The Savage Mindset That Makes Hard Things Easy - Jocko Willink (4K)

Chris Williamson 0:00 I know that you're a fan of the Thomas Sowell quote, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." What's that mean to you?

Jocko Willink 0:07 That you're never gonna completely solve anything in your life or in the world, and there's always gonna be compromises that you have to make. And if you aren't willing to make those compromises, or you don't keep your mind open for those compromises, you're gonna run into some real (laughs) problems. But if you look at it, and the fact that, ya- you know you might put a little more effort over here that's gonna take away from s- some effort over there, you can't just do everything at once, so, yeah, no solutions, only trade-offs.

Chris Williamson 0:32 How do you deal with the tension of feeling that other thing pull away from you? Right, you know that you need to focus, and you know that by focusing on one thing, another thing is going to start to drop away, but the classic over-achiever mindset is, well, everything needs to be growing at all times. So, there's a- an emotional pain of watching something stagnate or watching something fall behind. How do you try and navigate that?

Jocko Willink 0:57 Y- you just have to figure out what the priority is. A- a- a- and- and at certain times, you know, certain things might be a higher priority right now than it is at some other point, and something else picks up, and sometimes the family needs to be the priority, sometimes the business, sometimes the other business, sometimes the health. Like, you're just gonna have to weigh those things out, and re- recognize that you can't do them all a- simultaneously at the same time all the time. It's just, it's not gonna work. So you gotta figure out where you're gonna make some compromises, where you're gonna make some trade-offs.

Chris Williamson 1:24 Yeah, the, uh, the sentence, "You can be anything you want, but you can't be everything you want," is so good for that. And especially if you like novelty, like doing lots of different things, "Oh, this is interesting to me, I'm- I'm curious, I want to..." You go, yeah, okay, dude, but there is a limit, right? And when you start to sp- it's the most obvious thing in the world. If you spread yourself too thinly across lots of different things, you can't be that great at all of them. You can't be really that great at any of them after you start to spin it up after a while.

Jocko Willink 1:50 Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those laws of combat that I- y- teach and used to teach in SEAL teams and now I teach to businesses, prioritize and execute. Like, you've gotta figure out what the priorities are and then execute on those things. But you gotta figure out what the- what the biggest priority is at any given time, like I said, whether it's this business or your family or your health, at certain times you gotta say, "All right, I gotta pay attention to my family right now. I can feel things are gettin' a little bit-"

Chris Williamson 2:16 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 2:16 "... sketchy over there." Or, "All right, my family seems solid right now, I gotta focus on this part of the business." And then within the business, this particular section of the business, and you go right on down the line.

Chris Williamson 2:26 How do you think about, uh, moving between planning and execution in that way? Is it something that you can do at the same time or is it really important to sort of step back, give yourself that perspective, and then go back in to actually enact the strategies?

Jocko Willink 2:39 If you end up executing things yourself, y- you can only do so much at one time, right? I mean, if you're- if you've got something going on with your family, well, hopefully your spouse is gonna be able to take some action on that, whatever that thing is, and then you've got m- businesses, well, you've got departments inside your business, and you, you know, assign some plan to someone inside the business that's gonna step up and take charge of that thing and run with it. So, that's d- that's the fourth law of combat leadership, which is- which is decentralized command, meaning you can't do everything yourself. You need to allow your subordinate leaders to step up and lead and make things happen. So that's a... It- it's- it's mandatory to do that if you're gonna- if you're gonna execute on more th- more than one thing-

Chris Williamson 3:23 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 3:23 ... in life.

Chris Williamson 3:23 Mm-hmm. What about when it comes to working out what your priority should be for yourself? It seems like even that, uh, not being able to see the wood for the trees, I'm currently in the midst of this thing, but I need to actually... Is this the best place for my, uh, for my attention to be spent right now?

Jocko Willink 3:39 Yeah, I- I- I think, first of all, you've got to be able to detach a little bit and take a step back and take a look at what's going on in the world and take- take a look at what's going on in your world to go, "Oh, you know what? It seems like this might not be the best thing." 'Cause that's- I think what happens is if you don't take a step back and you don't detach, then you're not gonna recognize what's happening, what's going on, and that's how someone can work until they have no family left or pay so much attention to their family that they lose their job (laughs) , they go in the wrong direction.

Chris Williamson 4:06 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 4:06 So you need to be able to s- take a step back and actually assess what's going on, and you can't get drawn down into the weeds of any particular thing-

Chris Williamson 4:14 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 4:14 ... for too long, right? Like, you can do it for a little while.

Chris Williamson 4:17 Yep.

Jocko Willink 4:17 You can do it, depending on the thing, (laughs) you can do it for a day or a week or a month sometimes, but then after that you gotta say, "All right, I gotta take a step back and-"

Chris Williamson 4:25 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 4:25 "... and have a look around."

Chris Williamson 4:25 Well, the same thing goes for, uh, health, right? If you're gonna launch a new business, probably not gonna be in the best condition you've ever been in, so a- are you just gonna take over? Maybe I'll get a k- you know, push but leg session in across the week or something like that, and you go, "Okay, well, I- if I really want to find my future husband or wife, well, I," you know, that- I- I imagine that my sleep's gonna suffer. You know, I'm gonna have to go out more. I'm gonna have to be more social. Maybe I'm gonna have to go to restaurants and, like, pretend to eat like a normal person. (laughs) Uh, it is a lesson that I think you can only learn with experience. It's very difficult to tell somebody, "You need to do this." It's really something that you learn through pain. That you go, "I- I- I let my foot off the gas with this one particular thing."

Jocko Willink 5:07 Yep.

Chris Williamson 5:08 "Look at what happened. Didn't go well. I better not do that again. I better not let my health get to the stage where I- I haven't slept properly for three weeks at a time and (snores) ugh, look at, you know, that was when I got sick."

Jocko Willink 5:20 Yeah. And I think that actually health is one that you- y- you don't want to totally walk away from health at any time. And I think that's one of the reasons that I- I feel like I'm doing pretty good right now, is I never... I probably haven't taken more than, you know, two or three days off from working out in decades. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I g- I mean, okay, I had a surgery on my neck, so, okay, that was- I- I took some time after that. But even after that, like, after three days, I was (clears throat) in my garage gym walking around in circles, like-

Chris Williamson 5:57 That doesn't s- that doesn't surprise me.

Jocko Willink 5:58 ... just trying to make something happen.... but I, I think when people completely abandon their health for a month or two months, I think that can be ... I think that's where injuries start coming into play, and you, you lose ... you really go backwards.

Chris Williamson 6:13 It's foundational, right?

Jocko Willink 6:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:15 The, the other stuff that you're trying to do-

Jocko Willink 6:16 Yep.

Chris Williamson 6:16 ... is build on top of that.

Jocko Willink 6:17 Yep.

Chris Williamson 6:17 Yeah. Uh, I guess, actually using you as an example for sleep might not be a, a particularly good ex- uh, good idea

Chris Williamson 6:23 there. Uh, what's your advice for how people can be more confident in their decisions in life? Like, where does confidence come from, in your opinion?

Jocko Willink 6:31 I think confidence comes from, I th- well, clearly, some of it comes from experience, but I think one of the, one of the most profound things that you can do to become more confident is to become okay with saying, "Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what to do right now." And if you can say that, all of a sudden, it, th- the world becomes just a lot easier. And, you know, for, if, if we're in a meeting and we've got some, you know, uh, a project that we're gonna s- get started on, and it's something I've never done before, and I'm the boss, and I say, "Hey Chris, I'm not really sure what to do right now." Well, th- that's okay. And you go, "Well, actually, I, at my old company, we did the same thing, so let's make this move," and I go, "Okay, that sounds like a good place to start anyways," and so now we get started. Whereas, if I come in and I'm like, "I don't want Chris to know that I don't know how to do this," or, "I'm not sure of myself right now," or, "I'm lacking confidence, so I'm gonna pretend to be confident-"

Chris Williamson 7:27 Hmm.

Jocko Willink 7:28 ... I think that's problematic. So I, I think, look, though n- no one knows everything. No one makes all perfect decisions. No one is, uh, understands every element of the world (laughs) , so I think a good way to gain confidence quickly is to admit the fact that you don't know everything-

Chris Williamson 7:45 Hmm.

Jocko Willink 7:45 ... and, and just be okay with saying, "Yeah, I'm not really sure what to do here."

Chris Williamson 7:49 Does that lower the pressure, lower the bar of self-expectation?

Jocko Willink 7:55 Absolutely. I think it, I think it lowers the bar of self-expectation, not to a negative point where it's like, "Oh, I've got low expectations of myself," but if I was to be coming up here to, to sit down with you and have this talk, and I was thinking, "What if he asked me about something I don't know about? What am I gonna do?" And I'd be a little bit panicked, and then you'd ask me about, uh, uh, car racing, Formula 1 racing, right, which we were talking about before we started this. And now all a sudden you said, "Well, hey, in Formula 1, the, the, the drivers do this. What do you think of that protocol?" And I was, like, trying to formulate in my head-

Chris Williamson 8:31 Pretend.

