Essentials: How to Become Resilient, Forge Your Identity & Lead Others | Jocko Willink

1. 0:00 – 0:23

   Jocko Willink

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. [upbeat music] I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Jocko Willink. Jocko Willink, welcome.

   2. JWJocko Willink0:22

      Thanks for having me, man.

2. 0:23 – 2:40

   Discipline, Impact & Autonomy in the Military

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:23

      In my view, and I think in the view of a lot of people, you embody discipline. So today I definitely want to talk about routines, but also mindsets, but also things that you do and ways that you approach things that might not contradict, but not be so obvious to people, might, um, be a little bit counterintuitive. There are generators and projectors, and generators are people that are just from a very young age, they realize they can impact other people. They want to create things in the world. And then there are these projectors that like to just kind of reflect on what they see. And it's not that generators are good and projectors are bad, the world needs both, that they really work in a kind of symbiotic way. But your story captures the essence of what it is to be a generator, which is that by doing certain things, you can have an impact and it feeds back to you, and it's likely that they receive something from it as well.

   2. JWJocko Willink1:14

      Yeah. And w- where this all came to fruition as I, as I now piece together as you're talking through this stuff... Look, when I joined the military, you join the military and you get a blank slate. No one cares what you got on the SATs or the... And no one cares about anything. You're a blank slate. And then with that blank slate it is, "Hey, if you do this thing, if you perform this task and you perform it well, you will get recognition. You will hopefully get more control over your own destiny," which is the ultimate in compensation for, for human beings, to have more control over your own destiny. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't control what you're doing every day, or at least you don't control most of what you're doing, then it's, then it's not worth it. The reason people try and make money is so they can have more autonomy in their life. And so in the military, it became very clear to me very quickly that if I performed well, I actually got a lot more freedom with what I did. That's when I started to realize, oh, what I'm doing right now is gonna impact not only what's gonna happen to me in the next hour, but in the next two years, three years, five years. The more I focused on doing things that are gonna positively impact my future, the better my life became, and I think that's a very huge lesson to learn that I know I didn't figure out for quite some time. [laughs]

3. 2:40 – 4:12

   Energy, Waking Up, Alarm Clock & Debate

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:40

      I get the impression, and I think everyone gets the impression, that you're somebody with a lot of energy, and I wonder whether or not you wake up with a lot of energy and you feel like you have to burn it off with this physical activity and, and work and other demands in your life. Or do you find that you wake up and your energy is kind of neutral and exercise and physical activity gives you energy?

   2. JWJocko Willink3:02

      I, I would say it's both, right? There's no way I can sit here and say, "Oh yeah, every day that alarm clock goes off, and I'm like, 'Oh yeah, let's rock and roll.'" Not... Certainly that's not the case. It's also certainly not the case that every day I'm like, "Oh God, not again." No. Uh, I'd say most of the time the alarm clock goes off and I, I, I don't think a bunch. Like, when my alarm clock goes off, I, I don't debate with myself. I'm not negotiating. I, I just... The thing goes off and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Sort of robotic. Now, I... This, this much I can say. When you go and work out, you're gonna feel better. You will get energy from working out. You go break a sweat, you're gonna feel better. This... You're gonna get more energy from it. And look, you gotta go really, really hard to where now you feel more tired when you're done, and even that, I mean, you gotta go psycho. I'll do that occasionally, but I don't do that on a daily basis. You know, at the end of a day, if I wake up, lift, run, surf, and then I do jujitsu in the afternoon, like, at the end of that day, I'm tired and I feel tired. Uh, but normal day, working out just makes you feel better. G- definitely gives you e- definitely gives me

4. 4:12 – 5:45

   Tool: Exercise for Energy; Eating, Fasting & Mental Clarity

   1. JWJocko Willink4:12

      energy.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman4:12

      The idea that movement and exercise gives us energy I think is an important idea, and it's something that I was... frankly, I was hoping your answer would be that, as opposed to that, you know, you wake up every day and you just want to just attack the world because you have so much energy getting out of bed, because frankly, I never feel that way.

