Navy Seal EXPLAINS How To BUILD Self-Discipline & EXTREME OWNERSHIP | Jocko Willink & Lewis Howes

but what I worry about is I worry about missing out on opportunities that I have because I got friends that will never get the chance to execute on opportunities because they didn't come home and so for me to squander any moment any second of my life is something that that definitely definitely haunts me it haunts me every day and I won't let it happen I welcome to the school grants podcast we've got Jocko in the house my man thank you for coming here got a part of this family we're talking a little bit about your Navy SEAL training how you say it actually isn't that hard isn't that big a deal but a lot of people seem to quit through the process and you're saying you were giving me context it's not as hard as going to war and actually being in that real life experience yeah I don't wanna say I don't to make it sound like it's not hard because it certainly is hard and especially for someone like myself I wasn't the best athlete you know I was like an average high school athlete and so physically I had to I had to go hard in order to pass all the evolutions but yeah I mean compared to when you look at someone that was in the SEAL Teams for a long time they're not sitting there harking back to the days of remember how hard this training was not thinking about their deployments overseas and the things that they had to do that's the world losses that's the real hard stuff I was with a seal this weekend his name's Chad and he was saying that I said what was the day where most people quit because it's a it's a self eliminating process right don't you acquit yourself they don't fire you from SEAL training you say 98% of the time it's well yeah it's a really high percentage of people that quit but there's also people that fail really so if you fail when I went through and things change a little bit but when I went through if you failed one run they were watching you if you failed another run you would get moved back to the net last to the next class then if you failed another one you were out so what do mean a run so time for mile time drunk Josh yeah for mile time drowned or and that's one example because you have a four mile times run you have swims that are timed you have obstacle courses that are timed and then you have other we call them evolutions but you have underwater not time life-saving so life-saving is a good one because what it is is you have to go and rescue these seal instructors in the water so it's sort of like what a lifeguard would do but it's pretty funny because they're trying to drown you like they're attacking you when you jump into your punch to hear their breath they're trying to drag you down to the bottom of the other pool so if you fail that once then you'll get another try if you fail it again you'll get rolled to the last cloud to the next class and if you fail there then you're out but you could fail if you failed one run one swim one obstacle course then then you could you could do that and I did that you know I failed a run I failed a swim I failed an obstacle course I don't know if I failed any oh I failed one water evolution called pool competency I failed that one time so I was like a grey man in terms of it was actually good I wasn't great at anything but I wasn't horrible at anything either yeah you were consistent so that was a good place to day job that's great he told me I don't know if this is too graphic but I said what was the hardest day where most people quit when most people gave up in the six months of training he said towards the end of training it's not as difficult they're not trying to break you everyday as in the first I guess two or four weeks but I said what was the hardest day for most people and he said I was he said I was in shock because it was when they played a video over and over and they made let's watch a video I'm not sure if it was the same video that you had to watch your time he was a didn't even haven't no he said there was a video and this might be too graphic to talk about but he said there was a video where an enemy was using a knife to cut off the head American hmm and he and they made you watch it over and over again and they said this is very real if you get captured they'll probably do something like this you know they were trying to know psychologically break you down and train you to be afraid if this is it and he said for him he got angry watching the video whereas a lot of other people got afraid and they quit that day right afterwards they all went not all of them but a lot of them quit how much of it was for you psychologically challenging versus physically challenging and where though those moments that made you angry or more excited to dive in or were there any moments that made you question being a seal there was no there was not any question for me I knew what I wanted to do I never thought about quitting at any moment real I'm you know that's interesting that the video concept we didn't like I said we didn't have there wasn't videos like that that we could watch but I think one I think that's actually good that they show that video because these days you can get kids that they see they they see the SEAL Teams and they think these guys are out whatever running around on the beach and the fact that matter is when you're in the SEAL Teams you're your mission and your job is to go and kill the enemy and part of that job is putting yourself at risk with your friends of getting killed or wounded yourself so that's that's good initial on that because that's a good wake-up call if you're going in the SEAL Teams because you think you're gonna you know go to the bar and strut around with your chest out like that's not what the SEAL Teams is the SEAL Teams is going to war that's what