Jocko Willink 8:32 ... pretend like I know what I'm talking about, when I don't. So instead I just say, "Oh yeah, I'm, I don't know anything about car racing, so you tell me." A- and, and that means the whole drive up here-

Chris Williamson 8:43 Hmm.

Jocko Willink 8:43 ... to come and sit down with you and get interviewed by you, instead of me being paranoid that you might ask something I don't know about and my confidence is now shaken, instead I'm rolling in here like, "Oh yeah, if, if he asks me some stuff I don't know about, I can say, 'Oh yeah, I'm not really 100% sure about that. What do you know?'" Or-

Chris Williamson 8:59 Hmm.

Jocko Willink 8:59 ... "What's your opinion?"

Chris Williamson 9:00 Mm-hmm. That's liberating in a way.

Jocko Willink 9:01 I think it's very liberating. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:03 Is that sort of humility?

Jocko Willink 9:06 That's, I, uh, yes, I think that is humility.

Chris Williamson 9:09 Yep.

Jocko Willink 9:09 And, and it's something that you get, you know, when you're in the military, you know, you can be in charge of people that have more experience than you, and if that makes you uncomfortable, oftentimes people flex to try and act (laughs) like they know more than they do, when it's like, "Oh yeah, you've run these kind of operations before, Chris? W- why don't you take lead on this?" Okay, I'm, y- I'm the senior guy, I'm the boss, but I say, "Hey Chris, you've already run these type of operations, why don't you take lead on this?"

Chris Williamson 9:36 Hmm.

Jocko Willink 9:36 No big deal. It's ... Does your respect for me go down or does it go up?

Chris Williamson 9:40 Goes up.

Jocko Willink 9:41 Exactly. As opposed to me saying, "Uh, here's what we're gonna do, Chris," and I don't know what I'm talking about, and you can clearly see this 'cause you've done it 25 times, and I, I'm an idiot. So yeah, I would say be more humble and you'll be more confident.

Chris Williamson 9:56 It's really interesting to think where you're lowering the stakes. There's, there's no su- in that definition of confidence, there's no such thing as not having enough confidence. There is just being yourself.

Jocko Willink 10:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:05 And then if you are yourself and you meet the limits of whatever your competence is, your understanding, hand it off to someone else or say, "Hey, dan- I, n- does no one ... Oh, brilliant, no one here knows what to do?" Uh, you know a good example of this? The first-ever cinema production that we did, so this is our cinema series-

Jocko Willink 10:21 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:21 ... fancy cameras and big team of people and stuff. Uh, the first one we ever did was in (laughs) uh, S- San Antonio. We did it in the Alamo with Jordan Peterson.

Jocko Willink 10:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:30 Uh, and we're setting up, we've got the cameras here, and it's the first time we've done anything like this, so the production's a little bit more, uh, spit-and-sawdust, let's say. And we're about to get started, and the guys do the sound check like we did before where you started screaming.

Jocko Willink 10:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:44 And, uh, they (laughs) could hear in the background, they were like, "There's someone speaking. There's someone speaking on the channel. What the fuck is that?" They're like, "Is that ... It's a local FM radio station."

Jocko Willink 10:59 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:59 How the fuck are we picking up ... It was two mics plugged into a, uh, a couple of inline, uh, amps and a, uh, fucking recording device, and we're trying to work out, like, is it w- uh, is it the power? Is there a radio station inside of the building-

Jocko Willink 11:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:13 ... and it's somehow sending radio signals through the socket in the wall or whatever it was? And, uh, no one knew. And this is, this is actually a, a rule for life. If you have a problem, and I guess ChatGPT would probably be a really good solution for this now 'cause it's good at, at searching lots of stuff, but if you just put the problem that you have in and then the word Reddit afterward, almost always ... So sure enough, one of the guys did, and what it turned out to be was if you've got very long XLR cables that attach to these microphones and they cross, they turn into an antenna.

Jocko Willink 11:44 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:45 And sure enough, took them out, put shorter ones in, made sure they didn't cross, went away.

Jocko Willink 11:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:50 Holy fuck.

Jocko Willink 11:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:52 But no one in there was, "I, oh, y- I've seen this before. Is, uh, uh, y- listen to me." It's like, "Ah, uhh," y- just everyone searching different shit, like, unplugging stuff, trying to change things around.

Jocko Willink 12:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:03 Right.

Jocko Willink 12:03 There's, uh, a sense of humility in the fact that, "Hey, I don't know what to do. I'm gonna go on the web and google-"

Chris Williamson 12:08 Yes.

Jocko Willink 12:08 "... what to do."

Chris Williamson 12:09 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 12:09 No factor.

Chris Williamson 12:10 Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I like that idea that unconfidence comes from you positioning, uh, your level of expertise higher than it actually is.

Jocko Willink 12:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:23 And-

Jocko Willink 12:23 And there's, there's like a whole cycle too, because it's almost like a circular thing, because if you wanna be confident, you gotta be humble, and then w- when you're humble, then you are more confident, 'cause you're okay with not knowing.

Chris Williamson 12:37 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 12:37 You know, I had some guy ask me, um, it was about, it was about meeting girls, like it was a guy who wanted to go out and meet girls, and he was lacking confidence, and, and he's like, "You know, I'm, I'm 27 years old or whatever it was. I really wanna meet my mate and I'm searching and I'm going out." And I said, "Well, first of all, if you walk up to a girl with the expectation in your mind that this could be the one..." (laughs) I mean, imagine the crazy pressure you're putting on yourself.

Chris Williamson 13:05 A little bit of performance anxiety there, yeah.

Jocko Willink 13:07 Yeah. Told you're gonna act like an idiot. And I said, "Man, just instead, just go up and expect that what she's gonna say is like, when you say hi to her, hopefully she'll say hi back and maybe she won't, and if she doesn't, no big deal." Like, that's where you set the bar, and, and that's gonna make you, uh, it's gonna make you perform a lot better in that scenario. You know, there's another, another interesting thing I was talking about lately, and we, we were just talking about bow hunting, and I had this thing where somebody asked me about, like, how to actually execute in the moment and get your mind right when you have to perform, and I, I didn't n- never really thought about this before, and I actually thought through my whole life and what my attitude was, and if you are... Need to perform, you need to be very, very humble, and, like, if I've got an event that I've gotta do, I've got a mission that I've gotta do, I've gotta train, I've gotta prepare, I've gotta plan, and that whole... All of that is driven from humility, right? I, I, I don't think I'm ready so I'm gonna, I'm gonna prepare more, I'm gonna rehearse more. I don't... I'm not thinking clearly about what the enemy will do, so I need to come up with a better plan, like, I'm gonna be very humble and I'm gonna therefore prepare very hard and very extensively. But at the moment I put my night vision goggles on and I, and I, I lower them down over my eyes, there's like a switch that goes off that I am 100% gonna win.

Chris Williamson 14:37 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 14:38 And where... The, the, the reason this ties into bow hunting is I was up at one of the, one of the Total Archery challenges. If you haven't been to one of those, go to one of those. Um, they're really cool. They set up all these, uh, 3D targets all over usually ski mountains and you shoot, and it's cool, it's a lot of fun, bunch of awesome people there, and I had just gone through this answer to somebody about how to actually execute in the moment, and I realized you go up to take a, a shot... Like, first of all, going to TAC or going hunting, you're training all the time 'cause you don't wanna miss the shot, you gotta be humble, y- y- you know how hard it is, you're gonna be out of breath, the pressure's gonna be on, and so you've gotta train, train, train, train, prepare, prepare, prepare. But when you get up there and you, like, knock your, your arrow onto your bow, you've just gotta be like, "Oh, I'm gonna slay this right now." And I started consciously thinking about that at TAC, and TAC's really... They set up courses that are r- shots that are totally ridiculous, and, you know, you, you can lose five, eight, 10 arrows hitting rocks and trees and everything else. Yeah. And I went up with that attitude, and I, I shot the whole course with one arrow, which is... Look, is there luck involved? Yes, there's luck involved. But still, it's like that attitude of, "Hey, I'm walking up, I've trained, but now I'm gonna just go slay this thing," and all that performance anxiety is gone, you go up, get confident. "Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna punch this thing right through that target, no factor," and you do it. And I think that's a good thing to think about when it comes to execution, like, yes, be humble, be prepared, but when you knock that arrow or you put your night vision goggles on, or you step into that meeting to do that presentation, you should be like, "Oh, I'm about to slay this right now."

Chris Williamson 16:21 How do you avoid the, uh, humbleness and the humility turning into performance doubt?

Jocko Willink 16:27 Because I think it, I, I think it has to be a conscious decision that you make that when you go in there... And for me, again, it was very, uh, almost like getting into character, right? Like, I'm getting... If I'm knocking this arrow or I'm putting my, my, my night vision goggles down, w- I'm... That's, that's the switch. "I'm going." You know? Uh, w- you go on stage now, right? So, hey, do you prepare prior to? Yeah, you're like, "Oh, I gotta do my notes and get everything set up," but when you walk out on stage, like when you put that mic on, you should be like, "All right, it's go time, and I'm gonna slay this situation that I'm going into."