   3. JWJocko Willink4:30

      [laughs]

   4. AHAndrew Huberman4:30

      But I always feel better after I train. Do you nourish after you train, or do you find that eating slows you down?

   5. JWJocko Willink4:37

      I find that eating slows me down. So no, I don't eat a big meal until I'm kind of done with the physical stuff for the day, which is usually at night, 6:00, 7:00 at night, which I guess there's some bad things about that. I eat too late. [laughs]

   6. AHAndrew Huberman4:49

      Well, the data say, you know, if you're having a regular meal schedule that allows you to sleep well at night, whatever that means for you, and that allows you to be active and focused when you need to be active and focused, that's the ideal schedule.

   7. JWJocko Willink5:02

      When I'm working with clients, like, so I have a leadership consulting company, Echelon Front. When I'm going to work with a client, I'm not eating, I... 'cause, 'cause they're gonna be asking me questions, we're gonna be diving into what's happening inside their business. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on. It's a lot of cognitive work. Podcast, I'm not eating before a podcast. Before I'm recording a podcast, I'm not eating 'cause I don't want to have a bunch of food in my stomach. I want to... You, you, you get a certain level of mental clarity when you haven't eaten a bunch of food. So going out on missions, I never would eat before I go out, out on a mission. I would eat when I come home. You know, you get home 4:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning from doing an operation, cool, then I'll eat. 'Cause then I'm gonna do a debrief for 15 minutes, clean weapons, and then eat a big meal, go to sleep. Cool. Yeah, I don't want to have food in my stomach when I've got to perform or execute

5. 5:45 – 6:31

   Tool: High-Intensity Exercise, Peak Mentality

   1. JWJocko Willink5:45

      anything.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman5:45

      So much of what you embody and what you do, I think, centers around this idea of discipline, of course, but also energy. It's the intuitive sense I get about why people are so drawn to your messaging and what you do and how you do it. Are there certain forms of exercise, like weightlifting versus cardio, that you find give you- An especially big boost in what we're calling energy, and here this could be cognitive energy, it could be physical energy, but a pr- a readiness for the next thing.

   3. JWJocko Willink6:13

      I would have to say, like, the, the high-intensity sort of anaerobic blast, you know, whether it's on the bike or on the rower or, you know, swinging a kettlebell hard, something like that, that last 10, 15 minutes, that's a really good way to, you know, peak my mentality for the day.

6. 6:31 – 8:34

   Winning & Losing, SEAL Selection, BUD/S, Resilience

   1. AHAndrew Huberman6:31

      When you were in the teams, what was your observation about how winning and losing would impact people in the short and long term? From the perspective of leadership, and maybe more importantly from the perspective of yourself, how do you work with that? How do you calibrate wins and losses? How do you transmute losses into energy? Because wins we know convert to energy, but losses oftentimes can sap our energy way, way down.

   2. JWJocko Willink6:55

      To start with, I think that the selection process to get into the SEAL teams is going to weed out a bunch of people that can't recover very quickly from something bad. The kid that was the star of the football team, the star of the basketball team, the captain of this, the captain of that, he's been winning his whole life, he goes to BUD/S and he quits. Because in BUD/S, you're not gonna win. Y- you're certainly not gonna win everything. They're gonna find what you're not good at, and they're gonna exploit that, and you're gonna lose. A, a lot of guys that may lose and it disrupts their, their motivation, they're probably just gonna quit. A- and so that's why you get this massive attrition rate with guys that are studs. Division One athlete, Division One wrestlers, Division One football players, Division One runners and swimmers, they all come to BUD/S. They all quit. Not all of them quit, but there's plenty of examples of the highest level of collegiate athlete in sports that translate very well to what you're doing in, in basic SEAL training, and they quit. And sometimes it's because they don't know how to lose, they don't know how to recover from a loss. So I think already in ... Once you get to a SEAL team, you've got people that are, generally speaking, gonna be pretty resilient when it comes to dealing with a loss. Now, once you're in the teams, and what you're talking about is now you start taking m- much more significant loss. You're not losing a race, you're losing one of your friends. And this is what, from a leadership perspective, you have to, you have to pay attention to. So when you're a, a leader in any organization,

