge for you from that transition? From team member to player to player coach, let's say. Well, you actually, you're like not wanting to be, to call me a follower. Well, when you get into the SEAL teams and you're a new guy, you're absolutely following.

Right. You don't know what you're doing. You don't understand the tactics. And so there's other people that have experience. You're listening to them. They're teaching you. And then as I got older and more experienced and eventually I did move into leadership positions and became an officer in the SEAL teams and then it was my time to step up and lead and the

amount of lessons that I learned are countless and that's what I ended up writing a bunch of books about I wrote ended up writing a bunch of books about those leadership Experiences that I had right out of the gate, you know when you asked me what I learned you know one of the most important things that I talk about all the time is You're gonna get humbled and you need to be humble right because you don't leader. Absolutely Yeah, as a leader, especially you step up into a leadership position. Do you know everything? No, no, you don't know everything if you act act like you know everything, you're going to get eaten alive. Humbled quickly. You're going to get humbled. And not only that, but your troops are going to look at you and say, who do you think we are? Do

you think we're stupid? So you're acting like you know everything. We actually know you don't know everything and you're acting that way. So their respect for you goes down. Whereas if you just say, hey, look, I just got into this job. I'm going to do the best I can. I don't know everything. My mind is open. I'm here to listen. I'm here to learn. And if you guys can help me out, I'd appreciate it. Well, everyone sees you as a humble person that's ready to listen and ready to learn and their respect for you actually goes up. and walk in and say, hey, I don't know anything. I'm ignorant. I haven't done any preparation. I haven't studied anything. I don't know anything about my job. But you can only learn so much from books and from various documents, right? Eventually, you got to start doing it. So you got to, that's what I learned. Number one, you got to be humble. Yeah. How long were you a leader of teams? Yeah. How long were you a leader of teams?

So I was enlisted in the SEAL teams for my first eight years, and then I got a commission and became a SEAL officer. Okay. And how many years were you an officer for? Twelve years. Twelve years. I want to take a moment with this interview and inspiring self-discipline interview with Jocko to talk about Thinkific. Now, Thinkific is the best platform to create, market, and sell your own online courses. I've been building online courses for almost a decade, guys.

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And was the 11th and 12th year easier than the first and second year as a team leader? So most humbling experience there's, well, the most humbling experience you're going to experience on the battlefield is if you have your guys wounded or killed. Yeah. And when that happens, there's nothing that's going to be worse than that for you as a person. Right. Because you feel responsible. You feel like it was your job. It's not just you feel responsible. You are responsible. You are in charge. And so when someone gets wounded or killed, if you're not shouldering that burden, then you're lying to

yourself. So that's number one. The story that I wrote about in Extreme Ownership, the opening chapter of Extreme Ownership is there was a blue on blue, a fratricide, meaning friendly forces killing friendly forces. And that happened when I was on a mission. It was actually a group of my SEALs with some Army soldiers and some Iraqi soldiers in a position, and in a sniper position, and they got basically attacked by a friendly Iraqi element. And got- Your guys did? Yes, got into a gunfight with them.

One of my guys killed an Iraqi soldier, wounded a couple more Iraqi soldiers, one of my guys got wounded. It was a nightmare nightmare because it's- You're on the same side. You're on the same team. Yes. Yes. So yeah. And I was the guy in charge. Wow. So do you want to talk about humbling? That's humbling. All these, you think you're so good.

You think you've got tactics mastered and all that stuff. You think you're great at planning and all those things. And I wouldn't say that I thought that, but I definitely thought I was competent. And so when that unfolded, it's like, oh, guess whose fault this is? It's my fault. Wow. Where do you go after that? How do you go back to a confident place of being able to lead people? Because you've got to have some confidence too. You can't just be concerned that something wrong is going to happen all the time, right? How do you transition back into a confident place? Number one, take ownership of what went wrong. Extreme ownership. Take extreme ownership of it, right? Because it's the same thing I just said. If that would have happened and I would have said, hey guys, that was my fault. It was his fault and

his fault and his fault. People would have looked at me. They know the truth. The truth is I'm the guy in charge. So everyone's respect level for me would have gone down and their confidence in me would have gone down. But when I go in and say, Hey guys, look, this is what went wrong. This is my fault because I'm the guy in charge. And this is what we're going to do to fix it. Well, now everyone says, okay, well he he's taken ownership of the problem and he's actually got some good solutions to make sure this doesn't happen again. Their confidence and the respect for me goes up and we can move forward. Right. How often did you have to take extreme ownership? Every single day. Every day. Oh yeah. Of course. Wow. Of course. The minute that you're

blaming anyone else for things that are going wrong, the moment that you do that, think about what it does to you. Think about what it does to you. If I'm walking, if we go on a mission and something goes wrong and I go, that wasn't my fault. Well, what am I doing to fix it now? What am I doing? I'm not doing anything. Nothing. Because I don't think it's my fault. So I'm not going to change anything. Well, then we'll make that same mistake again. And then I'll say that wasn't my fault. And we'll never make any progress. Whereas if I say, hey, this was my fault. Here's what I'm going to do to fix it. Then we fix the problem. And by the way, when I point my finger at you and I say, hey, you know, this was your fault. What's your reaction to that?

Defensiveness. Yeah. You're going to get defensive. Yeah, of course. And then what are you going to do? No, it wasn't. I'm blaming this person. That's perfect. They dropped the ball here. Jimmy did that. Johnny did this. And what are they all going to do? Point it back to you.

So now what do we end up with? We end up with- No solutions. No one taking ownership of any of the problems. The problems never get solved. We never progress. So how many times did you take extreme ownership of something that technically wasn't your fault? There is no thing.

There is no thing? There is no thing. So you'll take ownership of everything, even if it wasn't directly- This is a question, a comment that I get from my consulting business, right? You know, we work with business leaders. And someone will say, yeah, I get it, you know. But what should I do when it's really not my fault? But it is your fault.

It's like, oh, yeah. I have yet to have somebody stump me with a question when I say, no, if you're in charge of something and something goes wrong, it's your fault. It's all your responsibility. It's all your responsibility. Because if I'm in charge of a platoon and one of the machine gunners that's four or five levels below me in the chain of command and is on a position that I'm not even at. Right. And he shoots his machine gun in the wrong direction. Towards friendly forces.

Whose fault is that? It's your fault. Yes. It's my fault. I didn't train him well enough. I didn't make sure he understood his fields of fire, where he was allowed to shoot. I didn't make sure that he was being monitored correctly

by his fire team leader to make sure that they all knew what was happening. And at the end of the line, if he's not competent and capable of doing his job, it's my fault that I let him be in that position. So no matter what happens, it's my fault. So what do you tell CEOs or leaders of big companies that have multiple lines underneath them that don't have the time to train them personally,

but they have someone underneath needs them to train, who's training them, who's training them. How do you coach those individuals? It's real easy. You know, the guy says to me, hey, you know, we failed this project. And I said, oh, why did we fail that project? Oh, because of Bill, the frontline manager.

Oh, okay, who's in charge of Bill? It's Mike. Okay, who's in charge of Mike? Fred, who's in charge of Fred? The leader, the CEO. Who's in charge of Mike? Fred. Who's in charge of Fred? The leader, the CEO. Yeah, that's right. You're in charge of Fred. So that means you need to make sure that your intent is felt all the way down through the chain of command. How do we do that? That's leadership. This is why I have a consulting business. Because this is what you have to do. Because the larger a company gets,

look, when I'm in charge of eight people, It's easier. everybody knows what I'm thinking. I mean, I see them every day. I can sit in one room and talk to them all face to face. On the battlefield, you're in charge of a fire team. A fire team has four or five people in it. Even in combat, you can control four or five people.

Eight people, you actually can't control anymore. In a firefight, you can't control eight people. That's why the Army, the Marine Corps, around the whole world, it's like four or five people in a fire team. That's what the base unit is. In the corporate world, you can handle a little bit more than that because there's no explosions happening. There's no gunfire. So you can control eight people, 10 people, something like that. That's kind of what the normal corporate structure breaks out as. But the bigger you get, the more you have to rely on those subordinate leaders to spread the word, to understand what the mission is, to understand what the end state is, to understand why they're doing what they're doing. That's what you have to do as a leader. And when you do that, there was plenty of missions that I went on where I was the ground force commander in charge of 30 or 40 SEALs or 100 SEALs and Iraqi soldiers combined together.