Chris Williamson 17:00 I wonder whether this is part of the advantage of, uh, Beyonce's got an, an alter ego for on stage.

Jocko Willink 17:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:09 Uh, Kobe, alter ego for on the court.

Jocko Willink 17:12 Oh, 100%.

Chris Williamson 17:13 And I wonder whether that (snaps fingers) allows-

Jocko Willink 17:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:15 ... the humility in practice, uh, sort of godliness in, in performance. Have you ever seen the, uh, Facebook post that Kobe put after he ruptured his Achilles?

Jocko Willink 17:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:30 I'm gonna read this. It's so fucking good.

Jocko Willink 17:32 Yep.

Chris Williamson 17:32 "This is such BS. All the training and sacrifice just flew out of the window with one step that I've done millions of times. The frustration is unbearable. The anger is rage. Why the hell did this happen? Makes no damn sense. Now I'm supposed to come back from this and be the same player or better at 35? How in the world am I supposed to do that? I have no clue. Do I have the consistent will to overcome this thing? Maybe I should break out of this rocking chair and reminisce on the career that was. Maybe this is how my book ends. Maybe Father Time has defeated me. Then again, maybe not. It's 3:30 AM. My foot feels like a dead weight. My head is spinning from the pain meds and I'm wide awake. Forgive my venting, but what's the purpose of social media if I won't bring this to you? No real image."... feels good to vent, let it out, to feel as if this was the worst thing ever, because after all the venting, the real s- perspective sets in. There are far greater issues and challenges in the world than a torn Achilles. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, find the silver lining, and get to work with the same belief, same drive, and same conviction as ever. One day, the beginning of a new career journey will commence. Today is not that day. If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear. I've always loved that quote. That's Mamba mentality. We don't quit, we don't cower, we don't run. We endure and conquer. I know it's a long post, but I'm Facebook venting lol. Maybe (laughs) now, I can actually get some sleep and be excited for surgery tomorrow. First step of a new challenge. Thank you for all your present support. Much love always, Mamba out. Kobe Bryant, 13th of April, 2013.

Jocko Willink 18:59 Yeah. Yup. Yeah, and I bet, a- again, he's a great example. He wasn't walking around arrogant, thinking, "Hey, I'm so good that I don't need to practice." No, he was the opposite, practicing more than anybody else, and y- that way, again, going into the game, "Give me the ball," you know? "Give me the ball. It's cl- it's clutch time, it's go time, give me the ball. I'm gonna make this." And that's the same with Jordan, same with Larry Bird. Like, you look at the greats, they all practiced insane. They, they were insane when it came to practice. They tried to beat everyone at practice, they'd stay after practice. And when game time came, they would, (laughs) first of all, talk smack, right? Larry Bird was famous for talking smack. But give me the ball 'cause they know that they can make the shot.

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Chris Williamson 20:39 You spent a good bit of your career in situations that would cause most people to feel a ton of fear. I think that fear is related to this confidence, conviction in my decisions. What have you learned about how to deal with and overcome fear?

Jocko Willink 20:55 Go. Go. Yup. It's y- when all that, all that, uh, fear that's in your head, all the what-ifs and the scenarios that you create inside your own mind that are way worse than anything that is actually gonna happen, they all disappear when you go. So, just, just take action and, and start moving forward. It, and it- that is the, th- that is the moment that can last a million years, is waiting to go. And I've found I- I'm pretty good at it now, where, "Oh," I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I know what that is," and I'm going, and then that's it. And once you go... Uh, you know, driving e- even, you know, speaking of in being in combat, if we were driving to a target and you're, you know, so you're gonna go hit a target somewhere, and driving to the target, the closer you get, you're thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the bad things that are gonna happen, all the stuff. "What if one of my, my guys gets wounded? What if they have IEDs in the

Narrator 21:59 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 21:59 Like, there's a bunch of things going through your mind. Once you, like, stop, get out of the vehicle, y- all those things go away, yup, and you're doing the thing, and you're not worried about it anymore. And so, it's just go. That's, that's th- that's the answer.

Chris Williamson 22:13 So action is an antidote to anxiety then? (laughs)

Jocko Willink 22:15 Man, action's an antidote to all kinds of problems in life. Yeah. You know, it's, I was, uh, I- I- I ski, and I was up at, I was up in, uh, Big Sky, Montana, and they've got this, this, you know, challenging trail. And I was at the top of it, and you're thinking, "Oh, well, this could be the end of my ACL," and, like, all these stupid things are going through my mind and I'm like, uh, it's like, as soon as I got there, just boom, just going, da- just go 'cause-

Chris Williamson 22:39 Is that something you always had?

Jocko Willink 22:40 What?

Chris Williamson 22:41 That, uh, I feel fear, immediately lean into it. How trained is that versus how innate is that?

Jocko Willink 22:48 I think it's t- I think it's trained because you go through, (laughs) you go through situations, and... And it's interesting, you know, in the military, they're probably doing it to you on purpose or maybe it's just the way it is, but okay, you're gonna go rappelling, right? Rappelling is relatively d- it doesn't feel that crazy. Well, then you're gonna fast rope, which is a little bit of a step up, and then you're gonna fast, ef- you're gonna rappel off of a building, right? And then you're gonna rappel out of a helicopter. Then you're gonna fast rope out of a tower, and then you're gonna fast rope out of a helicopter, and then you're gonna parachute, and then you're gonna free-fall parachute. And all those things g- they're all things that you can be afraid of. Even going back to, like, the obstacle course, which I think the tallest obstacle on the obstacle course might be the, the, the cargo net-

Chris Williamson 23:33 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 23:33 ... which is a cargo net that you climb up. It's probably... I don't know how tall it is, but it's tall enough that you are not gonna be in good shape if you fall.

Chris Williamson 23:41 Yup.

Jocko Willink 23:42 And you have to climb up the tar- cargo net and then you have to go over the top of it and then climb back down the other side. But even that, if you're freaked out or you're scared, you're gonna get stuck there. And there's guys that do get stuck, they don't climb over the top of it, not a lot, but there's occasionally guys that say, "Yeah, this, it's, they're not, it's not happening."

Chris Williamson 24:00 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 24:00 So, the longer that you sit, th- s- you hang on and look and stare and contemplate the chances of you falling off, it- it doesn't get any better. So eventually, you just, pff, throw your leg over (laughs) and get over that damn thing. So I think I probably just experienced it enough and was...... cognizant enough to recognize that at some point, "Oh, yeah, this feeling of caution and fear and all that stuff in the back of my head, yeah, I just need to get rid of all that and just go."

Chris Williamson 24:27 It seems to go away when I move toward it.

Jocko Willink 24:29 Yeah. Uh, it does go away. It (laughs) 100% goes away. Uh, uh, there's gotta be something that you do that you're, that makes you a little bit scared.

Chris Williamson 24:37 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 24:38 What?

Chris Williamson 24:39 What's the stuff? Going out on stage is one of those. You know, three and a half thousand people in London, this big event that we've been-

Jocko Willink 24:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:45 ... building up to for six months. And my least, uh, my two favorite bits of it, or three favorite bits of it, half an hour before I'm about to go on, as I go on-

Jocko Willink 24:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:56 ... and then just as I finish and as I come off.

Jocko Willink 24:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:59 One minute before I go on is fucking awful.

Jocko Willink 25:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:02 And it's the, you, in the Humvee driving-

Jocko Willink 25:04 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:04 ... to the target with the people, thinking about the things.

Jocko Willink 25:07 Yep.

Chris Williamson 25:07 You're like, "If I could just eh, uh, uh," you know. But you see, uh, uh, greyhounds in the traps before they get set off. It's the exact same. And that's a really, really good way to put it, the fact that the fear of the thing is only present when the thing hasn't started.

Jocko Willink 25:27 Yeah. I, I wrote a kids' book called Mikey and the Dragons, and the, the story is, spoiler alert, the kid, he's, he, he's, uh, his dad is the king. His dad dies. The kid now has to defend the village from the dragons. And, you know, he's scared 'cause he's only a little kid and he can't pick up the sword and he can't pick up the shield, it's too heavy, but he's the kid. He's the son of the king. He's the prince. He's gotta go fight the dragons. And he gets a note from his dad that says, "Hey, stand up. Go attack the dragons. You'll see that there's nothing to be afraid of." And he gets up there and enters the dragon cave, and-

Chris Williamson 26:00 Mm.

Jocko Willink 26:01 ... guess what? The dragons are little, tiny, cute dragons. And, but his fear is the same fear that we all build up for whatever that thing is, whether it's going on stage, or whether it's jumping out of an airplane, or whether it's taking risk with some kind of a business situation.

Chris Williamson 26:15 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 26:15 Well, the more you sit there and think about it, the worse it's gonna get in your own head.

Chris Williamson 26:20 So good. Uh, I wonder how much of it as well is fear of the unknown versus fear of the thing. It's, uh, like, the story that I've told myself, it's the fact that there's uncertainty on the other side of this, and that I like control, that here is order and there is chaos, and I don't want to lose some of this beautiful order by stepping into the chaot- But as you do, you realize that it's not that you, uh, that that merges with you. It's that you push this out of the way.