7. 8:34 – 10:38

   Leadership, Morale & Mob Mentality; Tool: Detach & Correct

   1. JWJocko Willink8:34

      you're basically in charge of a mob. When it comes to what their morale is, and they feed off of each other just like a mob rioting in the streets going, "Oh, we can break this window. Let's break all the windows," and they, they, they move this mob mentality. And that happens with morale inside of a team. And you as a leader can't get caught up with the mob. You have to detach yourself from the mob mentally so that you don't get caught up in their emotions and their morale, because if you get caught up in their emotions and you get caught up in mora- their morale, you can't correct it. So we go out on a mission. The mission goes great. We get into a gunfight, kill a couple bad guys, everyone's okay, high fives, everyone's feeling great. You come back to base, "Hey, we don't need to debrief. That was perfect. Hey, we don't need to get our gear f- you know, uh, maintained. We can just go to bed. We- we're awesome." That's when the leader has to say, "Oh, we've got the mob, and the mob is becoming slightly arrogant. Hey, guys, real quick, that was a good op, but there's some things we could improve on." You gotta bring that mob back and bring them back to center line. Same thing in the other direction. You go out on an operation, it doesn't go well. You go out on an operation, you take casualties. Now you come back to base, you see guys moping around, you see the, the spirit starting to break, and same thing. If you g- if you're part of that mob, you'll be, you'll be with them, your morale will be breaking, your spirit will be breaking. You gotta look and say, "Oh, I see what's happening. Hey, guys, listen up. That was tough. Didn't go the way we wanted it to go. We need to learn some lessons. Here are some things I can do better. What can we do better to make sure that that never happens again?" So as a leader, when it comes to winning and losing, you're generally going to be the person countering what the mob mentality is. 'Cause when the mob starts winning, they wanna keep winning, and they might get arrogant. When the mob is losing, they might start to lose more because their attitude goes down the drain. So that's what you have to pay attention to from a leadership perspective. For me personally, [lips smack] I think,

8. 10:38 – 12:17

   Loss, Grief; Tool: Action as a Cure for Adversity

   1. JWJocko Willink10:38

      or I know what I did when, when I lost guys was focus on, all right, w- we need to, we need to celebrate the life, we need to move the lo- mourn the loss, and then we need to go to work. We need to get our gear back on, we need to lock and load our weapons, we need to get back out there. I, I know that that's what we needed to do. You know, so often the best way to contend with, with problems, with issues, with adversity is action. Is by taking action. The more you sit and the more you wait and the more time you spend with that adversity with the upper hand inside your head, the, the worse it's gonna get. So for me, always taking action, making something happen. It doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be some mammoth triumph that you're gonna go and pursue, but if you say, "Hey, listen, this, what happened didn't go the way we wanted it to. We're gonna get our gear back on, we're gonna go back out. We're gonna do this other mission." And it's in a, in your personal life, too. You know, something doesn't go the way you wanted it to go, you didn't get the job you wanted, you didn't get the hire, you didn't get the promotion, you can go home and sit there and, and, and dwell on it. That's not getting you any progress. Or you say, "Okay, you know what? Let me do a quick analysis. Why didn't I get that promotion? Oh, it's 'cause I didn't get this qualification," or, "I hadn't jumped through this gate Okay, cool. What do I need to... Let, let me, let me look into how do I, how do I get to jump through that gate so next time I will get the promotion? And you start taking action. Action for me is a cure for a lot of problems that we have in life.

9. 12:17 – 14:54

   Parenting & Success; Tool: Be the Counterweight, Balance

   1. AHAndrew Huberman12:17

      I think that in the context of moderating these systems, it's so key. I mean, it's key to have a long arc in a career path, military, science, or otherwise. As a father in particular, how do you apply these same sorts of ideas when, you know, your kid is kind of down because it's hard to be a 14-year-old, or because it was a bad day, or when they're up?