Plenty of operations like that. You know how many people I talked to? I would talk to three. Right. I would talk to the two platoon commanders and the mobility commander. Yeah. And everybody, and then they would talk to their two or three people. And then their people would talk

to their two or three people. So how do you get that message across to a hundred or thousands, if that's in your organization? There's a bunch of different ways. So in a big organization, this is something that we come across. I mean, we work with companies. I think the biggest company we work with

is 167,000 employees. 167,000 employees global, right? So they're all over the place. So how do you get the message? Well, there's a bunch of things that you have to do. Number one, you have to make sure that your message is simple, clear, and concise, right? You've got to communicate in a way that even that frontline trooper can understand what you're talking about. Now, you have to translate that up and down the chain of command because if you're my chief operating officer, obviously the level of detail that I go into with you and the chief financial officer, that's going to be higher. We need to be in a deeper level of conversation and understanding, but I need to make sure that you know how to translate that down

to your next level. And then that person knows how to translate it down to their next level and all the way through the chain of command. There's companies where I'll go into the CEO and we'll be talking I'll say so how well does everyone understand? What your mission is here and they'll say oh absolutely. I'll go to a frontline person and say what's the mission of this company? They have no idea. They have no idea. So and this can be a real problem Yeah, I mean obviously this can be a real problem, but it becomes a real problem when if You're a frontline troop and you don't understand what the mission is, you can make bad decisions on the frontline. So there are certain companies at certain stages where the most important thing they can do is be cost effective, save money. If a frontline troop needs to make a decision about, hey, should I redo this thing right now, which is going to cost us a little bit

more money, or should I just let it go with a little bit lower standard? Well, if what you're focused on is saving money, that guy says, okay, you know what? I'm going to let this go, even though the standard is a little bit lower. That's a decision that can get made. But what if your focus right now, maybe you've got some bad reviews from consumers, and so your focus is to make quality perfect, even if you have to expend a little bit more money. If the frontline troop knows that he goes, wait a second, this isn't quite where we want it. So he redoes it. It costs a little bit more money, but we're now achieving the mission at that time. And guess what? As you can probably figure out the mission changes because we work with a, we will work with a company where what are they trying to do right now? They're trying

to maximize profits for this quarter because they're going public and they need four quarters in a row or six quarters in a row where they see that increasing. So, okay, guess what kind of decisions they're making? Now, can you go too far with that? Absolutely. And now you get the frontline truth that goes,

hey, I don't care. I'll put out as many as I possibly can. It's going to be dirt cheap and I saved the company a bunch of money. But now we end up with bad quality out there and we will get a bad reputation and that'll hurt us strategically. Right. So how do you get that message out there? You have to, number one, make sure it's simple. And then you communicate it. What's a simple message for like, I guess it depends on the

company, but. It depends on the company. Yeah. But should a simple message be like one sentence, you mean? Or should it be simple to understand? Simple to understand. And what we'll do with companies is we'll do a drill. We'll work on their mission. It's kind of their mission statement, but then also their mantra, or maybe a couple mantras where in this case, hey, it's quality over quantity. And now a frontline person's making decisions based on that. And so there's a couple mantras, two, three mantras that the people can refer back to that helps them guide their decision-making process. And then on top of that, they have like a little bit more detailed mission statement where they can say, wait a second, I know the mantra says this, but it also says we're supposed

to take care of our customers. And if I let this go, then my customers won't be taken care of. I need to adjust a little bit. Right. What would you say is your mission and the mantras you use for your business brand? So I have a bunch of different businesses. For Echelon Front, our consulting business, our mission is to be the premier organization for leadership consultancy in the world. That's what we're trying to do. And we're doing great at it. You know, we're doing great at it. How do we do that? What are the mantras? Well, number one, like we just said, what do we want to do? We want to make our clients and customers happy. How do we do that? We provide them great service and we actually improve their game. We actually can look at their

metrics and say, Hey, look, we're glad you brought us on board. Here's what we said we were going to do, and here's how it works. And one of the other things that we say is, look, we don't want to be a permanent crutch that people have to rely on. So a lot of consultancies, they want to go in and hook into a company for an extended period of time, and we don't want to do that. We want to work with you for six months, 12 months, 18 months, depending on the size of the company. And let you go. Yeah. We do have some companies that are growing rapidly. And so what we do is as they acquire new companies or as they bring in lots of new people, we are there to help train them and kind of onboard them. So that has turned into some longer term contracts, but that's one of the mantras is we don't

want to be embedded with you forever. If we're with you for too long, we failed. Yeah. Okay. So those are the kind of things we do. And what about your personal mission with the content you do and all the books? Is there a mission there that you have as well? I'm trying to take the lessons that I was lucky enough to learn and get them to as many people as I can so they don't have to suffer through the same

mistakes that I made. Yeah. What would you say is your biggest insecurity? Do you have any insecurities? My biggest insecurity? Because from the outside looking in, you feel like, it seems like you have no fear. You're extremely successful in business. Everything you put out is really successful. You've been through 20 years of training and combat. You've seen the worst in the world. You've seen the best.

It doesn't seem like you have many insecurities. I'm just curious if you face any today after all the lessons you've gone through. Yeah. I would say like anybody else, I don't wanna fail at things. And for me, like I said, if there's people out there that could use the lessons that I've learned and I haven't gotten it to them, to me, that's a failure. So that's the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night.

The other thing from that perspective that, that's the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. The other thing from that perspective is, you know, you, you look at, you say, you know, you've seen a lot, you've been through a lot. And, and I have, I've been through a decent amount. There's, there's many, many people that have been through infinitely worse than me, but for what I'm insecure about, for what I worry about, my life is a gift. Your life is a gift. I know that for a fact. And for me to squander that is something that definitely haunts me. It haunts me every day and I won't let it happen.

Yeah. I'm assuming you had a lot of friends that didn't make it back or people you were with or trained or. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of the above. So do you feel like you have this responsibility to make sure you take on every opportunity or the opportunities that come to you? You've got to at least give them your best shot, even if you kind of quote unquote fail at it. Well, yeah.

I mean, there's a, there's a. What you just said. I mean, even, you know, as you said it, it's an unrealistic statement. Hey, every opportunity that comes your way, I'm gonna take on. No, that's not true. Every opportunity that I have, prioritize and execute, you know, which is one of the laws of combat.

It's like, hey, you're gonna get opportunities, but I'm gonna look at them, assess them, and move forward. But really, I'm talking about the real things that I'm trying to do, that I have the opportunity to do, I'm gonna do them to the best of my ability. Yeah. Is there anything you regret in your 20 years of being a SEAL?

I mean, you're always gonna have regret. Is there anything that you still hold onto that you haven't processed and let go of or been okay with, I guess, like the regrets that you dealt with? You know, I don't spend a lot of time with regret. That's good. You know, because there's not much

that you can do about it. It's happened. It's happened, yeah. So the way I look at regret is what did I learn from it? What did I learn from whatever thing I'm looking at that I know I could have done a better job, could have done different? Sure, there's a million things like that. But I don't sit there and think about them all day long. What I think is like, hey, here's the lessons that I learned from them.

I won't make those mistakes again and move forward. Yeah. Was it challenging? Because you have four kids, did you say? Four kids. Four kids. forward yeah was it challenging because you have four kids did you say four kids four kids was it challenging at times being a father and going off to war and thinking about kids and missing out on kids was that challenging for you or do you know this is what i signed up for

and it's all gonna be okay i'm gonna come home eventually and spend more quality time with him or do you struggle with being a father and being away a lot at the same time? Yeah, when you have kids and you go away to war and you don't know if you're going to come back, that's horrible. How do you handle that emotionally or mentally? I think I did a lot of compartmentalization. Really?

And so, like, here's a for instance. I was in Ramadi, my last deployment to Iraq, and my wife asked me to send a picture of where I slept at night because my kids said, oh, the kids want to see where you're sleeping. We were in an old regime kind of palace on the wall, not quite a palace, but a mansion. And of course, it's all now boarded up and there's sandbags in the windows and there's machine gun nests on it and the whole nine yards. But that's where we were living. And I had a little bedroom in there with a plywood bed that we'd built.

And there was some kind of a crappy mattress on it. A little cushion, yeah. Yeah, but that's where I slept. And so I was going to take a picture of it so I could send it to my wife on an email. And when I took the picture, I looked at it and I realized that there was something wrong with the picture.

So I opened up a drawer, pulled out a little file, a little folder, took some pictures of my wife and kids and put them up around the bed. Wow. And then I took a picture of it and then I took all those things back down. I put them back in the folder. I put them back in the drawer because the last thing I needed to be thinking about while I was away on deployment was thinking about my wife and kids. What I needed to be thinking about was the guys that were with me that were counting on me to make the right decisions. And so I didn't want to be thinking about my wife and kids. So I compartmentalized them. I would talk to my wife maybe once a week, call her, check in. i would tell her everything's great everything's fine

and she would tell me the same thing you know it doesn't matter what was going on at home as far as she can't be worrying about her she didn't want me worrying about her wow or the kids so as far as i knew everything was good and as far as she knew everything was good and that was what seemed to work well wow did they teach you that or is that is that what a lot of SEALs did? Or is that just kind of something you had to? I think some, and not just SEALs, but I think most human beings will figure that that's probably the best thing to do is focus on your job at hand and put those thoughts and feelings aside. But I'll tell you what, you talked about being scared. And I said, for me being scared

of one of my guys getting hurt, the last thing in the world I wanted to be thinking about while I was on deployment was my wife and kids at home and would I ever see them again and any of that. I'm not thinking about that. That's not happening. Then you're making the wrong moves. Yeah, because then what you're doing is you're hesitating.