Jocko Willink 26:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:47 You know, kind of like how, uh, uh, little reality distortion sphere-

Jocko Willink 26:51 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:51 ... moves through. And you locally, so this is, wa- it was my Twitter bio for ages, to quote from Naval, he says, uh, "I locally reverse entropy." I fucking love that idea. You know, you've got this entire universe. Entropy, this force that is going to destroy everything. The only thing that is not going to survive, entro- or that is going to survive, entropy, right? This permanent decline all the way down, and you think, "Yeah, briefly, for my time on this planet, for however many decades I'm gonna be here, I actually locally reverse entropy. The fucking entire power of the universe bearing down on me." It's like, "Yeah, not while I'm here."

Jocko Willink 27:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:27 I really love that. I think it's a cool like, uh, cosmic middle finger.

Jocko Willink 27:31 Yeah, and it's just the fact that you, you can control a lot more than you think. And the world is happening, and if you let the world happen to you, it's gonna happen to you. But if you wanna make something happen in the world, you can do that as well. It's a choice you get to make.

Chris Williamson 27:45 Does being in firefights and, and, ah, dri- driving in Humvees up to scary missions, does that make everything else seem less fear inducing? Rela- I'm tr- trying to work out how much carry over you get from a career of doing what you do to now. Is it permanently sort of reset a baseline of that?

Jocko Willink 28:09 Yeah. It, it kinda is, man. Like, what is the worst case scenario that's gonna happen? A- and really the, when the, the fear that I had in combat, which was a deep, horrible, um, one that you feel in your stomach knots, is you fear that one of your guys are gonna get wounded or killed. And, you know, f- fear of me getting killed, I didn't really care. Uh, you know, I was over that. I accepted it. That's wh- what could happen. That's like my job and not just my job, like, "Oh, this is what I signed up for," but that's kinda what I always felt like that was just who I was. But I'm okay with taking that responsibility for myself, but, uh, you know, putting that responsibility on your friends is not something that feels good. And so, that gut-wrenching, horrible feeling is not something that I, I don't think you're gonna experience that in a normal job.

Chris Williamson 29:13 Mm.

Jocko Willink 29:14 And even with businesses. You know, I, and I've, look, I've had things go wrong in my businesses. We've had, you know, made mistakes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, you know, I've had my team saying like, reporting to me and telling me about this negative thing that happened. And I could see, you know, because I got great people, that they're really disappointed and they really feel-

Chris Williamson 29:39 'Cause they care.

Jocko Willink 29:39 ... terrible. But I'm like, "Hey, no one's gonna die, and we're gonna g- recover from this and everything's gonna be cool. Like, we're, it's all right."

Chris Williamson 29:49 Rogan's got this insight, "The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you."

Jocko Willink 29:53 Absolutely true.

Chris Williamson 29:54 And if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is a fucking firefight in Fallujah, uh, or if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is accidentally spending 10 grand on the wrong business credit card, both of those that you don't get. There's no Uber surcharge, discount, or whatever, for the worst thing that ever happened to you being less bad than the worst thing that ever happened to somebody else.

Jocko Willink 30:15 And the, where I really learned that was with kids, because as kids are in sixth grade...... and someone, you know, uh, throws a rotten orange at them and then everyone laughs at them. That is horrible for that kid. And, you know, when the kid comes home and, and they're crying and, and, and they say... And you go, "What happened?" "I got hit in the head and they called me, you know, orange head." And you go, "Oh, yeah. Don't worry about it. It's funny." Eh, that doesn't work.

Chris Williamson 30:46 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 30:46 (laughs) Like, you, you have to learn to, you have to learn to understand-

Chris Williamson 30:50 Deal with them as if they've just-

Jocko Willink 30:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:51 ... been in a firefight.

Jocko Willink 30:52 E- exactly. Exactly. And, and, and you can help them get through it, you know. You can help them because it, it, it helps... It will help them when they see that perspective as well, just like when I was talking to my team. It's like, "Oh, we had this horrible thing happen. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to the team collectively. Okay." The... Me sharing the perspective of like, "Hey, guys, no one's dead. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna, you know... No one's getting their bonus this quarter, but okay, me included, but that's all right. We're gonna get through this and we're gonna grow and we learn from it and we're gonna carry on." So giving people perspective can help them, but you can't just say, "Oh, your problem isn't really a problem."

Chris Williamson 31:28 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 31:28 You can't say that. That doesn't work.

Chris Williamson 31:30 Yeah. Denying... S- saying to somebody, "The way that you feel isn't valid-"

Jocko Willink 31:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:36 ... is not a constructive way-

Jocko Willink 31:38 It's, that's not gonna work out well. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 31:40 No.

Jocko Willink 31:40 It's not gonna work out well.

Chris Williamson 31:41 Not with your partner that comes home and says, "You, you, you said that you were gonna do this thing." It's like, "No, I didn't." It's like, well, in their world-

Jocko Willink 31:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:47 ... you said that they, that they... And even the denial of that, it's like, "Look, I, uh, how about I go and do it anyway?" Even though... Well, you know, there's just a million different ways of communicating like that. Uh,

Chris Williamson 31:59 I wanna know, just on the firefight topic, um, I've been spending a good bit of time reading more, um, like military history and, and, and trying to get a bit more of an understanding of... There's a, a great book called Atrocitology, which is the hundred greatest human atrocities across time. It's ranked by the, the, uh, number of people that were killed. And I've been sort of trying to think about, um, that level of fear, that level of sort of kinetic, uh, uh, engagement between people. What is it that normal people don't understand about what a modern firefight is like? What is it that they don't get about what it's actually like to be there?

Jocko Willink 32:42 I think the, the chaos of it and the not knowing what's... Uh, so here's an example. We, we would... In training, when I was running training, we would have guys shoot paintball at... Like, really high speed paintball guns. And so if you, you were a, uh, a SEAL platoon commander, you're a SEAL platoon commander, Chris, and I would have my SEALs in the training detachment going out with paintball and, and shooting your guys. And you had paintball too and you could shoot back. So I remember guys would come to me and they'd say, "Well, you know..." We'd be in an, in an urban environment, right? So like, a fake city that we have that's concrete buildings, but it's a fake city. And the platoon commander, Chris, comes back to me and he's like, "Hey, Jocko, this is not realistic." "Oh, why isn't it realistic?" "Well, we can't tell where your guys are shooting from because the paintball, the paint guns don't have muzzle flash-"

Chris Williamson 33:38 Muzzle flash.

Jocko Willink 33:38 "... and they don't make a bang."

Chris Williamson 33:39 Yep.

Jocko Willink 33:39 "So, we can't tell where the shots are coming from." And it's like, guess what? You're not gonna know where you're getting shot at from. I mean, it's very similar to a paintball, actually. (laughs) It's like, you ever been in a city and you hear a siren over your left shoulder and you start looking over your left shoulder and all of a sudden it comes from the right because of the way sound dynamics work? So that's like one tiny example of how confusing and chaotic it can be.

Chris Williamson 34:04 Mm.

Jocko Willink 34:04 And, and so I think seeing in the movies y- some, some... They're doing it better and better now. Uh, the movie just came out called Warfare, which was, was directed and written by a SEAL, a guy named Ray Mendoza, who actually was the group of guys that came and took our, my place and, and my guys' place in Ramadi in 2006. He came and took... His guys took our place. And so a few weeks later they had a... They, they got hit on an operation and they had two guys get really badly wounded. Um, but it was a really... And a, a couple of their Iraqi soldiers, their friendly Iraqi soldiers got killed. Just a very vicious situation. But when you see the movie and they... He made it very realistic. And it's chaos. It's chaos and confusion and guys are not knowing what's happening, screaming, wounded guys just screaming. And so I think that level of chaos and confusion-

Chris Williamson 35:06 Mm.

Jocko Willink 35:06 ... is, is what gets missed out on. And then what the leader needs to do is take a step back from that chaos and confusion, figure out what's happening and make decisions. So yeah, that's it.

Chris Williamson 35:19 It's not as slick or sexy as it's been portrayed in movies traditionally, but people are now catching up.

Jocko Willink 35:27 Yeah, I think people are catching up now. Um, I think people... I think... And, and this movie Warfare is a great example of, oh, there's total chaos.

Chris Williamson 35:36 It's not neat.

Jocko Willink 35:37 Yeah, it's not neat. And, and by the way, human beings with an incredible amount of training are still gonna, like, do things that you don't expect them to do. And that, that's, that's real. So it's, it's a good... It's, it's... The... Hollywood is, is starting to catch up with that.

Chris Williamson 35:55 Mm.

Jocko Willink 35:56 I'm try- just trying to think back of... You know, Saving Private Ryan did a pretty good job. You know, that opening scene on the beach, there was definitely World War II veterans that were... That sat through that, D-Day veterans that sat through that and said, "Whoa." Like that, "You, you guys got it." And some of the, some of the effects that they did, even in Save Private, in Saving Private Ryan where, uh, Tom Hanks is... They're getting shot at and he's sort of like, the, the... It gets quiet and slow motion type stuff, and he's just kinda detached from the whole thing. He's just...... out of body experience.