   2. JWJocko Willink12:40

      Well, clearly it's a very similar thing to what I just talked about. You know, if your kid is doing well and, and wins the wrestling tournament and is like, "Yeah, I won the wrestling tournament" and what do they want to do? They want to eat a triple cheese pizza, right? [laughs] I mean, they want to go crazy. And you, as a leader and as a, and as a parent, and as a friend need to say, "Hey, man, I mean, you did good. That was awesome. You had a great day."

   3. AHAndrew Huberman13:04

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JWJocko Willink13:05

      "But w- well, let's start thinking a little bit about next week, too. How about we just have a few slices of pizza, right, as a reward?" And this goes with yourself as well. You know, you, you do something, you have a success, and you say, "Oh, that, that, that's great, uh, but all glory is fleeting and I need to get back to work." And look, and do people go too far with that sometimes? Yes, absolutely. Sometimes people, they, they don't stop and celebrate at all, and those are the kind of people I think that get burned out eventually because they never say, "Hey, that was awesome. We had a big win. Cool. High five." So I think, you know, as a leader, as a friend, as a parent, as a spouse, you want to be able to modulate that, help modulate that. Don't shut it down. You know, your kid walks off the wrestling mat with, for a high five and you say, "You could've won by more." No, I'm not talking about that. Or your kid walks off the mat after losing, you say, "You got what you deserve." No. You've got to be the counter, the counterweight to the emotions that other people have. When you're doing a good job as a leader, as a friend, as a spouse, as a whatever, you're doing a good job as a counterweight. I think that's a, a, a good way to look at it. You want to, you want to provide some balance for people to make sure that they don't get out of control. And you, you notice when people have a downfall, it's normally because they've surrounded themselves with people that there's no counter to. There's no counterbalance. You know, if you were my best friend and I, you know, I went out drinking last night and had a great time and partied all night and met a girl and you're like, "Heck yeah, let's do it again tonight" eventually where are we going to be? We're going to be in the gutter somewhere. But if you say, "Hey, dude, that was awesome, but hey, remember, we got school on Monday," right? And you kind of pull me back. That's... We, we got to find balance in life and ourselves and then it, and then we got to, as much as we can, provide balance for other people because people are emotional and they get caught up in what they're doing, and you want to, you want to keep people balanced.

10. 14:54 – 17:42

    Sense of Self, Hardcore Music, DIY Attitude & Dissent

    1. AHAndrew Huberman14:54

       You seem to have a very strong sense of context and self. Was there something in your upbringing, your parents, or, or was it just kind of how you always imagined y- yourself as like, "Yeah, this is who I am"? 'Cause I actually think that many people do not have a very firm sense of self or their sense of self is so rigid that they can only operate in this like narrow trench of one domain of life and they end up very, very isolated.

    2. JWJocko Willink15:22

       As far as kind of where I became me, I, I just actually have to kind of give a lot of credit to the music that I grew up listening to and the attitude that we had back then. Listening to hardcore music, being able to stand up against what other people were saying, which is what you're doing when you're in that scene, and the whole DIY nature of it, "Hey, we, we can just do this ourselves. We can just make this happen for ourselves. We don't need anybody else. We can do this," and that hardcore attitude and sticking by your friends and standing up and getting in fights and like if that's what you're going to do, that's kind of m- my attitude. That music is the soundtrack to my life, and so I always would have that music running in my head. But to your question, I had something in me that when I heard that music for the first time, I was like, "Okay, th- here it is. You know, here it is." This is, you know, I hear The Beatles, I hear the Grateful Dead, I hear the Rolling Stones, I hear the whoever, and you go, "Okay, that's fine." But when I heard hardcore music for the first time, when I heard the Cro-Mags, when I heard Agnostic Front, when I heard the Bad Brains, I thought, uh... It was, that was just like, it was part of me already. I'm like a kid living in the woods in Connecticut. I, I'm just [laughs] kind of hearing what I'm hearing. Hey, listen to the lyrics. Listen to the lyrics of Minor Threat. Listen to the lyrics and, and you go, "Okay, this stuff, I agree with this stuff." And I, I just think that that kind of set a datum in my head of being okay with being outside, being okay with saying no, being okay with being a rebel, being okay with not going along with what everyone else is doing. That became very important when I was in the military and I looked at what leadership might be telling me to do and might think to myself, "Hey, that doesn't seem like a good idea," and having the, the wherewithal to say, "Hey, boss, I'm not sure this is a good idea." Not to be a jerk about it, but just to say, "There might be a better way to get this done. What do you think of this?" Or, "Hey, boss, can I ask you a question about that?" So I, I think if I had to trace it back, you know, having Black Flag My War side two on my record player for like a year and a half straight, that's [laughs] going to leave a mark, man. And I think it left a mark on me.