we do was there every time you were truly afraid whether it be in training or in war yeah the biggest the biggest amount of fear that I felt was absolutely without question when I was on my last deployment to Ramadi and the feeling that you have especially when you're in a leadership position is you're afraid that something's gonna happen to one of your guys when you're done is gonna get wounded or killed and so when your that's that's the fear that I felt and part of that is part of that is because some people myself included and this is not uncommon for guys to think well it probably won't nothing's gonna happen to me and so I had some of that for sure but I also had just that fear there's nothing worse than thinking about one of your guys one of your friends one of your brothers getting wounded or killed and yeah that's that's the what I was afraid of did you ever think anything would happen to you were you like maybe this is the mission where some random bullet hits me or yeah if I did think that I didn't really care you know I think at some point you realized that there's a chance you can die and that's what you signed up for and that's what you dedicated your life to and that's what you believed in is that you're doing the right thing so sure you get the feeling hey today could be the day Wow but there's also the fact that there's nothing you can do to there's nothing you can do to really control that so you've beyond what you've already done which is you've trained hard you've prepared hard you you've planned to the best of your ability you've mitigated as much risk as you can through your operational planning process through your standard operating procedures and on top of all those things you're at war and so there's a chance that a bullet is gonna be is gonna have your name on it and and the fact the matter is bullets don't have your name on it bullets say to whom it may concern and the bullet doesn't care who you are they don't care how much training you've had they don't care how well-prepared you are and if it's your day it's your day and so I think once you get to a point where you recognize and accept the fact that you could you can die then you can move past that and I mean I felt like that for a long time you know I felt like that for a long time that that was that was my job and I didn't really care so so whether I thought about it on a daily basis or anything I would say I didn't or just some part of the part of my world that I accepted you know you might you might die I mean you you played football you must realize that you could get injured right and make your neck yeah you can't be out there being worried about that and it might be in the back of your mind somewhere but I don't know if you agree with this but if that's what your primary concern is your chances of that happening to you are probably greater than if you just say put that in the back your mind and go out and play aggressive ball same thing on the battlefield you go out and you play aggressive that to me increases your probability of survival not so much for yourself more importantly for your troops yeah what did you learn when you took on that leadership role because I'm assuming you weren't leading teams your first two years as a Navy SEAL but then the more you were in the program you were then leading groups of guys for many years right yeah what was the biggest challenge for you from going as a I want to say a follower but as a team member into then transitioning into the leadership role of leading the team what was the biggest challenge for you from that transition from team member to Player to Player coach let's say yeah well you actually you're like not wanting to be to call me a follower well when you get into the SEAL Teams and you're a new guy you're absolutely following you've got you don't know what you're doing you don't understand the tactics and so there's other people that have experience you're listening to them they're teaching you and then as I got older and more experienced and eventually I did move into leadership positions and became an officer in the SEAL Teams and then it was my time to step up and lead and the amount of lessons that I learned are are countless and that's what I ended up writing a bunch of books about ended up writing a bunch of books about those leadership experiences that I had the right out of the gate you know when you asked me what I learned you know one of the most important things that I talk about all the time is you're you're gonna get humbled and you need to be humble right because you're the leader absolutely yeah as a leader especially you step up into a leadership position do you know everything no no you don't know everything if you act like you know everything you're gonna get eaten a lot humbled quickly you're gonna get humbled and and not only that but your your troops are gonna look at you and say why you true who do you think we are do you think we're stupid so you're acting like you know everything we actually know you don't know everything and you're acting that way sir you're there respect for you goes down whereas if you just say hey look I just got into this job I'm gonna do the best I can I don't know everything my mind is open I'm here to listen I'm here to learn and if you guys can help me out I'd appreciate it well everyone sees you as a humble person that's ready to listen and ready to learn and their respect for you actually goes up so I'm not saying you can walk in and say hey I don't know anything I'm ignorant I haven't done any preparation I had study to anything I don't know anything about my job but you can only learn so much from books and from from various documents right eventually got to start doing it so you got a that's when I load number one you got to be humble yeah how long how long