And if you're hesitating- That's when you get hurt. You're going to get hurt. You're going to get killed. Man, that's crazy. That's a story right there. So when she saw the photo, was she happy to see family photos around? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's nice. That's crazy. But you couldn't sleep at night looking at those photos? I didn't want to. Wow. Yeah. Did other guys do the same thing or did some of them have? I don't know. Some guys fueled them. That's fine. Not everyone's the same. Some guys I'm sure would look at the picture of their wife or their kids and feel motivated by it and give them something to look forward to. For me, I did not want to think about that. Wow, man. That's crazy. Was once a week enough for you to keep that connection going

and to keep the... Yeah. I mean, I've been married for a long time. I've been married for a long time, for 20 something years. Do you believe in God too? I think when you're overseas in a combat situation, you know, whether you, depending on what your version of God is going to be, but what I will say is this, you will see absolute pure evil overseas. You'll see it. in the Battle of Ramadi was abhorrent behavior by forces of evil that seemed to be non-human in many ways. And then the other side of the spectrum, when you're in combat, you're going to see some level of good and pure goodness that when one person will sacrifice their life to save other people, that's not normal, right? That's not a human instinct.

It's an instinct beyond being human. And so whatever that word means, good, evil, God, Satan. Yeah. I've seen it. Did you, what were your beliefs as a SEAL and have they changed since you've been home? Did you believe in a higher power or God or in a spiritual belief during that time? And has it shifted or changed?

I mean, I say the feelings that I had going in, I would say, you know, what I just explained about seeing good and evil, like when you see good and evil like that, that extreme, it just reinforced the fact that there's, like I said, wherever you put these ideas, wherever you think those ideas are rooted, I've seen them spring up into the world with my own eyes. Yeah. So what's your belief then? Do you believe in a higher power guiding you,

or do you believe there is a God, there isn't a God? Yeah, well, there has to be. In your mind? There's something inside. There's isn't a God. Yeah, well, there has to be. In your mind. There's something inside. There's something in the world, whether it's inside people's heads, whether it's external, I don't know. And I'm a person that looks at the world and thinks,

when I hear people saying God doesn't exist, then, or God 100% exists, guess what? I don't know. When I say I don't exist, then, or God 100% exists. Guess what? I don't know. When I say I don't know, I don't claim to understand the mysteries of the universe at all. But I will say this, when you look and you see the actions of human beings, whether that force is external or internal, they are there. And so I've seen them. Do you currently explore those questions about the mysteries of the world? If there is a God, if there isn't a God, do you think about that often? Or is that not something you're thinking about? Because for me, I'm constantly questioning everything. There's some days where I believe firmly there's a God. Other days, I feel like,

I don't know. So I'm just curious. Is that something that you're asking? You're not asking those questions or curious about that? Not really. But like I said, there's good in the world. There's evil in the world. Yeah. And whether that's some unifying thing inside of people's brains or whether it's external, you can think whatever you want.

I'm telling you it's there. I'm telling you it's there. I'm telling you it's there. And I don't try and convince people one way or the other. Yeah. You've just seen it. You've experienced both. I've seen it. I've experienced it. And that's good enough for me. What's the question you feel like you haven't been able to answer for yourself? Is there a question you're seeking to learn more about, answers to? If it's not God or the world, is there something else around leadership, around people, or around something else that you're seeking?

So you're asking me if there's a question that I think about all the time that I'm looking for? You're looking for an answer for you. Is there something that you're like, I'm really curious about this thing, whether it's about yourself, about other people, about the world, about leadership? Is there something that you're currently looking for an answer for? I literally sit around all day and talk about leadership. I think about leadership and what leadership to me, it boils down to understanding human nature. So for me, trying to better understand human nature is what I'm constantly trying to do. It's just gather a better understanding of human nature and how that applies to everything in the world.

Human nature, meaning the way we think, why we do certain things, why we respond emotionally, mentally, physically to ideas or people or reactions. Is that what you mean? How can I understand human nature, people, everything you just said? How can I understand that better? And that's what I'm always looking to do. Yeah. What has given you the best information around understanding people better?

Well, on my podcast, it's really a podcast about human nature. And it's human nature through the lens of war and atrocities, really. war and atrocities, really. Because when you start looking to reveal human nature, the place where human nature gets revealed most clearly is in chaotic situations. Yeah, life and death situations. Life and death situations. Whether it's war, whether it's a concentration camp, whether it's a prison camp, whatever that is, that's when you start to see what people, how people react. Survival situations. Yeah. And so for me, that, that constant trek down that road of uncovering what, how this person reacted, how this group of people react to how that other group

of people reacted, understanding that and seeing that and allowing that to unfold in my world has been, that's my road I'm on. Why do people react the most just in life, whether it's prison camp or war, or you're just walking down the street and someone cuts you off? Is there similarities between those situations where it might be just a normal day, but there's something that offends you or triggers you? And also in a time of life or death situation, are there any similarities? Oh, there's absolute similarities.

What are those things that- There's similarities across the board. That's what makes it so interesting to me. Right. Is because I get to see the way that things happen in wartime, and then you get to see how that compares to how it works in a in a corporate setting yeah why are we triggered to react or be defensive or guarded or in this kind of survival mode when life isn't actually

threatening us in a corporate setting or well the thing that's driving in a corporate setting often is your ego which by the way is the same thing that drives a lot of things that unfold, the same things that unfold in a combat scenario. It's like, oh, your ego's involved. Hey, I think we should do this plan this way. And then you think we should do it a different way. My plan's better. You think your plan's better. We bang heads. That's bad. That happens in war, and it happens in the corporate society as well. Ego. Yeah, ego. Ego drives all kinds of decisions that you make.

Bad decisions. It drives some good decisions too, right? I mean, it does. You're ignorant not to admit that, you know? Like, I like to win at things, right? Cool, what's driving that? It's 100% ego. You know what I mean? You like to win at things. You like to do right? Cool. What's driving that? It's a hundred percent ego. You know what I mean? You like to win at things. You like to do well. Cool. What's driving that?

It's, it's ego. There's some level of ego. Now, if it goes overboard and you start making decisions so that you can win, but you're stepping on the backs of other people, that means you've let your ego get out of control and now you're making mistakes and that's going to end up in your downfall eventually. It might not, you might, You might get pretty far. You might get pretty far allowing your ego to smash other people and abuse other people. You might get pretty far, but eventually it's going to come back on you. I guarantee it's going to come back on you. How do you manage your own ego with the success you get? You've had success in multiple areas of your career from a CEO to an author to a business leader

to an executive coach and leadership coach? How do you manage it when you are training CEOs from companies that have 100,000 plus employees and you're number one on the list and top podcasts? How do you manage it daily? Because I've seen over and over again through my own experiences, through the books that I cover on my podcast,

the books I've read in my life, if you want to open yourself up for a massive downfall, just let your ego get out of control. Really? If you want to let that happen, yeah, let your ego get out of control. So every single day for me, it starts at ground zero. I've got to go forward with an open mind, with a humble mind, looking at the world. You know, it's classic. Like when I get asked a question, I don't think to myself, oh, I know the answer to this. And I get asked questions all the time. And generally, when I hear a question, 99% of the questions that I hear, I've heard in some form before. But I don't go, oh, I've heard this before.

I already know the answer. I say, okay, well, let me hear this. What detail is this person talking about? What angle is this person coming at it from? What can I learn from this question? How can I assess this question? So everything that I look at, I try and look at from a humble perspective. And if you don't do that, it's going to be a problem. I mean, even when you're asking me questions about God, you're asking me questions about my beliefs. It's like, hey, here's my beliefs. I'm humble and I'm listening and my mind is open and this is what I've seen and this is what I can tell

you about it. I'm not sitting here jumping up and down saying you should believe this or you should believe that. I'm saying you should stay humble. You should keep an open mind about what's going on in the world. I am. I think you should do the same thing. Wow. It's a mindset. Every morning you wake up with an open mind. Yeah. And I don't want to get in this whole like morning routine where I go and look in the mirror and say, be humble. No, I don't do that. Like I'm not, that's not, that's not me. But when you know, you wake up and I'm just saying that the way I go about my business and my life is to say, say to myself, okay, well, I could be wrong about that. I could be wrong about this.