11. 17:42 – 18:31

    Motivation as an Emotion, Discipline

    1. AHAndrew Huberman17:42

       What are your sources of motivation?

    2. JWJocko Willink17:45

       Well, you pro- you probably heard me say that mo- motivation isn't something that I am going to count on because it's just an emotion that's going to come and go, just like feeling happy. You feel happy right now, maybe you won't feel happy in 15 minutes. You feel sad now, maybe you won't feel sad in 15 minutes. You feel motivated right now, you might not feel motivated in 15 minutes, therefore I can't rely on it, so I'm not going to put any money on just being motivated because it doesn't really matter to me. So the daily Actions that I take aren't from motivation, they're, they're just from discipline. Like, uh, like I said earlier, I'm not gonna get up and go through some big debate about, "Well, really, do I really feel like doing this?" No, I don't feel like doing it. It's, but it doesn't matter, so I'm just gonna go do it.

12. 18:31 – 20:00

    Tool: Move Toward Problems; Indirect Approach & Conflict

    1. AHAndrew Huberman18:31

       You've particular have said several times that rather than looking for sources of things outside you, like a job or a relationship, which are all great, um, but as sources of energy or motivation or inspiration, to use action as a positive action, as a source of energy.

    2. JWJocko Willink18:45

       Yeah. And, and positive action is wh- when you have to contend with something, when there's something that you're afraid of, right? Step into it, move towards it. You don't solve problems by running away from them. You solve them by moving towards them and figuring out what's going on. Then we can go down the whole path of talking about the indirect approach, which is, uh, uh, a theory of combat, which I completely believe in, but it also applies to, you know, interacting with other people. If you have a problem with some other person, to think to myself, "Well, I got, I got a problem with Andrew. I'm gonna go confront him on it." And, and that might not be the s- best solution. In fact, it's probably not the best solution for me to go confront you with the problem, 'cause now we're gonna have a confrontation. It might be better for me to take an indirect approach and not confront you, but instead engage in a conversation with you about something that's maybe adjacent to the problem that I have, and then eventually that builds our relationship to a point where you start to recognize, oh, I bet Jocko feels something about this thing, and we can move towards a solution instead of me trying to punch you in the face with some truth that I believe versus the truth that you believe, and now we're engaged in combat, and that's bad. There's gonna be casualties. I'd rather take an indirect approach and build a relationship where we can solve problems in a more positive

13. 20:00 – 21:33

    Meditation, Detachment & Teaching Young Leaders

    1. JWJocko Willink20:00

       way.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman20:00

       I also heard you say something earlier that's still flagging in my mind, which is, you know, not thinking too much. And you've talked about third personing of the self. I'd love to talk a little bit more about this, even though it's a topic you've delved into before. And in particular, the topic of meditation. Do you meditate? And if you don't do a kind of standard meditation, are there times throughout your day and your routine and your week where, as I'm describing this, it maps to something that kind of feels like open monitoring or focused meditation?