were you a leader of the team of teams so I was enlisted in the SEAL Teams for my first eight years and then I got a commission and became a seal officer okay and how many years were you an option for 12 years 12 years what what was the most humbling experience you had as a leader in all 12 years and was the eleventh and twelfth year easier than the first a second year as a team leader so most humbling experience there's well the most humbling experience you're gonna experience on the battlefield is if you have your guys wounded or killed yeah and when that happens there's nothing that's gonna be worse than that for you isn't for you as a person because you feel responsible you feel like it was your job it's not just you feel responsible you are responsible yeah you are in charge and so when someone gets wounded or killed you there's an if you're not shouldering that burden then you're lying to yourself mm-hmm so that's number one the story that I wrote about in extreme ownership the opening chapter of extreme ownership is there was a a blue on blue a fratricide meaning friendly forces killing friendly forces and that happened really when I was on a mission it was actually a group of my seals with some army soldiers and some Iraqi soldiers in a in a position and in a in a sniper position and they got basically attacked by a friendly Iraqi element thank you guys did yes got into a gunfight with them one of one of my guys killed an Iraqi soldier wounded a couple more Iraqi soldiers one of my guys got wounded it was night because it's hot we're on the same side you got the same - yes yes so yeah now we're in charge Wow so you want to talk about humbling that's humbling all the you you think you're so good you think you got tactics mastered and all that stuff you think you're great at planning and all those things and I wouldn't say that I fought that but I definitely thought I was competent and so when that unfolded it's like oh guess whose fault this is it's my fault Wow where do you go after that how do you go back to a competent place of being able to lead people because you gotta have some confidence to you can't just be you know concerned that something wrong is gonna happen right sorry how do you transition back into a competent place number one take ownership yeah of what we're wrong stream owners take extreme ownership of it right because it's the same thing I just said if that would happen and I would have said hey guys that was my fault there was his fault in her in his fault and his fault people would have looked to me they they know truth the truth is on the guy in charge so everyone's respect level for me would have gone down and their confidence in me would have gone down but when I go in and say hey guys look this is what went wrong this is my fault because I'm the guy in charge and this is what we're gonna do to fix it well now everyone says okay well he he's taken ownership of the problem and he's actually got some good solutions to make sure this doesn't happen again their confidence and their respect for me goes up and we can move forward right how often did you have to take extreme ownership every single day every day oh yeah of course Wow of course the minute that you're blaming anyone else for things that are going wrong the moment that you do that think about what it does you think what about what it does to you hmm if I'm walking if we go on a mission and something goes wrong and I go that wasn't my fault well what am i doing to fix it now what am i doing right I'm not doing anything nothing because because I don't think it's my fault so I'm not gonna change anything well then we'll make that same mistake again and then I'll say that wasn't my fault and we'll never never make any progress whereas if I say hey this was my fault here's what I'm gonna do to fix it then we fix the problem and by the way when I put my finger at you and I say hey you know this was your fault what's your reaction to that defensive me yeah you're gonna get defensive yeah of course and then what are you gonna do no was it I'm blaming this person that's perfect they dropped the ball here Jimmy did dad Johnny is this and what are they all gonna do pointing back to you so now what do we end up with we end up with our solutions no no one taking ownership of any of the problems the problems never get solved we never progressed so how many times did you take extreme ownership of something that technically wasn't your fault there is no thing there is no thing there is no thing so you'll take ownership of everything even if it wasn't directly this is a this is a question a comment that I get from from my consulting business right you know we work with business leaders and someone will say yeah I get it you know it's really not my fault but it is your fault oh yeah you you I can I have yet to have somebody stumped me with a question when I say no if you're in charge of something and something goes wrong it's your fault all your response it's all your responsibility because if I'm in charge of a platoon and one of the machine gunners that's four or five levels below me in the chain of command and is on a position that I'm not even at right and he shoots his machine gun in the wrong direction towards friendly forces whose fault is that it's your fault yes it's my fault I didn't train him well enough I didn't make sure he understood his fields of fire where he was allowed to shoot I didn't make sure that he was being monitored correctly by his fire team leader to make sure that they all knew what was happening and at the end of the line if he's not competent and capable of doing his job it's my fault that I let him be in that position right so no matter what happens it's my fault so what do you tell CEOs are leaders of big companies that have multiple lines you know