Chris Williamson 36:29 Mm.

Jocko Willink 36:29 And then someone shakes him, "Hey, loo- you know, Captain, you gotta get..." And, and he kinda gets back in it. And that's kind of an in- uh, leading indicator of what they're starting to get better and better at.

Chris Williamson 36:40 Is that a common, uh, emotion to feel that-

Jocko Willink 36:44 Yeah. Like-

Chris Williamson 36:45 ... and then -

Jocko Willink 36:46 And e- even earlier we were talking about, um, like noise and when you're in, in, when shooting your gun in a gunfight, shooting your gun is freaking loud. But if you're shooting your gun in a gunfight, you don't, you don't go, "Oh, th- that's loud."

Chris Williamson 36:59 (laughs)

Jocko Willink 37:00 Now, you might start to catch a glimpse of that sometimes where you're like, "Oh, my machine gunner's right here and he's dumping (laughs) rounds." And you go, "That's really loud right now and we're getting hit with blank, by the way, which hurts." So you, there's just these, these things that are happening that there's a lot going on and yeah, sometimes your adrenaline's going and you start to slow down and see, see things moving i- in a slower manner. Time kinda slows down sometimes.

Chris Williamson 37:27 Mm.

Jocko Willink 37:28 You start hearing some things that you might not have heard or not hearing things that you would hear. You know, another, another big thing is, you know, we, in modern days, we have these radios and we have headphones with noise-canceling headphones. And guys would start to pass radio traffic on the, on the radio. So if I needed you, "Hey Chris, come down to the first floor of this building. I need, I need you to set security for me." And I would say that on the radio to you, "Hey Chris," you know, "Hey Chris, come down to the first floor. I need you to s-" Meanwhile, you're up there on your machine gun, you don't hear a damn word that I say. And so what I have to do is I have to pass word verbally like, "Chris," and, "Chris, Chris." And it, it like wakes you up because everything that's going on in the headphone just becomes-

Chris Williamson 38:10 Oh, wow. You get a pattern interrupt.

Jocko Willink 38:12 Yes. Yes. So-

Chris Williamson 38:13 It's just t- t- in background. It's-

Jocko Willink 38:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:15 ... ambient fucking lift music.

Jocko Willink 38:16 Yes. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:18 That's crazy. Yeah, I mean, what about dealing with, uh, the level of adrenaline sort of during and after? Because, you know, you hear about, um... I was talking to a friend, a brown belt in BJJ but fought in Muay Thai for a long time-

Jocko Willink 38:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:32 ... went out to Thailand to fight, and we were watching, uh, Chris Eubank Jr. Versus Conor Benn-

Jocko Willink 38:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:37 ... boxing fight that happened the other week-

Jocko Willink 38:38 Sure.

Chris Williamson 38:38 ... in the UK. Probably one of the biggest, you know, uh, the two sons of two very famous boxers who had a huge rivalry and now they're doing it. And it's sort of been this big-

Jocko Willink 38:46 Epic.

Chris Williamson 38:46 ... buildup and all this stuff. It was super epic. I mean, and it was one of those walkouts that takes five minutes to happen and there's a, a, the dance bit and the, both of the dads are with the sons.

Jocko Willink 38:56 I feel you.

Chris Williamson 38:56 So it was, you know, it was real sort of hairs on the back of your neck stuff. Um, but I asked Josh, uh, "Hey man, uh, would- do you wanna be first or do you wanna be second in terms of walkout?" And he said, "Well, typically the, the, uh, champion will come out second." But, but I was like, "Yeah, I get that. I n- I've always seen that, but which one do you wanna be? Do you wanna get into the ring and sort of get a sense of the space? Or do you wanna come out second?" And he was like, "Dude, you always wanna be second because you're stood in the ring, the adrenaline's already been at its peak and you're just getting cold, slow, the adrenaline's not there. You've already had your moment. Now you're watching this-"

Jocko Willink 39:29 Sure.

Chris Williamson 39:30 "... dickhead have his moment." Um, uh, so I wondered the same when it comes to how long can you sustain adrenaline for through a, a, a, a combat-

Jocko Willink 39:39 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:40 ... uh, mission? I mean, what happens when you've got, we have a five minutes where we regroup at one corner and then you're like, "Okay, fuck, I've gotta � (imitates engine revving) �. Here we go. We go back up again."

Jocko Willink 39:48 It is like a rollercoaster. But what, what you were just saying and what we talked about previously, walk out second 'cause then the guy that walked out first gets to spend an extra four and a half minutes contemplating what's about to happen and living in his own fear, right? (laughs) He's running through that fear loop and freaking out, whereas you haven't even walked out yet. So let him sit out there on the big stage and let him freak out about it.

Chris Williamson 40:10 I'm sure that they take their time-

Jocko Willink 40:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:12 ... as well. It's like your, your walkout's five minutes, so it's like, "Yeah, we're gonna start-"

Jocko Willink 40:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:15 "... you know, 90 seconds late." And then-

Jocko Willink 40:17 It's like Musashi showing up four hours or three hours late to a sword fight. Like, "Oh yeah, you and I are gonna fight? Cool. I'll be there at noon." Show up at 2:30.

Chris Williamson 40:25 2:40, yeah.

Jocko Willink 40:25 Yeah. So you just sit there and freak out.

Chris Williamson 40:27 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 40:27 So it's a good plan.

Chris Williamson 40:28 Um, but yeah, that adrenaline, that up and down of that adrenaline, how, how did you manage that?

Jocko Willink 40:32 Well, what's interesting about that is you would think, like if I said to you, "All right, Chris, you're going to go out on a, on a patrol right now and someone, there, there's gonna be enemy trying to kill you." You'd think to yourself like, "Okay, well I'm gonna be freaking locked on for this whole two hours, right?" Like, "I'm gonna be, three hours, I'm gonna be totally locked on." Well, after an hour and a half and nothing's happened yet and you're hot and you're tired and you're-

Chris Williamson 40:54 Mm.

Jocko Willink 40:54 ... sweaty and you're carrying 100 pounds worth of, or 60 pounds worth of gear, you start to go, "Dude, do I really want to take a knee at this corner? Do I really need to take a knee at this corner right now?" Meaning you're gonna stop and you'd like to lower your profile a little bit. But after an hour and a half, maybe you'll just stand and hold that thing. So we, it's interesting, we talk about complacency and how you can't let, you can't get complacent, right? Well, and people say, "Well, you know, in combat, of course, you'd never get complacent." It... No, absolutely people get complacent in combat. So when that adrenaline runs out, you have to have the discipline-

Chris Williamson 41:32 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 41:32 ... to say, "Oh, I'm getting in my corner. I need to take a knee to lower my profile." Period, end of story. I gotta, I gotta follow the protocols no matter what.

Chris Williamson 41:40 Does that, uh, suggest that different roles within, uh, military units are, uh, d- different people are disposed to different roles? I mean, this is obvious that certain people go toward spotting, sniping, uh, being the door kickers, being the people that g- sit back and do more planning, people that drive, that fly drones, people, you know, all the medics, all the rest, whatever it might be. But I have to imagine that within that, uh, you may find when somebody gets into operations that actually, I'm perfectly competent at all of the skills, but my nervous system just does not agree with this, so I'm gonna have to adapt over time and maybe I do need to be somebody that's sat up top and needs to hold sustained focus at a sort of a lower, uh, rate.... for a longer period of time, or maybe I'm the sort of person, I can't hold it. I, I'm good in bursts. I'm like the Usain Bolt-

Jocko Willink 42:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:34 ... of the fucking special forces. I can kick a door down, do a thing, and then (breathes deeply) all right, we go again.

Jocko Willink 42:39 Yep.

Chris Williamson 42:39 Um, I imagine that that must be something that, that happens during training and, uh, uh, during operations too.

Jocko Willink 42:45 Yeah, and you're gonna find, like you mentioned being a sniper. Being a sniper is a, is a job of patience. And so if you're a person that's freaking hyperactive and you don't like to sit still for a long time, being a sniper is going to be a hor- horrible job for you. Whereas being a breacher, where you're gonna walk up to a door, someone's gonna say, "Breacher up," and you're gonna go kick that thing in or blow it up in the next 14 seconds, that's a job for short att- short attention span Chris.

Chris Williamson 43:09 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 43:09 But if long attention span Chris, patient Chris, will, you know, will guide you as a SEAL to be a sniper as opposed...

Chris Williamson 43:17 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 43:17 And then, and then also, like, you've got joint tactical air control, which is the guy that's got multiple aircraft overhead and he's got stuff going on on the ground, but he's gotta take, he's gotta detach from that, and he's gotta put these aircraft, he's gotta stack them in the proper way, keep them, uh, out of each other's way, uh, in the air-

Chris Williamson 43:35 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 43:36 ... and then he's gotta find targets on the ground and direct various aircraft. So there's a lot of cerebral processing that has to happen.

Chris Williamson 43:42 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 43:43 So depending on who you are, you're gonna sort of get guided to a job that is suitable for you.