    3. JWJocko Willink20:29

       Yeah. So, no, I don't meditate. I haven't ever ... I don't think I've ever actually meditated for one second in my life, and I, [laughs] I've never tried to do it. That being said, if the goal is to take a step back and detach from what's going on, I do that all day every day. [laughs] And so, you know, that's, that is something that I've talked about and it's something that I tried to teach. You know, I tried to teach the young SEAL leaders not to get caught up in what's happening right in front of them, but to take a step back, detach from the situation, detach from their emotions. On the battlefield, I want people to be able to see more angles, more maneuvers, more opportunities, more of what the enemy might do, more perspective. And it goes to what I was saying earlier about the mob. Being able to be part of a team, part of the mob, part of the gang, but still have the ability to take a step back, detach from that, and assess what is the best way for this team to move forward, to me is the true superpower of life. And, you know, this goes back to when you start talking about people that are having,

14. 21:33 – 23:54

    Depression, Storm Clouds & Losing Perspective

    1. JWJocko Willink21:33

       going through struggles in life, right? And I've described this before as, you know, if I'm looking at you and you're, you're in a bad state, right? You're depressed, you're sad, you're moping around, you're not getting anything done, and I'm looking at you from the outside and, a- and I'm thinking, for me, I see this storm cloud around your head. All you see, no matter what direction you look, is storm. All you see is darkness. I'm outside and I'm looking, I'm like, "Hey, man, this guy's got a great education. He's healthy. He's got a good team around him. Like, he's got all these things going for him." But you, in that state, you literally cannot see anything but the darkness of the storm. And that's what's so scary about when people enter that mode, is you can look, I can look at it from the outside and be like, "Andrew, you just gotta move, like, four feet forward and you're gonna be through this thing." And yet you're, y- you might hear me say that and you go, "No, Jocko, I'm looking ahead. There's nothing but darkness." So helping people move forward, take action, and be able to get that perspective, detach and get outside themselves, get outside their own heads. You know, Tim Ferriss said, "Get out of your head, get into your body." That's one [laughs] way to do it. Take action, go do things. It's very scary, and I'm sure you've had this experience where you're talking to someone that you know and you're looking at them going, "Hey, man, no, it's gonna be okay." Like, you can clearly see that whatever they're, whatever is bothering them and dragging them down, you can clearly see. You know, a lot of times it's a relationship, right? The, the girl or the guy, they got, they got dumped. And you go, "Hey, man, that person was a disaster anyways. You're better off without them." A- and they cannot compute that. They are stuck there. Or maybe it's the school that they didn't get into or the job that they didn't get, and they get so wrapped up in that, they can't s- they can't get out of that storm. It's such a helpless feeling, and that's why trying to engage with people and trying to give people that superpower of detachment where they can take a step back and say, "You know what? You're right, man. That, that girl, sh- she, she wasn't who I really thought she was. I should move on." Yes. The solution to your problem is not gonna be found in the problem.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman23:40

       Mm.

    3. JWJocko Willink23:40

       It's not gonna be found in there. You have to get out of the problem so that you can look at it, make an assessment, and you can assess how to solve the problem or whether you need to solve the problem or not. So detachment is a superpower, man.

15. 23:54 – 28:19

    Tool: Detachment, Oil Rig Story, Field of View

    1. AHAndrew Huberman23:54

       What is your process for engaging detachment or for disengaging?