underneath them that don't have the time to train them personally but they have someone in Nathan a train who's training them hearing them how do you it's real easy you know the guy says to me hey you know we failed this project and I said oh why do we fail that project oh because of Bill the frontline manager okay who's in charge of Bill it's Mike okay who's in charge of Mike Fred who's in charge your friend the leader the CEO yes I am yeah that's right you're in charge of Fred so that means you need to make sure that your intent is felt all the way down through the chain of command how do we do that that's leadership this is why I have a consulting business this is what you have to do because the larger company gets look what I'm in charge of eight people it's easier everybody cut everybody knows what I'm thinking I can I mean I see him every night I can sit in one room and talk to him all face-to-face we on the battlefield you're in charge of a fireteam a fireteam has four or five people in it even in combat you can control four or five people eight people you actually can't control anymore in a firefight you can't control eight people that's why the army the Marine Corps around the whole world it's like four or five people in a fireteam that's what the base unit is not in the corporate world you can handle a little bit more than that because there's no explosions happening there's no gunfire yeah so you can control eight people ten people something like that that's kind of what the normal corporate structure breaks out as but the bigger you get the more you have to rely on those subordinate leaders to spread the word to understand what the mission is to understand what the end state is to understand why they're doing what they're doing that's what you have to do as a leader and when you do that there was plenty of missions that I went on where I was the Ground Force commander in charge of 30 or 40 SEALs or a hundred seals and Iraqi soldiers combined together plenty of operations like that you know how many people I talk to I would talk to three right I would talk to the two platoon commanders and the mobility commander yeah and everybody and then they would talk to their two or three people and then there people would talk to their two or three people so how do you get that message across 200 or thousands if that's in your group there's there's a bunch of different ways so in a bigger organization this is something that we come across I mean we work with companies I think the biggest company we worked with is a hundred and one hundred and sixty-seven thousand employees 167 thousand employees of global right so they're all over the place so how do you get the message well there's a bunch of things that you have to do number one you have to make sure that your message is simple clear and concise right everywhere you got to you got to communicate in a way that even that frontline trooper can understand what you're talking about now you have to translate that up and down the chain of man because if you're my chief operating officer obviously the level of detail that I go into with you and and the chief financial officer there that's gonna be hired you guys need to we need to be in a deeper level of conversation and understanding but I need to make sure that you know how to translate that down to your next level and then that person knows how to translate it down to their next level and all the way through the chain of command there's companies where I'll go in to the CEO and we'll be talking I'll say so how well does everyone understand what your mission is here and they'll say oh absolutely I'll go to a frontline person and say what's the mission of this company they have no idea they have no idea so and this could be a real problem this could be really I mean obviously this can be a real problem but it becomes a real problem when if you're a frontline troop and you don't understand what the mission is you can make bad decisions on the frontline so there are certain companies at certain stages where the most important thing they can do is is be cost effective save money right and that's if a frontline troops needs to make a decision about hey should i redo this thing right now which is gonna cost us a little bit more money or should I just let it go with a little bit lower standard well if what you're focused on is saving money that guy says okay you know what I'm gonna let this go even though the standards a little bit lower that that's that's a decision that can get made but what if you're focused right now maybe you've got some bad reviews from consumers and so your focus is to make quality perfect even if you have to expend a little bit more money if the frontline truth knows that he goes wait a second this isn't quite where we want it so he redoes it it cost a little bit more money but we're we're now achieving the mission and guess what as you can probably figure out the mission changes because we work with a we will work with a company we're what are they trying to do right now they're trying to maximize profits for this quarter because they're going public and they need four quarters in a row or six quarters in a row when they see that increasing front so okay guess what kind of decisions they're making now can you go too far with that absolutely and now you get the front line truth that goes ahead okay oh I'll put out as many as I possibly can it's gonna be dirt cheap and I saved the company bunch money but now we end up with bad quality out there and we will get a bad reputation into that Alberto strategically Brian so how do you get that message out there you you have to number one make sure it's simple and then you communicate it what's a simple message for like them I guess it depends on the company depends on the company yeah it