Chris Williamson 43:51 Mm. Yeah, so I- I've been thinking about this after a, uh, cool genetic test thing that I did that looks at all of the different alleles that you've got and then maps them to what they're predictive for. So some of them are to do with, uh, dopamine response. Others are to do with how you process vitamin B12. Some of them, for me, uh, to do with how you process cortisol and adrenaline. And, uh, my... One of the jobs that it said would not be good for me would be something with huge peaks and troughs. So as long as I can sustain focus, I could be someone that was holding it for a long period of time, but if you've got these massively intense periods and then these big dips, uh, my nervous system isn't, uh, built to come back into line very quickly like that. I would love... I was... I knew that we had this episode. I'd love to see what your results would be with that. My ability to clear adrenaline and cortisol, not so good. I have to guess that you and the rest of the guys that you were with would be, uh, whatever the equivalent of like a, a super, uh, super-spreader event for being able to bring that back into line.

Jocko Willink 44:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 44:52 It's fascinating.

Jocko Willink 44:53 And, and there's no genetic test on that thing to get in the SEAL teams. So we end up with guys, and you can see 'em, like you can see a guy that gets really... Uh, I don't know if this is the same thing, but you have people that get really emotional about things, and then some people that don't-

Chris Williamson 45:07 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 45:07 ... and everything in between. So, I think some of that has to... I mean, certainly I would think that if your adrenaline is pumping, your emotions are heightened, right? And then if your adrenaline is not pumping, then you're more emotionally calm.

Chris Williamson 45:20 Mm.

Jocko Willink 45:21 I, I would think that that would be accurate.

Chris Williamson 45:23 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 45:24 So, you get... You end up with both people in the SEAL teams. And yeah, like someone that's super hyper-emotional is probably not gonna be ideal sniper. Not that they're not, 'cause there are guys that are emotional that are good, great snipers too, but y- you know, if you've got someone that... As you grow, right, as you get older, you must learn to regulate some of that stuff too, I'm, I'm assuming, so that you are harder to disrupt.

Chris Williamson 45:53 Knock off base.

Jocko Willink 45:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I mean, tha- that's the fascinating thing that you realize when you see the building blocks of who you are, which are, you know, there's 20,000 pairs of alleles or whatever it might be, and it's like, "Huh, I always wondered why fucking, like, gluten didn't agree with me. Ah. Huh, I always wondered why I struggled to sleep after something exciting happened on a nighttime. Ah-ha, I always wondered why..." You know, whatever. Um-

Jocko Willink 46:15 I would like to run another experiment-

Chris Williamson 46:17 Uh-huh.

Jocko Willink 46:17 ... where we, like, you give me, I give you this test, and then I just make stuff up-

Chris Williamson 46:22 See what-

Jocko Willink 46:22 ... and tell you... 'Cause I hear about people who, uh, do, like, Whoop strap and they get told in the morning, "You didn't get good sleep last night." And then they start feeling like, "Oh, man, I'm really dragging today." And then they get told, "Oh, you slept great last night." And they, they feel like they have more energy, and pretty soon they go, "Wait a second. I, I got told I didn't sleep well, but I had an awesome day and I did, you know, I performed well in my stuff." So, I'd be interested to tell you, like, "Oh, you're-"

Chris Williamson 46:53 So good.

Jocko Willink 46:53 ... "you're emotionally just stable."

Chris Williamson 46:56 Yeah, locked on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jocko Willink 46:57 You're locked on, and see if you're like, "Oh, yeah, ƒ"

Chris Williamson 46:58 There's a, a great book called The Expectation Effect by David Robson. Just a popular science book. It's about four years old now. And, uh, he looked at a study where they did exactly this. So, they gave, uh, a cohort of people, two different groups. One group has a particular genetic predisposition that allows them to blow off CO2 more efficiently, and that means that for VO2 max work, they have, uh, th- th- they're much more effective. Other group does not have this mutation. They mixed them up and split them into two parts so each group had equal proportions of people with and people without. You can see where I'm gonna go.

Jocko Willink 47:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:35 They told Group One, "Hey, you've got this genetic mutation." Remembering 50% of them don't. "You're gonna, you're, you're gonna crush this. It's gonna be amazing." Group Two, "You don't have this genetic mutation. It may be a little bit more tough for you to do th-" remembering 50% of them do. The group that were told that they did but didn't have it outperformed the group that did have it but were told that they didn't, and he came up with this synopsis which is, your expectations are even more powerful than your genes.

Jocko Willink 47:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:58 Uh-

Jocko Willink 47:58 Have you ever heard of the Monster experiment?

Chris Williamson 48:01 No.

Jocko Willink 48:01 So they s- the exact same thing except for it was with kids with speech impediments. So what they did is they said, "Hey Chris, listen. You know how occasionally when you're talking you kind of, like, stutter a little bit?" And of course everyone stutters a little bit sometimes. So they say, "Chris, that's because you're a stutterer and it's probably gonna get worse as you get older." And sure enough, when they told kids that, their, they developed stutters and had it get worse. And then other kids, they were, they said, "Oh, yeah, you've got a..." The kids with actual stutters, they say, "Hey, you've got a little bit of a stutter right now, but it's no factor. It's just you're going through the phase." And they would come out of it. And this turned into a big giant lawsuit 'cause it gave kids, like, permanent speech impediments, which is-

Chris Williamson 48:42 Hence Monster.

Jocko Willink 48:43 ... just awful. (laughs) Yeah, that's, yeah, hence they call it Monster.... uh, which is interesting because there's also that thing which I have heard and read, which is when a kid does something good, you don't, you don't compliment them on their talent. You compliment them on their hard work.

Chris Williamson 49:02 Eff- effort. Yeah, yeah.

Jocko Willink 49:03 Yeah. Which this is a little bit the off- opposite, right? If I say, "Hey, you know, Chris, you did a great job because you're so talented," then you're like, "Oh, cool. I don't have to work that hard."

Chris Williamson 49:11 Mm.

Jocko Willink 49:12 But it's a little bit of the opposite, right? Little bit of the opposite.

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Chris Williamson 50:19 do most people misunderstand about discipline equals freedom?

Jocko Willink 50:27 Um... I don't know. I think it was pretty simple to understand. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:33 I agree, but I, I, w- it's... With simplicity comes an awful lot of opportunity for people to-

Jocko Willink 50:39 Yeah. I, I, I guess there's always people that, you know, as they're trying to fish for a contrarian thing to say, which I think you kinda have to fish for it. I think you have to work for it to get with that statement. But, oh, there's such a thing as too much discipline, and if you have t- so much discipline in your life, then you're- won't be enjoying your life. And cool, yep. If you are so disciplined that you never go out and you never, uh, eat a pizza, cool, y- you're, you're, you're, you're... That might... You might be bummed out. Yep. You can go too far with it.

Chris Williamson 51:16 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 51:16 But generally speaking, if you have an occasional pizza, 'cause they taste really good and once a month or whatever, you go down to the pizza place and you get a pizza, cool. Good for you. That's gonna be awesome.

Chris Williamson 51:27 Mm.

Jocko Willink 51:27 And that's the reward for freedom. But I think it's, I think it's pretty straightforward and... I guess, I guess if I was to fish a little bit more, I would say that the idea that discipline is natural or it's, um-

Chris Williamson 51:47 Like innate?

Jocko Willink 51:48 ... innate.

Chris Williamson 51:49 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 51:49 And actually, my middle daughter, who's a jujitsu player, she was, she was actually speaking the other day, and one of the things that she said was... She was speaking about discipline. And she said, "You know, I was w- I was training... My dad and I, we went to the gym the other day and we w- we were both training and I was training with, you know, the, the, the guys that I train with and she was training with the people she trains with. And it's a Sunday and we're training. We're both like really tired when we're done." And we get done and we're kinda sitting up o- on the mats and we're talking and, and I look at her and I said, I was, I said, uh, "Not one part of me wanted to come train today. Like 0% of me wanted to come train today. And I'm so, so glad I came and trained." 'Cause you know, you always feel great when you get done training. But... So my daughter went and spoke to this group and she said, "You know, my dad, you know, Mr. Discipline, who's been on this path for however many decades, my dad didn't wanna train." And he had to go, "Hey, doesn't matter whether you wanna do it or not. You gotta have the discipline to go do it." And, and he did, and he got done with it. So... And I think that's a good thing to remember, that discipline isn't just, oh, this person is, quote, more disciplined than, than this other person. It's like, no, this person is choosing discipline, this person is not.

Chris Williamson 53:06 Mm.

Jocko Willink 53:07 That's the way it is.

Chris Williamson 53:07 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 53:08 So, I think that's an important thing to remember. You have the option of being disciplined. You, you don't have the option of being born 6'4". Right? You don't have that option. You either are or you're not. But you do have the option of choosing discipline or not.

Chris Williamson 53:24 So, discipline, not necessarily something that you're born with?

Jocko Willink 53:28 I don't think so at all. I think maybe there's some small percentage of it. Maybe this person's a little bit more innately disciplined than this other person. But I think it's a choice.