    2. JWJocko Willink23:58

       I recognized, like, in a moment what detachment was and how helpful it was. On an oil rig doing a training mission, my whole platoon is in a skirmish line looking at a, a large area of the oil rig that we're supposed to be clearing. Again, this is not combat. This is in the '90s. There's nothing going on. We're just doing training. And I'm standing in this skirmish line. And by the way, I'm the youngest and most junior guy in my platoon, and I'm standing there looking down the sight of my weapon, and I'm waiting for someone to make a call and tell us what to do. And I wait for five seconds, and I wait for 10 seconds, and I wait for 20 seconds, and no one's saying anything. And we're waiting for a leader in my platoon to, to make a call, to tell us what to do, to tell me what to do. And finally, after like 30 seconds, which seems like an eternity, I can't take it anymore. I take a step off the skirmish line. I look to my left, I look to my right, and what I see is every other guy in my platoon is staring down their weapon, which means their field of view is tiny. It's like a 20-degree field of view. You're looking down the s- the, the scope of your weapon or the sight of your weapon, and that's how big their field of view is. And I'm looking and I'm thinking, "Oh, there's my platoon commander. He's looking down the scope, the sight of his weapon. There's my platoon chief. He's looking down the sight of his weapon. There's my leading petty officer. He's looking down the sight of his weapon. There's my assistant platoon commander. He's looking down the..." So everyone in the platoon is looking down the sight of their weapon, which means they all have a very narrow field of vision. Well, when I take a step back and look to my left and look to my right, guess what kind of field of vision I got? I got a massive one. I can see the whole scene, and I can see exactly what it is we need to do. Look, as a new guy, you need to keep your mouth shut. You don't say anything. And I'm thinking, "Well, but no one else is saying anything." So I muster up all the courage I can, and I open my mouth and I say, "Hold left, clear right," which is a basic tactical call. This is not a patent level genius maneuver. It's just a normal call to make in a situation that we were in. I say, "Hold left, clear right," and I'm expecting to get kinda slapped, told, "Shut up, new guy," but instead everyone just repeats the call, "Hold left, clear right. Hold left, clear right." We get to the, the top of the oil rig, which means we cleared the whole thing. We're on the helo deck at, at the top, and we go into a debrief. And now I'm expecting, okay, now I'm gonna get told, "Hey, what were you doing? You g- need to keep your mouth shut." And instead the platoon chief goes, "Hey, Jocko, good call on the cellar deck down there." And I was kinda like, "Yeah, that's right." But then I thought to myself, "Hold on a second. If I'm the youngest, most junior guy in this platoon, why was I able to see what we needed to do and make that call? Why did that, why did that just happen?" And then I realized it was 'cause I took, took a step back. I broadened my field of view, which allowed me to think more clearly, 'cause instead of being hyper-focused and narrowly focused, I broadened my range of vision. I t- took a breath before I made my call, right? I had to take my... take a, a nice breath to speak clearly. And I realized that taking a step back and detaching, I got to see infinitely more than even the most experienced guys in my platoon. And I started doing it all the time and I started doing it in land warfare. I started doing it in urban combat. I started doing it in all these tactical training scenarios. These are just training. This is the '90s. Started doing these training scenarios, and it always allowed me to see what we needed to do. Then I started doing it, like when I was having conversations with people and having a conversation with my platoon chief, and I can see that he's starting to turn a little red in the face, and I, we, we're, we're about to argue about something. I said, "Oh, wait a second." I'm taking a step back, looking, going, "He's getting mad right now, and he's the platoon chief." And I'd say, "Hey, you know what, chief? That sounds good. Let me go take a re- let me go re- relook at the plan," or whatever. And so I started to do this kinda with my normal life, was to not get wrapped up in my own emotions, not get wrapped up in the, the, the gunfight that was happening right in front of my face, not to get wrapped up in the details of what was going on, but instead take a step back, detach, look around, and then you can make a much, much better decision. Now listen, if you are the only person in a gunfight, w- it's gonna be harder for you to do that 'cause you've gotta be focused on whatever you're shooting at. But when you have 16 guys or 20 guys, they're all looking in the same direction, it's very easy to be the guy that goes, "I'm gonna take a step back, look around, make a call." When I teach this to people now, the mechanics of it,

16. 28:19 – 29:19

    Tools: Take a Step Back, Slow Breathing & Widen Field of View

    1. JWJocko Willink28:19

       take a step back. Literally, you're at, you know, you and I are at a meeting. There's a bunch of people. This starts to get a heated argument. I will literally push my chair back away from the table, change my perspective, perspective, open, widen my field of view. The other thing, like in the SEAL teams, you don't wanna sound panicked on the radio, for a couple reasons. Number one, because when you panic on the radio, it's gonna cause other people to panic. Number two, if you panic on the radio and you sound panicked, everyone's gonna make fun of you. So what would I do before I would key up my radio? Take a breath. And so here I'm manually slowing down my breath. I'm broadening my field of view. So if you're in a meeting or you're in a, you know, you're at the, at the supermarket parking lot and someone starts to yell at you, take a step back, take a breath, broaden your field of view, detach from those emotions that you're having, and make some space. And I'll tell you, here's another, like, weird little nuanced thing.