should a simple message be like one sentence you mean or should it be a simple to understand simple to understand the more and and what we'll do with companies is we'll do a drill well we'll work on their mission it's kind of their mission statement but and then also their mantra or maybe a couple mantras where you know in this case hey its quality over quantity and now a frontline persons making decisions based on them right and so there's a couple mantras - three mantras that the people can refer back to that helps them guide their decision-making process and then on top of that they have like a little bit more detailed mission statement where they can say wait a second I know the mantra says this but it also says we're supposed to take care of our customers and if I let this go that my customers won't be taken care of I need to I need to adjust a little bit right what would you say is your mission and the mantras you use for your your business brand so I have a bunch of different businesses you know for a salon front our our consulting business our mission is to be the premier Organization for leadership consultant consultancy in the world that's what we're trying to do and we're doing great at it you know we're doing great at it how do we do that what are the mantras well number one like you just like like we just said what do we wanna do we want to make our clients and customers happy how do we do that we provide them great service and we actually improve their game we actually can look at their metrics and say hey look we're glad you brought us on board here's what we said we were going to do and here's how it works so that's and the one of the other things that we say is look we don't want to be a permanent crutch that people have to rely on so a lot of consulting company consultancies they they want to go in and and hook into a company for an extended period of time and we don't want to do that we want to work with you for six months 12 months 18 months depending on the size the company can let you go yeah we do have some companies that are growing rapidly and so what we do is we as they acquire new companies or as they bring in lots of new people we are there to help train them and kind of onboard them so that has turned into some longer-term contracts but that's one of the mantras is is we don't want to be embedded with you forever if we if we're with you for too long we failed yeah okay so those are the kind of things we do what about your personal mission with the Kahn thing you do and all the books as there are missions there you have as well I'm trying to take the lessons that I was lucky enough to learn and get them to as many people as I can so they don't have to suffer through the same mistakes that I made yeah what would you say is your biggest insecurity if you have any insecurities my biggest insecurity because from the outside looking in you feel like it seems like you have no fear your sixth really successful in business everything you put out is really successful you've been through twenty years of training and combat you've seen the worst in the world you've seen the best and it doesn't seem like you got many insecurities so I'm just I'm curious you facing me today after all the lessons you've gone through yeah I mean I would say like anybody else I I don't want to fail at things yeah and for me like I said if there's people out there that could use the lessons that I've learned and I haven't gotten it to them to me that's a failure yeah so that that's the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night the other thing from that perspective is you know you you look at you say you know you've seen a lot you've been through a lot and and I have I've been through a decent out there's there's many many people that have been through infinitely worse than me but you know for what I'm insecure about for what I worry about is I worry about missing out on opportunities that I have because I got friends that will never get the chance to execute on opportunities because they didn't come home and so for me to squander any moment any second of my life my life is a gift your life is a gift I know that for a fact and for me to squander that is something that that definitely definitely haunts me it haunts me every day and I won't let it happen yeah cuz you got I'm assuming you got a lot of friends that didn't make it back for people you were with or trained or yeah yeah all of the above so you click you have this responsibility to make sure you take on every opportunity or the opportunities that come to you you've got a at least given your best shot even if you kind of quote/unquote fail at it well yeah I mean there's a there's a what you just said I mean even you know as you said it it's an unrealistic statement hey every opportunity that comes your way I'm gonna take on no that's not true every opportunity that I have prioritized and execute you know which is one of the laws of combat right it's like hey you're gonna get opportunities but I'm gonna look at them assess them and move forward but really I'm talking about the the real things that are that I'm trying to do that I have the opportunity to do I'm gonna do them to the best of my ability yeah is there anything you regret in your 20 years of being a seal I mean you're always gonna have regret is there anything that you are you still hold on to that you haven't like process and let go of or taking been ok with I guess like the regrets that you dealt with you you know I don't spend a lot of time with regret and that's good you know because there's there's not much that you can do about it it's happened something so what what would the way I look at regret is what did I learn from it mmm what did I learn from whatever thing I'm looking at that I know I could have done a better job