Even the book that I wrote, Follow On to Extreme Ownership, the book is called The Dichotomy of Leadership. And what's interesting about this book, so the dichotomy of leadership is like you can't be extreme in one direction or the other, right? You can't be, if you're in a leadership position, you can't talk all the time, right? Obviously as a boss, you need to communicate. You need to talk to your people. But if you talk too much, guess what happens? People start, stop listening to you. You're putting out too much information. They don't know what's important and what's not. So that's bad. You can't go too far in that direction. The other direction is you can't not talk enough. And now no one knows what's going on. No one knows what's happening. So you have to be balanced, and that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership. But probably the

first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what, there's another side to this, is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive. You got to be default aggressive. That's how you got to be. Because when something's going on, you got to be aggressive to get that problem solved. And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating, well then you can get killed. Okay, so there you go. And that's what I used to tell guys.

And as I was telling you. That's extreme, that's an extreme style. Yes, that's the problem with it. And so the question is, can you be too aggressive? Yes. Absolutely. You can, hey, there's a machine gun nest over there. Let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies.

You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably, even as I had these kind of mantras, like default aggressive, can you do too much of that? Yes, you can. So you end up with this, what do you end up? Can you be too passive? Oh yeah, absolutely.

Well, now we're not making any progress. Now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver Okay, so that's bad. So where do you want to be? You want to be balanced even the idea of extreme ownership? Can you take too much ownership? Yes. Yes, you can't really you yes, you can't I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything two different things Listen to this if you're working for me and I say, okay Here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight.

Here's the people I want you to take. Here's the weapons I want you to bring. Here's the vehicles I want you to bring. Here's the route I want you to use to get to the target. Here's the method I want you to use to secure the target. Here's the route I want you to do to get back. So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go execute.

Now, can you really take ownership of that plan? If someone else gave you the whole thing? I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No. No, it's not your plan. It's my plan. So when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude?

Well, it's not my plan. Yeah, and you're at an obstacle now and you're like, hey, Jocko didn't think of this. Right, right. So his plan's horrible. So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think of this. You didn't think of this option. Yeah, yeah. Right.

So that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is I say, hey, here's the plan or here's the mission. How do you want to do it? And now if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people and you'll say, oh, hey guys, here's the plan or here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it? Now you all come up with a good plan and you come back to me and you say, here's the plan. And I say, that looks pretty good. Go execute. And now when you hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude? I need to adapt. I need to adjust. What's your plan? You'll make it. Come up with this. Yeah. Yes. So can you take too much ownership? The answer is yes, you can. So with just about every, you can name a trait, right?

You can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait, and you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad. So you have to be balanced. So even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what, being aggressive is really, really good most of the time. But if you're too aggressive, that's not good. So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's humility. That's you being humble enough to say, you know what, I really don't understand this that well. say, you know what? I really don't understand this that well. And there's some things in my life that I don't get. Whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured

out. I already know what I'm doing. I already know where I'm going. I already know what God is specifically. I already know what's going to happen to me when I die. All those things. But instead you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing. Yeah. That's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? You feel like something's missing? I know. I feel like I'm living a pretty good life right now. I mean, I'm totally blessed. I mean, I got a great family. I got great kids. I got a great company. I got working with great people. Yeah. No, healthy, healthy, you know, I get to work out, train. I'm feeling good. Living dream man yeah living the dream so

you never feel like there's something missing for you right now if there is you're working towards it you're working on the next book you're building the business yeah well there's a difference between something missing and am i satisfied yeah right because i'm not satisfied i mean i always want to go like i never i never get done with the end of the day and go cool mission accomplished. Like it's like, yeah. Yeah. So you're not satisfied, but you feel like nothing's missing.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd say that's a fair statement. What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most? Oh, I mean, my kids. My kids are cool. They're funny. You know, my wife and kids. Yeah.

My wife and kids are cool and funny, and we have a good time, and lots of inside jokes and all that. Yeah. You know, and I train jiu-jitsu, and that's very fun. And surf, that's fun. Yeah. Play guitar, that's fun. How old are your kids again?

Age? 20, 18, 16, and 10. And what's the biggest lesson you learned about yourself being a father to them? Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be. You can't train them to be. They're going to be who they are. And you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be who they are. they're going to be who they who they are and the more you try and force them into what you want them to be the harder they're gonna push back and rebel Wow

yep did you learn that the hard way or did you get yep so you tried to train them into a certain way or yeah somewhat and it's pretty obvious like from my perspective I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives. And we went down the road because we're having dinner now, so we're done talking about work. But now everyone wants to ask me about, you know, parenting and everything else. And at the table, I'm like, hey, who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do? And there's like one guy out of ten, right? Because most people, you know, your parents are wanting you to do this thing and you do something else. I mean, I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old. Like that's,

that probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do. Not even in the same ballpark, right? Yeah. They didn't want you to go to war. Yeah. They didn't want that. So here you go. Yeah. See ya. That's, so the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be the worse off it's going to be it's it's the same thing with leadership it's the same thing with leadership if i'm if i'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat the more resistance i'm going to get from it whereas if i plant the seed and i allow that plan to grow with them the better it's going to be received.

Like when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in? Well, you allow them to come up with a plan yourself. What if in your mind you're like, you really know that plan's not that good? It depends on how bad it is. How bad is it? What's at stake? If you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you're going to give them, and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us

working with, and the contract doesn't really matter, I'd be like, hey, hey, give it a shot. Here's a couple, I might give you a couple adjustments and give you some coaching on it. And then you go and you do your thing and you come back and you're like, oh no, we didn't land it. And I say, well, what do you think? Let's debrief. And now we talk about it and said, you know, you said this and you said that here's some other ways to go about it. I might even actually have you do it to me. So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, Hey, here's some other things that might've worked. Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was going to have value to our company, I'm going to, I'm going to either, yeah, I'm going to step in and be like, okay,

let's think about that. What's their reaction going to be? And by the way, that's when I'm not going to say, no, don't do it that way. I'm going to say, give me that. Tell me that again. And let me hear you. Let me give you some objections that you might hear from them. And all of a sudden I'll let you come up with the solutions. Even though I'm sitting there going, yeah, what he needs to say is this. No, I'll let you come up with a solution. So then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed. And then you're going to feel like you won, which you did. That's great. Which is great.

It gives you more ownership, more respect in yourself, confidence, belief. How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches, or employees, team members? Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement. And if you're not humble, you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it. So if you think you know everything, you're not listening, you're not asking for it. Even when it gets told to you, you don't listen to it. So feedback is built upon being humble. What would you say is in your way to getting to the next level? What feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to to the next level? What feedback do you think you need to hear or receive

from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have? The weird thing about me is even though you might think, look at me and think, oh, who's going to tell this guy anything, right? The reality is if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command, if they think I'm wrong, everyone will say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan. So even, you know, when I was a task unit commander in, so I'm in charge and I'm the head seal for this 40 seals, I'm the main guy. Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say? Why not? What do you think? What are you thinking? How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me. They would know that. So my friends, my family,

they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long. They're not intimidated or scared of you? No. That's good. No. So how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team, in order to welcome the feedback of the information. Yeah. What you do is when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it. This is like, you know, just the other day we have a leadership event that we do two or three times a year. But the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98% of the time and talking 2% of the time. So every time you come to me and you say, hey, Jocko, I don't like this plan. I don't say,

shut up and do it my way. No, I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it and then tell me how you want to do it. So therefore, the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know the door's open. You know that I'm going to be open-minded and listen to you, and that's how you build it. Every time you shut someone down from speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not going to get the feedback. And if there's no feedback, as we just said, you're not going to improve. What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills right off the bat, two things you can think of, and what are two things that wannabe leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders? So what are two things they could add to our skill sets?

Yeah, two things that you have. Number one is listen, which we just talked about, so that's fresh on my mind. And you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position, they should be talking all the time. Wrong answer. Wrong answer. I'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies and I'll listen for 38 minutes. And at the end of those 38 minutes, I'll have already thought through every discussion that's been had. You want to argue with him and he's arguing with her. And guess what? I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important. Meanwhile, you're expending all your ammunition. She's expending all her ammunition. He's given up everything he's got. I'm learning all their thought patterns.