17. 29:19 – 31:32

    Tools: Chin Up, Hands Down, Listening; Relationships

    1. JWJocko Willink29:19

       Lift your chin up and put your hands down. When I get defensive, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna raise my hands up and put my chin down. That's like a fighting mode. So if you and I are having a discussion and I'm starting to get heated and I'm starting to like, "Oh, he's not listening to me," instead of me p- putting my chin down and, and putting my hands, like, up, up to where I can put them in your face a little bit, no. I'm actually gonna take a step back. I'm gonna say, put my chin up. It changes my perspective a little bit more. It changes my visual perspective just by changing the angle of my head. Take a step back. Put my hands down. I'm not being in a defensive mood. I actually wanna hear what you have to say. And if I start listening to what you have to say and not talking, it's very hard to be detached when you're talking. It's another key component. You wanna detach? Shut your mouth. I'm in a meeting in my companies, I'm not the one that's doing all the talking. In fact, I'm doing mostly listening, and that way I'm detached. I'm listening to what they have to say. I'm more capable of seeing what holes there are in their plans by not moving my mouth, not talking. I'm listening So those are some of the methodologies that I use and that I advise people to use in order to effectively start down the pathway of being able to detach in various scenarios. It applies to everything that we do. If you're having a conversation with your significant other and you start to see that they're getting frustrated about something. Now look, if you're in the conversation 100%, you're going to get frustrated too. You're going to get frustrated. They're frustrated. Next thing you know, you've got an emotional argument going on. Whereas if you can take a mental step back and say, "Wait, why are they frustrated right now? Oh, because I'm trying to solve their problem when really what they're looking to do is vent. Okay, got it. Let them vent. Okay, cool. Oh, that sounds horrible. What do you think you're going to do?" Instead of saying, "Well, if that's the problem, here's what you should do," because people aren't always looking for that. So yeah, this thing, this ability is, and it's something that can absolutely be trained. And that's what's cool about it. It can absolutely be trained. It's not a natural gift. Some people will be better at it than others, but it's something that you can train. And I used to see guys develop it and I see people develop it now in the business world.

18. 31:32 – 32:04

    Tool: Deliberate Discomfort & Training Resiliency

    1. AHAndrew Huberman31:32

       Do you think there's value to doing things each day that suck a little bit or from time to time doing something that puts one into a state of deliberate discomfort?

    2. JWJocko Willink31:42

       Yeah, 100%. I mean, even in order to improve yourself, you got to impose some discipline on yourself, right? Just like you would develop your legs by doing squats and you would develop your back by doing pull-ups, I think you would develop your resiliency by doing repetitions of things that require you to be tougher.

19. 32:04 – 33:02

    Acknowledgements

    1. AHAndrew Huberman32:04

       I just want to extend an enormous thank you. As a civilian, thank you for the work you did in the military, but also teaching people about the military. I think a lot of people don't realize what it's about at any level and learning about your experience there and what you've observed, bringing other people's experiences from the military more broadly is super important and sharing this and being able to entertain some of my scientific riffs. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

    2. JWJocko Willink32:30

       There's plenty of people that have done way more than I've ever done and sacrificed infinitely more than I ever sacrificed. So I'm thankful for being here. I know that you put all kinds of information and the same back at you. I have greatly benefited from the information that you put out. And so I thank you as well and appreciate coming on here and appreciate you spreading the word about how people can be better yourself. So thanks for having me. I appreciate it, man.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman33:01

       Let's do it again.

Episode duration: 33:07