could have done different sure there was a million things like that but I don't sit there and think about them all day long what I think is like hey here's the lessons that I've learned from them I won't make those mistakes again and move forward yeah what is it challenge because you have four kids did you say four kids or kids was it challenging at times being a father and going off to war and thinking about kids and missing out at kids was that challenging for you or do you know this is what I signed up for and it's all gonna be okay I'm gonna come home eventually and spend more quality time with them where did you struggle with being a father and being away a lot of the same time yeah when you have kids and you go away to war you you're gonna come back that's horrible how do you how do you handle that emotionally or mentally I think I did a lot of compartmentalization really and so like here's a for instance I was in Ramadi my last deployment to Iraq and my wife asked me to send a picture of where I slept at night because my kids she said oh the kids want to see we were sleeping we were in an old regime kind of Palace on the one not quite a palace but a mansion and of course it's all now boarded up and they're sandbags or their machine-gun nests on it and the whole nine yards but that's where you're living you know and I had a little bedroom in there with a plywood bed that would you know we'd built and there was some kind of a crappy mattress on it a little cushion yeah yeah but that's that's where I slept and so I was going to take a picture of it so I could send it to my wife on an email and when I took the picture I looked at it and I realized that there was something wrong with the picture so I opened up a drawer pulled out a little file a little folder took some pictures of my wife and kids and put them up around the bed Wow and then I took picture of it and then I took all those things back down I put him back in the folder I put him back in the drawer because the last thing I needed to be thinking about while I was away on deployment was thinking about my wife and kids Wow what I needed to be thinking about was the guys that were with me that were counting on me to make the right decisions and so I didn't want to be thinking about my wife and kids so I compartmentalized them I would talk to my wife maybe once a week call our check-in I would tell her everything's great everything's fine and she would tell me the same thing you know doesn't matter what was going on at home as far as she can't be worrying about her she didn't want me worrying about her or the kids so as far as I knew everything was good as far as she knew everything was good and that was what seemed to work well Wow did they teach you that or is that is that what a lot of seals did or is that just counts on us I had to you just I think some and not just seals but I think most human beings will we'll figure that that's probably the best thing to do is focus on your job and and and and put those thoughts and feelings aside but why I'll tell you what you know you talked about being scared and I said you know for me being scared of one of my guys getting hurt the last thing in the world I wanted to be thinking about while I was on deployment was my wife and kids at home and would I ever see him again in any of that I'm not thinking about that that's not that's not happening then you're making the wrong moves yeah because then you're then you're then what you're doing is you're hesitating and if you're hesitating that's gonna get hurt you're gonna get hurt you're gonna get killed so man that's crazy that's a story right there so when she saw the photo was she happy to see the family photos or well yeah yeah that's nice but in here yeah that's crazy but you couldn't sleep at night looking at those photos want to Wow yeah did other guys do the same thing or some of them have I don't know yeah you know if some guys fueled them that's fine you know not everyone's the same right you know some guys I'm sure would look at their look at the picture of their of their wife or their kids and and if the energy feel motivated by it and give them something to look forward to for me I did not want to think about that oh man that's crazy was once a week enough for you to keep that connection going and to keep the yeah I mean I've been married for a long time I've been married for a long time for 20-something years do you believe in God - I think when you're overseas in a combat situation you know whether you depending on what your version of of God is gonna be but what I will say is this you will see absolute pure evil overseas you'll see it you know what we saw in the Battle of Ramadi was abhorrent behavior by forces of evil that seemed to be non-human in many ways and then the other side of the spectrum when you're in combat you're gonna see some level of good and pure goodness when you know and so when when one person will sacrifice their life to save other people that's not normal right that's not a human instinct it's a hint an instinct beyond being human and so whatever your whatever that word means good evil God Satan yeah I've seen it did you what were your beliefs as a seal and have they changed since your since you've been home did you did you believe in a higher power or God or or spiritual belief during that time and as it shifted or changed I say the the feelings that I had going in I would say you know what I just explained about seeing good and evil like when you see good and evil like that that extreme it just reinforced the fact that there's what like I said wherever you put these ideas wherever you think those ideas are rooted I've seen them spring up into the world with my own eyes yeah so what's your belief then is it do you believe in a higher power guiding you or people