I'm learning the pros and cons of each one of their arguments. And I do that for 38 minutes. And in the 39th minute, I say, hey, here's what I think we should do. And guess what? Because I've done an accurate assessment and listened, I'm actually going to be able to make the best decision. It wasn't because I was smarter. It wasn't because I had better tactical understanding. It's because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone, spilled their guts, learned everything that they knew, and did a good detached assessment of what the right thing to do was. So listen. And the other one is the word that I just used, which is detach, which is not getting emotional, not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter. If you can take a step back and look around, you're going to see infinitely more than

you can when you're in the weeds, staring the firefight in the face, looking down the sights of your weapon shooting. If you're doing that, you can't see anything else. Just think about that metaphor right there. If I'm looking down the sights of my weapon and I'm shooting, my world is this big. The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at high port, take a step back and actually look around, I can see infinitely more. So apply that to a meeting. This is the meeting that we just talked about, a 38 minute meeting. All this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm the boss. I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion. But what am I really doing then? What I'm really doing then is I'm in the weeds and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening.

So there you apply it there to your personal life. If you and I are arguing, you're my friend and you did something and now we're starting to escalate an argument and I'm starting to get emotional, am I able to listen to you anymore? Am I able to logically figure out what's going on? If I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad? And now i'm starting to raise my voice. Is that whole situation going in the right direction? No, no, it's not

It's not so what I need to do is take a step back detach calm down Listen to what she's saying and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without Without saying saying and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without, without saying you need to calm down or you're too emotional. No, no, no, no, no. Because if, if you come to me and you're mad about something, you come to me, whether it's, whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner, you come to me and you say, the dang, the supply department didn't give me the stuff I needed. If I say, hey, calm down, right? If that's my reaction, then you

realize that I'm against you, right? I don't get it. And so now it's me and the supply department against you. No one understands. No one understands. So I do a little technique. What is that? I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm going to reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm going to diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation. How would you do this with your wife?

Well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late. They're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say calm down. I say, oh, you've got to be kidding stuff. I don't say calm down, I say, I say, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Two weeks? And you go, yeah, can you believe it?

Ah, that's horrible. We gotta put a solution, we gotta get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved, right? So we already, now we're on the same team so we can work together to find a solution. We bonded on the pain. Yes, yes.

We felt the pain. Yes, we're on the same team. Okay, My wife, what's going to make my wife mad? The ice machine's not working, right? The ice machine's not working. It's your fault. Whether it's my fault, but we don't know. The ice machine's not working. By the way, this is a real story. This is happening today. The ice machine's not working. She didn't get mad about it, but the ice machine's not working if i go hey chill out you have a refrigerator and a house and we just calm down right is that how's that gonna go it's

not gonna go good now she's gonna get mad now it's me against her you know so instead the ice machine's not working ah man that thing is junk have you called the the repair guy you know what i mean and then all of a sudden we're on the same team. And she's like, well, no, I haven't, but I'm about to. Okay, cool. As opposed to the ice machine's not working. Well, okay, do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess? Right?

That's not going to go over well. So what would you call it? Reflect and diminish. Reflect and diminish. Reflect and diminish. Yeah, reflect and diminish. What if someone's coming after you and attacking you? Not like the supply chain or the ice machine, but it's like, you didn't do this.

Oh, yeah. This is your fault. I want you to guess what I'm going to do. What's that? What do you guess I'm going to do? If you come and attack me and tell me something's my fault, what do you think I'm going to do? You personally? Yes.

You would listen? Yes. Reflect and diminish? I would actually detach. Detach, yes. How do you detach your emotions from someone coming after you emotionally, even if it was or wasn't your fault? Well, there's a couple things that you've asked me now in the last couple minutes.

No, it's all good because it's all exciting. Because I can see like your mind is spinning here. You're absorbing and you're like, oh, this makes sense. If you're attacking my you're like, oh, this makes sense. If you're attacking my ego, immediately, as soon as I feel frustrated, angry, defensive, all three of those things are red flags to me that that's my ego. I immediately know. I go, when I feel my bristling, yeah, when I feel that, I know it's, I guarantee it's 99% it's just my ego that I'm mad. So what do you do in that moment? I immediately go, oh, that's your ego, you idiot.

Listen to what he's got to say. Let's win. Let's win. So how do I win? Do I win by attacking you? No. No, I don't win by attacking you. If you're the only winner, you both lose.

Yes. So when you attack me. You both need to win. And you say, whatever your attack is, you say, this is your fault. I go, you know what? Absolutely. This is my fault. Here's the you know what? Absolutely. This is my fault. Here's, here's the mistake that I made. And I know it affected you in a negative way.

Here's the things that I'm working on right now to remedy it. What are you going to do? Are you going to yell at me more? Are you going to say, are you going to tell me it's my fault again? Like I just, a crazy person might say it a couple more times and a crazy person. I'll be like, yeah, I know this, you know, I get this. I guess another question I get when it's sort of like similar to what you said earlier, when you said, yeah, but what if it's not really your fault? Right. The other one I get a lot is if you say, Hey, listen, Lewis, this is, this is my fault that this happened. You go, you're right. It is your fault. And then people say, what do I do then? What do I do then? If the person's blaming me, how do I take ownership then?

And I'm like, that's the whole point. That's the whole point. The whole point of taking ownership is when you look at me and you point your finger and you say, this is all your fault. I say, yes, I know. That's what I just said. This is absolutely my fault. I'm the one that's in charge. And these are the things that I'm going to do to fix it. That's where we're going to start. Wow. So when someone blames you, yes, take ownership. Now, if you have in the back of your mind, like you did earlier, like, Hey, maybe this isn't really my fault. Like if you have that in the back of your mind, you're actually wrong. You're actually wrong. You're in charge. And that applies to your life as well. That applies to your life as well. How you, you know, you got to take ownership of what's going on in your life when you're not where you you want to be and you say it's because the boss doesn't like you or it's

because the girl treated you this way or the guy did this. Like all those things, you got to take ownership of. Yeah. And if you're blaming all these other external things, you're not going to make any changes and that's going to be a problem. Okay. Let's talk about relationships with this. I want to stay with this for a second. Get some. Say that you're trying to think of a situation. Yes. You're going to be thinking long and hard. But I'm sure you've had many experiences with your wife, right? How many years you've been married? 22. So I'm sure there's many times where you've expressed your dislike about something with her and she's expressed dislike of something about you. Is that fair to say?

Not really. No? No. What am I gaining from telling my wife something I dislike about her? Or about a situation or something she's unhappy with that you forgot to do? Or are you guys not like that? I don't really play into that whole bickering thing. That's great.

That's amazing. Because I'm immediately just de-escalating. You de-escalate all the time. Just de-escalate. Like what am I going to gain? Am I going to win an argument? Here's the question. Am I going to win an argument with my wife?

No. No. I might win a short-term battle with my wife. What's that going to do for me for the next week? It's going to be bad. I'm going to suffer more. So I'm not looking to win an argument I'm looking to resolve a problem Wow, and that's what allows I mean the SEAL teams has like a 90% divorce rate

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, why is that because you're gone all the time? You're under a lot of stress you detach emotionally you come home you you you just that's what happens It's a hard environment to I mean, let's face it, normal people have like a 50% divorce rate. So you put that, you put normal people, you put them in massive stress and you go on six month deployments, eight month deployments, back to back to back to back. Yeah. So how do you detach your ego? I guess your wife doesn't come at you. No, my wife will do that all day long. Really? So she's coming at you. Oh, no, my wife will do that all day long really So she's coming at you are attacking little things here and there

How do you not let it affect you emotionally or were you like don't you see how hard I'm working or don't you see? What I'm providing or don't you see that I'm showing up every day consistent Don't you see that my ego is out of control and I'm looking to fight you right now I'm not gonna play that game. So you just detach it instantly. Yes, if someone's coming out You gotta be careful because if you're unemotional, uh-huh, that's not good either right? There's a balance. Yeah. Yeah, because if you just go if you just sit back and you show no emotions Well try that sometime with your girlfriend, right when they get mad at you just go what's for dinner? See how that works. No. No, no. You can't do that.

You've got to reflect. You have to be balanced. You have to be balanced. But yes, your ego is what plays into, your ego drives all kinds of stupid things that you do. And here's what's interesting. When you're truly confident, when you truly are confident, it allows you to be able to say, you know what? like if you and I are working together and I've been doing this for 20 years and you've been doing it for four or three or two and you come to me and say, hey, I want to try this a different way.

If I'm really confident, I'll be able to say, you know what, that plan sounds better than mine actually. Why don't you go and execute that? Wow. Now, what do you think of me when I say that? Awesome.

Yeah, you think, you're the man. He's a cool leader. He's a cool leader. He's a cool leader. He gets me. He trusts me. He trusts me. He respects me.