Chris Williamson 53:40 Well, how much of it's habit as well, and momentum? You know, as you said that, I think this is one of the vicious cycles that people get into, and it's also why you see people that have unbelievably outsized, uh, results in life and those who kind of have consistently bad results in life, because each positive experience is self-reinforcing. It tells you a story about the sort of person you are, and you start to build on good habits and these good habits show you more good habits and you get a little bit more confidence and you get a little bit more... And you say, "Well, this is part of my identity now, actually. Can push myself a little bit." So, da da da da da da da da da da. And you're like, holy fuck. Like even if the 1% per day-

Jocko Willink 54:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:18 ... increase, and you end up at some unbelievably big number by the end of the year. But you also see the opposite. And this is how you get, you know, very diverging outcomes from people that started at relatively similar places.

Jocko Willink 54:30 Mm-hmm. Certainly, and this is something that I've said for a while and... Is discipline begets discipline, right? If you make a bad decision in the morning and you decide you're not gonna get out of bed, you decide you're not gonna work out, when you get to the office, the donuts are that much more tempting and you're probably gonna eat one.

Chris Williamson 54:46 Mm.

Jocko Willink 54:46 Whereas if you woke up early, you worked out...... you got a little bit of work done before you even showed up to work. You show up to work and now there's donuts, you're like, "Oh, I don't need those right now."

Chris Williamson 54:54 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 54:54 You, you, you just make better decisions and that's-

Chris Williamson 54:56 Are you on the front foot today or on the, on the back foot today?

Jocko Willink 54:58 Yeah, exactly. And, and yeah, the compounding thing, for sure. And you, you make one good little decision that leads to another good little opportunity and, and, you know, I'm sure you have friends like this too. I have friends that made just small decision after small bad decision after small bad decision and they end up in terrible, terrible places.

Chris Williamson 55:20 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 55:20 Which is awful to see.

Chris Williamson 55:23 An interesting pivot on the make one good decision begets another good decision is when you've got a difficult conversation to have. My friend Alex says, uh, "The life that you want is on the other side of the difficult conversations you're unprepared to have." And he uses this analogy of when, you know, you work up to it for ages and the stress and, you know, you're in the Humvee-

Jocko Willink 55:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:45 ... um, metaphorically driving up to the conversation. And you finally do it and you go, "I feel amazing." And then immediately, like a psychopath, like a serial killer, you look around and you go, "What other bad conversations can I have?" (laughs) Are you, like, seeking out targets for you're like, "Right, I need to ring my mum and tell her that she did that thing. And I, you know, I've got that guy that didn't deliver the Amazon parcel correctly. And I need to speak to this quick supplier," blah, blah, blah. But, uh, you... Uh, it's the same with that.

Jocko Willink 56:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:10 This sort of momentum thing is a big deal.

Jocko Willink 56:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:12 And it's why-

Jocko Willink 56:16 In that vein, when I don't feel like going to train jujitsu or I don't feel like waking up or I don't feel like working out, whatever that thing is, that feeling that I mentioned to my daughter of, like, "I'm so happy I came and trained today," I know that feeling so well that it just totally overrides the-

Chris Williamson 56:33 Oh, so you're projecting yourself into that?

Jocko Willink 56:34 ... the weakness. Yeah. I'm de- like, "Oh, yeah, I know how much better I'm gonna feel in an hour, in an hour and a half." I know that feeling so well. And I also know the other feeling, which is, "Man, I didn't train today." You know, I... It was Sunday and I've decided I need a day off. It's like, "No. Train." I know that. And I think that is very helpful.

Chris Williamson 56:52 What's still driving you now from a discipline perspective?

Jocko Willink 57:00 Well, I mean, in jujitsu, it's just, I love jujitsu. And, hey, you know, and again, if, if you want to do something, how much discipline does it take? (laughs) You know what I mean? I love jujitsu-

Chris Williamson 57:14 It literally takes more discipline to not do the thing.

Jocko Willink 57:16 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, you get injured and your arms... You, you know, you can tell that your arm, every time you train, it's getting a little bit worse. It takes more discipline to be like, "All right, I need to take a day off."

Chris Williamson 57:27 You with the neck.

Jocko Willink 57:28 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I, I mean, I enjoy doing these things. I enjoy working out. Do I enjoy working out every single day? No. And that's when it's like, oh, yeah, but I know the results of the long run. And I think that's a, that's an important thing that I've talked about and, again, talked about this with my, with my daughter is like, if you give up a little bit today, like, you can't get it back. Like, if you skip a workout today-

Chris Williamson 57:59 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 57:59 ... you can't, you... There's no possible way to get that back. When you let something go, it's gone. And Rome wasn't built in a day, but Rome didn't fall apart on a day either.

Chris Williamson 58:11 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 58:12 It didn't fall out, fall apart because of one thing. It falls apart just a little bit at a time.

Chris Williamson 58:17 Yeah. Nobody gets fit overnight and nobody gets fat overnight either.

Jocko Willink 58:19 Exactly. A- and so you can't, you know, you can't submit. You can't submit. You have to, you have to get in there and keep it going. And I know the results of not doing the thing are, are not good. And I enjoy doing the thing, so in order to keep doing the thing, you gotta do the thing.

Chris Williamson 58:37 Yes, it is.

Jocko Willink 58:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 58:37 It's this endless fucking infinite regress of doing the thing.

Jocko Willink 58:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:41 Yeah. I, um, I, I kind of get the sense as well w- with that story about not wanting to go to the gym, I do think that that's the difference between discipline and motivation, right? Motivation, I didn't want to do the thing. Discipline, I did the thing in spite of not wanting to do the thing.

Jocko Willink 58:58 Yep. Yep. And, look, I've said many times, you can't count on motivation. Like, it's not gonna be there for you.

Chris Williamson 59:03 Yeah.

Jocko Willink 59:04 Or it may, but it may not be. And if you-

Chris Williamson 59:07 It's lovely when it comes along.

Jocko Willink 59:07 ... if you wait for it to be there, it's 'cause you might be waiting more than you should.

Chris Williamson 59:13 On the other end of that, you know, the person who is going through a string of... Can I have one of those?

Jocko Willink 59:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:18 You want to spell one? On a drop no go, please. Thank you. What flavor is this?

Jocko Willink 59:22 There you go. This is iced tea lemonade. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:25 Okay. Okay. You're still pasteurizing these, right?

Jocko Willink 59:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:28 Yeah. Yeah. That's hardcore. Yeah, that's good.

Jocko Willink 59:37 That's coming from a Brit, you know, a tea drinker.

Chris Williamson 59:38 I know. Look-

Jocko Willink 59:39 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:40 ... i- it's not the same sort of tea.

Jocko Willink 59:41 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:42 It's not the same sort of tea. This isn't a fucking Earl Gray.

Jocko Willink 59:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:45 Uh, no, I appreciate what you guys did with this. We also did it with Nutonic. I really appreciate the fact that you didn't go heavy on the carbonation.

Jocko Willink 59:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:52 You know, it, if you're gonna have this before a workout, the last thing you want is like (gagging) sound effects ] . Just throw out it. So, no, yeah, that's lovely. Uh, you have a sour apple one?

Jocko Willink 1:00:04 We do.

Chris Williamson 1:00:05 Yeah. That's my favorite one.

Jocko Willink 1:00:06 It's a good one.

Chris Williamson 1:00:07 From what I've got. Yeah, it's awesome.

Jocko Willink 1:00:07 It's a popular one.

Chris Williamson 1:00:09 Um,

Chris Williamson 1:00:12 I imagine it's all well and good saying good decisions beget good decisions. You've got this infinite domino tumble that helps you to keep the momentum up. And, yes, it is your responsibility to deal with the repercussions of the decisions that you've made, including the string of bad ones for the last quite a long time, if that's the situation that you're in. But it's not particularly reassuring or comforting, I don't think, to somebody who's in the shit. So, what would you say to someone who's going through a bad month or a, a string of bad months and doesn't see any light at the end of the tunnel?

Jocko Willink 1:00:56 What are your options? You know, like, okay, you're upside down financially, you, relationship went ba- went south, you got, y- wha- whatever those things are, your credit card debt is up, you, you got fired from your job. Okay. You're, you're in a terrible situation. W- what are your options? Y- what you have to do is, well, you kinda have to prioritize and execute, right? Like, okay, I got all these bad things going on in my life. What is my biggest problem right now? And you've gotta say, okay, I gotta start with solving that problem. And you gotta start to, going back to the, I think it was the initial thing that we talked about, take, take action. You've got to take action and move forward. And if you don't, y- y- th- this, the d- the downward spiral doesn't end.

Chris Williamson 1:01:52 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 1:01:52 And if you allow it to continue to go down, i- that's where it's gonna end up. And so y- you just have to, what are my options? D- abandon the whole thing? Like, no, that's not the option. That is not the option. What can I make better right now? And start to reassemble things and putting 'em back together.