And he's got confidence. Now, if you come to me with a plan, which, by the way, you can tell that your plan's better than mine. I mean, it's evident for whatever reason. You come to me with that plan and I go, no, we're not doing it that way. Do it my way. I'd be like, this guy sucks. This guy sucks. Not only that, but you realize that I don't even have the confidence to trust you and let you move forward. Yeah. He's an

egomaniac. He's got to be his way. There you go. All those things. So I don't play that game. With friends, with business partners, with your wife, you don't play a game anywhere. No, I don't play that game. How did you learn that to like attach your triggers, like emotional triggers? Because I saw it over and over and over again. Saw it over and over again. Did you used to be that way and you saw it or you just saw it from other people? Luckily for me, I was able to observe a lot.

And I had this situation unfold. So I got a new book coming out, which is, and I explain this situation. I was in a SEAL platoon. I was a follower. So I was like, I was a one cruise wonder. So I'd been on one deployment, but still not super experienced. But, and we had a platoon commander

that was very inexperienced and had a massive ego. And so this is a bad combination. So what did he do? He would say, we're doing it this way. This is who we're going to take. This is the mission. This is the plan we're going to use.

He would force all of that down our throats. Not just mine, but everyone. Even guys that were experienced. Even guys that had way more experience than him. They would just, he would force these plans down our throats. And what do you think our attitude is? The attitude that you just explained earlier. We were totally, hey, this guy sucks. This guy's got a big ego. He doesn't listen to anyone else. He's horrible. He didn't respect him yet. And eventually we had a mutiny against that guy. Wow. We had a mutiny. We rebelled

against him and said, we're not going to work for this guy. Really? How often does that happen? Never. Hardly ever. Holy cow. I mean, that's the only mutiny that i that i saw in my 20 years it was that bad though was that was that situation so we have this mutiny and that was bad and you know at the time i was sitting there like and i actually had an okay relationship with the boss you know because i i'm a person that even as a new seal i realized oh you got to build a relationship with the guy that you're working with you got to make sure that that you're that you can talk to them that they'll talk to you that you understand what they it's like you got to build a relationship with the guy that you're working with. You got to make sure that you can talk to them, that they'll talk to you, that you understand what they want. It's like, you got to do that. Baseline of like and respect. Smart thing to do. Yeah.

So this unfolds. And of course, even though I had a relationship with a guy I didn't want to work with for him because he was horrible. Right. So he gets fired. And I'm watching and going, wow, that was weird. Because why did we hate that guy so much? Well, the reason was because he didn't listen to anyone. Everything was his way. He didn't treat us with respect. He was one of those guys that like, you take out the garbage. Hey, when we're traveling in a van, the front seat is left open for me. That was like one of his things, right? So all of us like, what are you

talking about? So none of us wanted to follow him. And that was, that stood out very starkly to me. Then when he got fired, a new platoon commander came in to take his place. And this platoon commander that came in to take his place was, was an awesome guy, had this great reputation as being a badass SEAL. And I didn't know him, but everyone knew his name. Wow. And he came in to take over. And I was kind of like, oh, dang, we're about to get tightened up.

You know, the guy's getting sent in here to fix us. So he shows up and I'm expecting this total beast to come in. And he's this super, he's not a huge guy. He's got like a nice smile on his face. Very, not quiet, but not loud. Just kind of a humble guy. And he says something along the lines of, hey, I'm looking forward to working with you guys. Wow. And I'm like, well, that's weird. And well, then it turns out when we got a mission to a training mission that we were going to go on, like the very first one, he's like, hey, you guys, here's the mission. You guys come up with a plan. And we're like, wow. But you're supposed to tell us the plan, right?

Yeah. Because that's what we've been used to. And by the way, this guy had incredible experience, combat experience. He'd had just about every job in a SEAL platoon that you can have. And there he was telling us to come up with a plan. And we love this guy. And we would do anything for him. So when I saw that stark contrast between these two leaders, one of them who was arrogant and one of them who was humble, that left a mark on me that never went away. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

What is the most important relationship every person has in the world? Is it with their intimate partner, their best friend, their boss, their parents, their kids? What do you think is the most important relationship that we all are going to face? I think that's a weird question. Sorry for the weirdness. It's just a weird question because as I was thinking about the context of it, all these relationships that you have, obviously you've got your spouse, right? That's who you're going to live with forever. That's okay. So that's a big one. Guess what? You're working. How long are you working every day? People are working 10 hours a day. If they don't have good relationships with the people they're working with, that's a problem.

So I don't think it's mutually exclusive that you need to have a great relationship and none of the other relationships matter. It's like, no, you have a bunch of relationships and you should nurture and build those relationships with everyone because that's what's important, right? That is what's important. When you talk about whatever you were saying earlier about the hole and all this stuff, it's like, hey, if you have good relationships, that's the big hole. If you don't have any relationships with people, then you don't really have anything. I mean, what are you going to be alone with a nice car, right? That's great.

It's cool. You're going to be alone with a nice car? Right? That's great. It's cool. You're going to be alone in a nice house. That's great. But you won't be happy. Yeah. Right? That you got a cool, you got a nice car. That's fun for like a week.

Right. So I think all those relationships are important. What about the relationship with ourselves? How do we develop a stronger bond or relationship with ourself? Again, it might be a weird question, but... Yeah, you're coming at me with weird questions. I know. I just like to go out there.

How do you build a relationship with your own self personally? How do you build it with yourself? Do you have conversations with yourself to build a relationship with you? Do you reflect on something? What do you mean by relationship with you? Well, we have relationships with other people. Right. And I feel like we also have conversations

in a relationship with ourself, the way we feel about ourself, the way we talk to ourself, the way we show up for our needs, our emotions. Is that something you think about? I'm trying to understand. Yeah. Relationship with self.

This is a concept I don't think about this concept a lot. Okay. Now, there might be something that I should be thinking about, right? Yeah, I'm trying to understand. Yeah. Relationship with self. This is a concept I don't think about this concept a lot. Okay. Now, there might be something that I should be thinking about, right? Yeah, I'm curious. Do you have a conversation with yourself daily or weekly or monthly where you check in and you ask yourself, am I okay? Am I doing the things I want to do? Am I enjoying this process? Am I loving who I am?

Do I respect myself? You know, the relationship and the conversation with self. You ever think about that? Yeah. I'm not, I'm not sure that I think about those things in a formal way. And part of this too, cause I understand, I think I understand where you're going with this. So, so let me explain this to you. When you're in charge of a military unit, you have something called commander's intent, which is, hey, on this mission, the overall thing that I'm trying to get accomplished is this, is this thing, whatever that thing is. It's called commander's intent.

And it's really the most important thing that everyone needs to understand. And when I was a leader of a SEAL platoon or a leader of a task unit, I didn't always have to say what the commander's intent was because I knew and they knew. They knew me well enough that if we were doing this type of mission, they knew what the most important thing was. So I should still say it, but everybody knew my guys could not hear a word from me, go out on a mission and know what overall was important to me. So the reason I say that is because I feel like I have the same thing with myself where I don't need to reinforce the fact that, hey, I'm here. Am I doing a good job? I know what I'm trying to do. I know that I know what I expect of myself. So I'm not having that conversation every day. I will say, you know, to your point, if I felt like I was looking around saying, wait a second, something's wrong here, right? Something's wrong. If I had a

SEAL platoon that did something on a mission that I didn't want them to do the next mission, I'd be like, okay guys, here's the most important thing. All right, they weren't they weren't clear They weren't clear So I think if I found myself in a position where I was waking up every day going man This is this is not where I want to be or man. This is I don't feel good about this then I would say okay What's my intent right now? What is the intent? What's the goal? What am I trying to get? Who am I trying to be? Then I might have to go back and kind of reestablish those things. So does that make sense to you?

Because, again, this isn't something that I think about it. And I guess what I'm trying to say, it's so deeply embedded in me. You don't have to say it to yourself. I'm not saying it to myself. When you transition from SEAL to, I mean, let me make sure I'm saying the terms right. Are you transitioning from SEAL to, is it former SEAL? What's the actual language? I mean, I just retired.

I'm not one of these people that says, I'm a fit. I'll make sure. How dare you? No, it's all good. So retired SEAL, did you have any challenge with identity or a clear mission after you retired of what you were going to be doing? Was that a struggle for you in that six-month, year, two-year period? No.

It was simple? It was clear? No. I started working with companies about six months before I retired. Gotcha. And if that wouldn't have happened, I was going to be surfing and doing jiu-jitsu. I own a gym in San Diego. And I was going to be doing that, which was totally good with me.

I was stoked to be doing that and hanging out with my family a bunch. Then this whole thing started to unfold, and as that unfolded, I did get on board. Now, what's good about your question, I'm sorry for criticizing you a couple times on weird questions, but what's good about your question is, I talk about this with veterans all the time, is when you get out of the military, you need a new mission. You need a new identity. You need a new, I don't know if You need a new identity. You need a new, I don't know if it's a new identity,

but yes, yes, I believe you're right. Like, people can wrap too much of themselves around their identity as an athlete, right? Yeah. I played arena football. That's me. Like, that's not you, right? Is it? A lot of guys,

I struggled with this for about a year and a half. So there you go. And a lot of guys that were friends of this for about a year and a half. So there you go. And a lot of guys that were friends of mine, they lived on the glory days. So I'm assuming there's a lot of SEALs, retired SEALs who probably have lived on the glory days. Yeah. So you got to look at it and be like, okay. And if that's what you want to do, like I had a friend when I was at SEAL Team 2 and he was getting closer to retirement. I was like, what are you going to do when you retire?

He's like, I'm going to be the fat retired guy down the street talking about what it was like. And I was like, that's awesome. Like, that's what he wanted to do. Hang out with his family. And you know, he did what he wanted to do with his life. That's cool. Like good, good. Uh, but what's bad is if you don't do that, cause that's a mission, right? The mission is I'm going to hang out with my family. I'm going to, you know, enjoy it. That's cool. That's a mission. What's not a mission is like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what a mission is like i don't know what i'm doing i don't know what my meaning is i don't know what my purpose is that can be a problem so to your point yes identifying what your new mission is going to be you should do that yeah and then people say well what if i can't think of a new mission then my answer is well go help someone

that's a good one well thank you if you if you if you're being service if you can't if you get out of the military you get done with a job or you get done playing arena football and you don't know what else to do because let's face it there's some other things that are come like when you got done playing arena football all of a sudden you're like okay I need money yeah I need a house I know yeah so so like that becomes a mission right but let's say like when you retire from the military, you got a retirement check coming in. You're not rich, but you can survive. Or you make a bunch of money doing something,

then you get, yeah. You can't let yourself float around in that arena. You gotta figure out what your new mission is. And if you don't, can't figure out what your new mission is, the other thing that can happen is, well, I got money because I got this job that I don't like, but that's not my mission. Okay, if you can't think of what your mission is going to be, go help someone.

Go find someone to help, and that will become your mission. And in that mission, you'll find not only will you benefit a group of people or a person or some other human beings in the world, but you'll start to recognize where you can improve yourself and bigger parts of the world. Love that. What do you think is, what is the biggest challenge that most people are facing right now in our world of why they have anger, resentment, frustration that they're not on the mission that they want to be doing? What is the challenge that most people are facing internally or emotionally or mentally that holds them back from having a clear sense of purpose, fulfillment? Do you think it's weird to ask a question about most people? Like what's holding most people back?

It seems like I talk to so many people and I know you do too. And like different people have different things that are problematic for them. Yes. That if you, if you wanted me to answer that question to the best of my ability, I would say what is preventing most people from moving in the direction that they want to move is a lack of discipline. And no one wants to hear that answer. It's the harshest answer. It's not sexy. It's not fun. Yeah. It's not, it's not cool. It's not good clickbait. Because the reason it's not good clickbait is because, well, you can put this as clickbait. The one reason most people don't succeed. Right. Right. But then as soon as they, you click on that clickbait and then it says

discipline, they don't even read it because they don't want to hear it. They want the easy way. Yeah. Because what they actually, actually, when they see that word discipline, it's actually slapped in the face because they know it's true. They actually know it's true. Discipline in what ways of their life? Discipline in your life. In which way should we not have discipline? Sure. Right. If you want to make progress in your life you got to have discipline that's how you get there discipline is the root of all good qualities yeah well i mean what what what are you going to get without discipline are you going to be in good physical shape without discipline are you going to be financially

successful without discipline are you gonna are you going to become more intellectually powerful without discipline? No. Can you think of any other goals that I could possibly achieve without discipline? If you have them, please let me know because I'm going to jump into them. I also think discipline gives you the most self-respect, belief in yourself, confidence. For sure. It builds those qualities of like, yeah, I got this. I can do something hard consistently and I can resist temptation or delay gratification. Very true. That's true. And that's a very interesting point that you bring up because when you take a military unit or any team of any kind, you take a team of any kind and you want to give them more confidence and give them more pride, what do you do? You put them in challenging

situations that require them to come together and be disciplined as a team. And then they become stronger and they become better and they develop pride and confidence. Those are all positive things. So what do you do as an individual human being? It's the same exact thing. The tougher things you go through, the more confidence you're going to have, the more confidence you have, the better you're going to get. Can you go too far with that? Yes, you can. You can let your ego get out of control and you can believe all the crap that you're being told. Hey, that was great. You did great.

It's like, no, actually, I did okay. Yeah. But I'm going to work and try and make myself better. So there's extreme discipline? Yes. There is absolutely extreme discipline. Yeah. There's people that are so disciplined that they have no joy.

They can't have fun anymore. That is the minority. The minority is, hey, I have so much discipline that I'm unhappy. Right? That's a minority. There are a few people like that. I'm sure I know some. I'm sure you know some.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other end of the spectrum is like, I have so much freedom, but I, you know, my life is a disaster because I do whatever I want. You know who does whatever they want? Homeless people on the streets that are addicted to drugs. Yeah, lazy people. They're doing whatever they want.

Yeah. They have total freedom, but they become a slave. They become a slave to their addiction. They become a slave to their financial situation. They become a slave to their financial situation. They've become a slave to their emotions. All those things are negative. The right place is the balance and what most people, the majority of people need a little bit more discipline in their life. So if you were to ask me and I wasn't to attack you about asking me a weird question, what's the number one thing? Discipline. That's why I wrote the discipline equals freedom field manual. Discipline equals freedom. You want freedom in your life?

You want to achieve what it is you want to achieve? How do you do that? You do it through discipline. You do it through hard work. You do it by knowing what it is you're supposed to do and then actually doing it. Do you, and I'm assuming you're going to say that, yes, to apply discipline in every area of your life. It's not just I'm disciplined in my nutrition and fitness, but discipline in relationships, discipline in finance, discipline. So it's learning and mastering multiple skills that you're going to be disciplined at.

I agree with everything you just said, except for the word mastering. Okay. Because we're not going to master anything, right? We're not going to master anything. It's very difficult. Somebody asked me that on social media. How do you master discipline? I'm like, you don't. You don't. You keep working at it, though. Every day. Yes. Continue to improve and grow. You better. You got the opportunity. What happens if we stop being disciplined in our life? If we think we've made it, we think we've achieved something, and we stop repeating the discipline patterns that got us there? This is a rhetorical question because we all repeating the discipline patterns that got us there.

This is a rhetorical question because we all know the answer. You stop being disciplined, you're going to start to devolve and become less and become worse and become weaker and become lazier and become more pathetic as a human being. Do you become more disciplined year after year, or do you just say, okay, I'd stay consistent with my discipline? Personally. I think I'm pretty consistent with my discipline. I think what you said earlier about getting more disciplined here,

more disciplined there, I might ramp it up in some area. Some things, yeah. And where I can focus, like, oh, I need to get more disciplined in this. Cool, make a run at it. Like, here's a good one. Like, I write books, you write books. Can you write a book without discipline?

It's very hard very hard. I mean that book doesn't write itself very hard and it and how often are you like? Oh super cool. I'm gonna go right today. Yeah, like it's not it's not a joy every sometimes It is sometimes it feels good and I get that but Generally writing is for me generally writing is not the premier thing that I'm looking to do every day. So how am I going to write a book? I have to have the discipline to say, yep, I'm going to go, I'm going to go write this. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah. So when I'm writing a book, back to your question, I have to impose discipline in that area because I've got a due date. Either I made it up or my publisher made

it up or whatever. Here's where I want this done by. Cool. I'm going to write a thousand words a day. That takes me about an hour a day. If I don't write a thousand words a day, I look up in a month and I got to write 30,000 words and that takes 30 hours and you can't, my brain doesn't like to do that. I'd rather just write a thousand words a day. So I'll focus my discipline on somewhere. That doesn't mean that when I'm focusing on writing, I'm laying on the couch until...

Eating potato chips. Yeah, eating potato chips. That's not happening. Yeah, so you stay disciplined in all areas of your life. Yes. If you want to be successful in every area.

Yes. Pretty basic concept, huh? I know. It's incredible. I wish there was something more magic about it. You've got a number of books, The Dichotomy of Leadership. You've got Extreme Owners it. You've got a number of books, Dichotomy of Leadership.

You've got Extreme Ownership. You've got a few other kids' books as well. You've got a new book coming out soon. What's it called again? January 2020. It's called Leadership Strategy and Tactics. They can pre-order it now. Yes, they can pre-order it now.

Now, get the book. What's the thing you're most excited about in your life? Is it the books? Is it the consulting? Is it being a dad? Is it surfing on the beach? Yeah, I mean, it's wintertime, so the winter waves are coming, which is nice to be out Are there bigger waves?