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 Small steps. I remember, uh, advice to a friend that was going through a period of low mood and was feeling bad about not being able to get out of bed and wasn't able to show up and all of this stuff, and I was like, "Dude, you need to literally see every single micro step." Like, you're in bed. You have gone to the bathroom a couple of times. You haven't seen sunlight in a few days. Uh, you've been ordering Uber Eats to the door and like, you know, sort of looking at the floor as the, the fucking delivery guy arrives. Like, you need to think about getting out of bed in the most rudimentary steps possible. So what's the first thing you need to do? Well, you need to pull the covers off you. Like, that is a step. Okay. Hey, like, I can... I mean, that's, you know, that's better than it was before. One foot out of the bed, two foot out of the bed, stand up, get a glass of water, put your shoe, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, slow, slow, slow.

Jocko Willink 1:03:02 Yeah. You know, there's something to... So people ask me about jujitsu and, and they, they, they don't like to fight, they don't like the idea of it, they don't like the physical, uh, close contact, whatever the case may be, like, and they'll say, "I don't like it." How long, you know, how long do I have to do it for?" And one of the things that I say is, "You have to do jujitsu until you submit someone e- while you're training with them." And the reason I say that is because if you can train long enough that you submit someone-

Chris Williamson 1:03:36 Mmm.

Jocko Willink 1:03:37 ... all of a sudden you go, "Oh, wow, I, I made progress."

Chris Williamson 1:03:41 Yes. There's a win.

Jocko Willink 1:03:42 I see the, I see the reward. And so with, yeah, do those little things, but do those little things until at the end of the day you go, "That was a pretty good day." Like, don't... 'cause if you just get up and, "Okay, well, I got out of bed and Chris said get out of the bed, but I still freaking don't like-"

Chris Williamson 1:04:01 I didn't, I didn't say that.

Jocko Willink 1:04:01 Yeah. Eh, eh, I still feel like crap, right? Okay, well, get out and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and you can stop when you get to the end of the day and you go, "Okay, you know what? Today was a pretty freaking cool day and I feel good." Then if you wanna go back to living in the hole and ordering Uber Eats, go ahead.

Chris Williamson 1:04:23 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 1:04:24 But at least give me, at least give me the effort to ha- to make yourself have a good day.

Chris Williamson 1:04:31 You know the, uh, idea around you do BJJ until you're able to submit someone, that shows that you've been there for long enough to have made some progress. A friend made this, uh, point to me and it's such a fucking smart point that I've never thought of despite the fact I've lifted weights for like 20 years. Going to the gym, m- muscular training in the gym is one of the only pursuits in life where during the act of doing the thing, you see the future progress of where you will be if you keep doing the thing.

Jocko Willink 1:04:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:59 So if I'm trying to learn Italian with you and we're on Duolingo or whatever the fuck the app is, n- at no point during the process of learning Italian do I understand what it would be like in six months time to be proficient in Italian. But if you go to the gym and you get a pump, you go, "Hey, if I keep doing this for six months, this is what I'll look like flat in a little while." And I think that that, it's such an under spoken about, uh, dynamic of training. I really think that that is one of the biggest feedback loop mechanisms of why it happened. I mean, I guess in BJJ if you just learned, um, a particular movement and you've drilled it and drilled it and drilled it and then you get into rolling and you're like, "Ha, I've still got it."

Jocko Willink 1:05:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:39 But next week you're like, "Where the fuck does my arm, like, I can't remember how the..." So maybe a tiny bit like that-

Jocko Willink 1:05:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:44 ... but there's, I don't think there's anything else. You don't get a pump preview anywhere else on the planet except for in the gym and I think that that's a under spoken about dynamic about why people love it.

Jocko Willink 1:05:53 Yeah. Uh, that's, i- that being said, you don't see much progress, you know, the next day. You know, yeah, you get a pump and i- depending on your physical makeup, like if you're, if you're overweight, you don't see a pump, you know, which is a bummer. And so if you're overweight, you're not gonna get any gratification going to the gym external. You're not gonna see anything.

Chris Williamson 1:06:17 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 1:06:18 So you gotta keep going. You gotta keep going until you start making some progress. Pull, you know, until you can do a pull-up.

Chris Williamson 1:06:23 Mm-hmm.

Jocko Willink 1:06:23 Once you can finally do a pull-up, okay. I've heard once that there's, you can't be overweight and do a pull-up. Like it's not, it's not possible.

Chris Williamson 1:06:29 That's a great point.

Jocko Willink 1:06:30 So pull-up's a good goal to have.

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Jocko Willink 1:07:48 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:07:48 ... and one, 10,000 two pull-ups?

Jocko Willink 1:07:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:51 He's, uh, I had Cam on the show last week, and I'm just, I'm like completely blown away-

Jocko Willink 1:07:57 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:07:57 ... by what his kids have done. One of them's a ranger, I think?

Jocko Willink 1:08:00 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:01 Uh, and, yeah. I was-

Jocko Willink 1:08:03 And Truett's Truett. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:08:05 Correct. Um, yeah, it's absurd, dude. I was, I, I, I found that quite, really interesting. Cam, it was, he was sort of really beautifully opened up in a way that I haven't heard him do it before. And he was like, "I don't know how I feel about pushing my boys that hard-"

Jocko Willink 1:08:20 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:20 "... when they were kids." You know, he's like, "I regret, in some ways, doing the things." He, he told me this story, um, his son that's a ranger, I think was maybe a, um, prison warden or something like that-

Jocko Willink 1:08:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:32 ... and had a, you know, good, stable, steady job contributing, law enforcemently stuff. And, uh, he came home and said to his dad, he was like, "I'm gonna apply to ranger school, I'm gonna become a ranger." And he's like, "Well, what, you know, you've got, um..." It's all well and good, Cam telling his kids when they're kids, "We don't settle for average, you're gonna be an overachiever, you're gonna work harder than everybody else, we're going to be elite," so on and so forth. But when you're faced with, uh, you're gonna maybe enter a kinetic future, uh, the rubber really meets the fucking road with your principles there-

Jocko Willink 1:09:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:04 ... right? Because it's your flesh and blood that's on the line. And he asked why, and his son said his own words back to him, and said, "Well, you know, we're Haynes, we don't settle for average, we don't, y- y- y- you know, agree with mediocrity, I'm gonna be special, elite," blah, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, Cam had this sort of moment where he was like, "Fuck, like maybe I've pushed my kids too far. Maybe I've pushed them so far that they didn't feel happy or content with a norm- a good, normal job."

Jocko Willink 1:09:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:34 "And what if my son goes off to war and gets fucking illd- uh, k- killed or injured-"

Jocko Willink 1:09:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:39 "... over there b- because I've put them in this place?" And it was a really interesting ... I've been fascinated for a very long time at the price that you need to pay to be somebody that you admire. You know, to be somebody that is a, an extreme performer, uh, that, that is, um, in a position that most people would find enviable.

Jocko Willink 1:09:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:59 And this is another one of those things. You-

Jocko Willink 1:10:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:02 ... you don't understand what it is that drives people to do the things that they do. Now, some people have a beautiful balance, you know, they, they do it from a place of self-love and wanting to maximize their time on this planet, and it's this, you know, wonderful, uh, upward trajectory toward a goal that they believe in. But for a lot of people, it's running away from something that they fear-

Jocko Willink 1:10:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:23 ... insufficiency, a need for validation, uh, uh, uh, comfort, control, um, uh, recognition from, uh, the teachers that didn't believe in them, the bullies that got them in school, the parents that didn't give them enough attention, the what, you know, whatever it is. And I think it's, it's just a really lovely redress for most people to think, "Okay, I think I want this thing." And as we said at the very, very beginning, "What's the price that I need to pay in order to be able to get this thing? Do I wanna pay that? Do I want to pay that price? To be Truett Haynes, what do I need to do? Well, I need to have a childhood where I'm made to carry a rock up a fucking hill every night after school for, like, 10 years. Do I want that? Like, do I want to be working so hard that my hands are three times this..." His hands were the size of your hands. Um, you know, that's where I need to be. Um, I just think it was, it was really, really interesting from Cam, you know, somebody who is an extreme performer, somebody whose sons are also extreme performers, to just look at, "Okay." It, it was a really, really interesting reflection.

Jocko Willink 1:11:26 Yeah, what, what, one thing that's very interesting when you look at, like, uh, basic SEAL training, right? So, basic SEAL training, it has something around an 80% attrition rate. It, and it is a, it is a tough course of training. And one, one thing that is just, completely makes no sense whatsoever is in a SEAL class, you'll have a kid from, you know, Massachusetts whose, both parents went to Harvard, he went to Harvard, and he, you know, spent his summers on the cape in th- their third home, because the other one's in Vermont, the whole nine yards, and he makes it through SEAL training. A- and then there'll be another kid from New York state who is also equivalently, you know, a Princeton kid, and he played whatever sport at Princeton, and he'll quit. So, so you have two silver spoon kids, one of them will make it, one will not. Go to the complete other end of the spectrum, and you have some kid that was raised in the barrio in LA that grew up, you know, a gangbanger or at least gangbanger adjacent, and he'll, he'll, he'll make it through training. And then another guy that's LA gangbanger or gangbanger adjacent, he'll, he'll quit. So y- so, it's really bizarre. And