I don't know. In the wintertime? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yes. So in the wintertime, you get the swells from the big storms. So that's always exciting.

Amazing. And what am i excited about i'm excited in the fact that i'm here i have today i have tomorrow and and there's plenty of men and women that have sacrificed to give us this opportunity to be here and so i'm going to take advantage of it yeah i love that there's a couple questions i want to ask you to wrap this up. This is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. So again, another weird question for you. We'll roll with it. So imagine many years from now, it's your last day. You get to pick the day and you get to be as old as you want. And you've achieved everything you want. It's a hypothetical world, right? You've achieved everything. You've gone after all your dreams. You've had failures and successes.

But most of the things you wanted to accomplish, you made them come true. And it's your last day. And you've got to turn the lights off. And you go somewhere else afterwards. But this world, this body is gone. And for whatever reason, all the things you've created, the books, the bestsellers, all this work, it's got to go with you to wherever you go. So no one else has access to this content information anymore. The

videos, all this stuff, gone. It's with you somewhere else. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you know to be true from your experience in this world, in this life, that you would share with the rest of us. Three things you know to be true or lessons you would want us to learn. What would you say are those three truths for you? That should be a super hard, complex question, but it's actually very straightforward and simple for me. Number one is take ownership of everything that's going on in your world.

That's extreme ownership. That's what it is. I wrote a book about it with my buddy, Leif Babin. There you go. Number two, discipline equals freedom. That was my second book. Why did I write that book? Because if you want to have freedom in your life, then you got to have discipline. And lastly, you got to be balanced. That's the dichotomy of leadership. If you go too far in one direction or the other, you're going to screw things up. So balance the dichotomy of your life.

The trilogy of books. There you go. The three truths. I love it, man. I'm sorry, but there's a reason why those books, there's a reason why I wrote those books. There's a reason why those titles are what they are. When you asked me earlier, what are you trying to do? What's your mission? My mission is to teach people the lessons that I've learned, right? So in trying to teach the lessons that I've learned, the biggest lessons that I've learned, right? So in trying to teach the lessons that I've learned, the biggest lessons that I've learned, I put them into books. They're actually in order of the way I believe them, right? The first one is take ownership. That's everything that's going on in your world. The second is discipline equals freedom. And the third one is the dichotomy of leadership. Be balanced. That's powerful. You're doing it, man. I love it. What's something that

you're very proud of that most people maybe don't know about you? Something that I'm very proud of? Yeah. Maybe something you're proud of that maybe a lot of people, they don't talk about that much, or maybe people wouldn't think about that you've done or that you haven't done. Yeah. I mean, obviously I got four kids and my kids are pretty awesome. Yeah. So it's weird when I, I've had my podcast for almost four years. And when my podcast first came out, like my oldest daughter was 16 and then, you know, 14 and then 12 and then six. And people would ask me questions about parenting. And I said, listen,

the jury ain't out yet on these kids, right? I don't know how they're going to turn out. I don't know if they're going to be successful or not. And also, I don't even know how you're defining successful. If I have my kid that has made a bunch of money and owns a bunch of property, but is miserable, how successful are they? They're not. And how successful was I as a dad? Not very. but is miserable, how successful are they? They're not. And how successful was I as a dad? Not very. So as my kids have gotten older now, it's been four years, four critical years, you know, going from high school through into college for two of them. And then, you know, the other ones growing up. Middle school to high school, yeah. Right. So I can, I can, I'm assessing them now and I go, yeah, you know what? Those kids, those kids are good to go. And so if there's something

that I was proud of, it's the fact that my kids are, right now, seem to be on a good trajectory in their lives. That's cool. Which feels good. That's great to be proud of that. That's powerful, man. Yeah. And my wife, who was around for all those years when I was gone all the time, she's the one that was raising them. She's the one that instilled in them a lot of the values that they have. So even though I could say I'm proud of it, it should really be my wife saying that, not me. Yeah, it's cool though.

Well, you got to take ownership, right? Extreme ownership. Well, that's another thing is when good things happen, you don't take ownership of that. When the team does something well and the boss says, hey, Jocko, good job with your team. I don't say that, it wasn't me. It was the team does something well and the boss says, hey, Jocko, good job with your team. I don't say, that wasn't me. It was the team.

Yeah. So when good things happen, you put it on other people. When bad things happen, you take extreme ownership. Yes. That's a good leadership quality, too. It is indeed. Well, I want to acknowledge you for a moment for showing us the way. Because you are a straightforward guy.

I love that, the way you respond to me and my weird questions for you. And I really acknowledge you for the way you've transitioned from your mission of being in service to this country and to humanity in the way that you did for 20 years, two decades, and transitioning into serving in a different way into the corporate world and to just everyone that's a listener

or a reader of your content. You're really in service in a different way, into the corporate world, into just everyone that's a listener or a reader of your content. You're really in service in a big way as well. And I would say probably a bigger way because you can reach more people now. And I really acknowledge you for sharing these wisdoms with us, the truth with us, the lessons that you learned from combat and allowing us to apply it in our life. I think it's really important that you're doing this, and I appreciate it very much and acknowledge you for it. So thanks for all that you do. Make sure you guys pick up

the books, the pre-order the newest book or get one of the previous ones, Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy of Leadership. Make sure you check them out. Check out your podcast and where's the best site to go and learn about all this stuff where they can follow you online? So jocopodcast.com is the podcast. Echelonfront.com is my leadership consultancy. And then Origin Maine. M-A-I-N-E is I have a company up in Maine where we manufacture clothing. We manufacture jujitsu gis. We manufacture jeans, which I'm wearing right now. We manufacture jujitsu geese. We manufacture jeans,

which I'm wearing right now. We manufacture boots, which I'm wearing right now. And we manufacture jujitsu geese, which is the uniform that you train jujitsu in. And we do it all in America. So we've, we've, we've got, we've taken a, an industry, which I grew up in new England and that used to be sort of the center for textiles in America and really one of them in the world. And it all went away. It all went overseas. And so over the past few years, myself and a friend of mine, business partner, we've been rebuilding that. And these towns up there have been ravaged by the industry going overseas. Yeah, and bringing it back.

We literally are bringing it back. We literally bought looms. We found our first loom in a, I think it was about a 500,000 square foot abandoned factory in Lewiston, Maine, and took that loom, which hadn't been used in probably 30 years, found the old timers that knew how to work on them, refurbished it, and started weaving our own material with American cotton. And now we've got looms that we've brought back from overseas. We started with our building boots as well. So it's really cool what we're doing up there.

We started off, obviously, with no employees. We have close to 60 folks up there in the factory, craftsmen, craftswomen. A lot of them are female. And we're rebuilding the economy of that town. And we're bringing manufacturing back to America where it belongs. That's great, man. But you've got all that at jockelpodcast.com as well. There's links to these other places. Yep, links to these other places. So that's what we're doing, man. You're doing great stuff.

I appreciate it. We're working on it. Appreciate you. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? My definition? What is my definition? Of greatness.

Of greatness is to help out other people. Yeah, there you go. Jaka, thanks, man. Appreciate you, brother. Thank you. Thank you, man. There you have it Jocko. Thanks, man. Appreciate you, brother. Thank you. Thank you, man. There you have it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this powerful interview.

I was a little nervous, sweating because of how disciplined and powerful Jocko's presence was. He has such a unique presence because of everything he's been through, of how disciplined his life is. It's pretty incredible to see what he's created and how he impacts people. And I love also the way he was curious about my questions. I mean, I was trying to dig in and he was curious about the questions and I loved that. And I love that he was willing to explain himself on some of these things. So for me, really powerful. If you enjoyed it, share it with one friend. You can be a hero. You can be a champion to one friend or share it to many friends in a WhatsApp group message or a group text message and just send the link lewishouse.com slash 871 to a person right now that you think

would enjoy this. Just text them the link, share it with me on Instagram stories, tag Jocko as well over on Instagram as I'm sure he would love to hear from you and learn more about you. We have the ability to continue to grow and we need to kill off our future self every single day. The things that aren't serving us, the things that aren't supporting us,

the things that are holding us back, the things that are weighing us down. We have the ability to grow every single day, but we must kill off the past things that no longer support us in that growth. And Ernest Hemingway said, there is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self. When you look at the things that don't work for you, imagine yourself staring at you, your former self, and reflect on all the things that aren't working and say, it's time to let these things go. It's time to let these beliefs go, these way of beings, these lack of self-disciplines, whatever it may be, these relationships, these unhealthy choices with nutrition, with decision-making, it's time to let

them go. And it's time to move forward in a more powerful way and kill off your former self so you can grow into the person you were born to become. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm looking forward to hearing how it impacted you. Let me know over on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, at Lewis Howes. Share with your friends. Subscribe to the podcast if this is your first time here. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music