deep there is a God there isn't a god yeah well there has to be your mind some there's something inside there's something in the world yeah whether it's inside people's heads whether it's external I don't know and I'm a person that looks at the world and thinks when I hear people saying God doesn't exist then or God 100% exists guess what I don't know when I say I don't know I don't I don't claim to understand the mysteries of the universe at all but I will say this when you look and you see the actions of human beings whether that forces external or internal they are there and so right I've seen them how do you do you currently explore those questions about the mysteries of the world if there is a God if there isn't a God do you think about that often or is that not something you're thinking about because for me I'm constantly questioning everything there's some days where I believe firmly there's God other days I feel like I don't know it's all just crazy that's something that you're known you know asking those questions are curious about that not really well like I said there's good in the world there's evil world yeah and whether that whether that's a some unifying thing inside of people's brains or whether it's external you can think whatever you want I'm telling you it's there I'm telling right there and I don't try and convince people one way or the other yeah you I've seen it I've seen I've experienced it and that's good enough for me what's the question you feel like you haven't been able to answer for yourself is there a question you're seeking to learn more about answers to if it's not God or the world is there something else around leadership around people or around something else that you're seeking so you're asking me if there's a question that I think about all the time that you're looking for an answer for you is there something that you're like I'm really curious about this thing whether it's about yourself about other people about the world about leadership is there something that you're currently looking for an answer for oops where is that I literally sit around all day and talk about leadership I think about leadership and what leadership to me it boils down to understanding human nature mm-hmm so for me trying to better understand human nature is what I'm constantly trying to do is just gather a better understanding of human nature and how that applies to everything in the world human nature meaning the way we think that why we do certain things why we respond yes emotionally mentally physically to ideas or people or reactions how can I understand human nature people everything you just said how can I understand that better and that's what I'm always looking to do yeah what is giving you the best information around understanding people better well you know on my podcast I it's really a podcast about human nature and it's human nature through the lens of war and atrocities really because when you start looking to reveal human nature the the place where human nature gets revealed most clearly is in chaotic situations yeah like mad life-and-death situations whether it's war whether it's a concentration camp whether it's a prison camp whatever that is that's where you start to see what people how people react survival situation and so for me that that constant trek down that road of uncovering what how this person reacted how this group of people reacted how that other group of people reacted understanding that and seeing that and allowing that to unfold in my world has been that's that's my that's that's my road I'm on what why do people react the most just in life whether it's you know prison camp or war or you're just walking down the street and someone cuts you off is there similarities between those situations where it might be just a normal day but there's something that offends you or triggers you and also in a time of life-or-death situation now there any similarities there's absolute similarly what about one of those things there's similarities across the board that's what makes it so interesting to me right is because I get to see the way that things happen in wartime and then you get to see you lived it how that compares to how it works in a in a corporate setting yeah one of the why are we triggered to react or be defensive or guarded or in this kind of survival mode when life isn't actually threatening us you know corporate setting or well the thing that's driving in a corporate setting often is your ego which by the way is the same thing that drives a lot of things that unfold the same things that unfold in a combat scenario it's like oh your egos involved hey I think we should do this plan this way and you think you should do it or do you think we should do it a different way my plans better you think your plans better we bang heads like that's bad that happens in war and it happens in the corporate society as well you know yeah ego egos that drives all kinds of decisions that you make bad decisions you drive some good decisions - yeah right I mean it does your you're ignorant not to admit that you know like I like to win it things right cool what's driving that it's a hundred percent ego you don't I mean you like to win it could you like to do well yeah cool what's driving that it's it's ego there's some level of ego now if it goes overboard and you start making decisions so that you can win but you're stepping on the backs of other people that means you've let your ego get out of control and now you're making mistakes and that's gonna end up and your downfall eventually am I not you might you might get pretty far your you might let get pretty far allowing your ego to smash other people and abuse other people you might get pretty far but eventually it's gonna come back on you yeah I guarantee it's gonna come back on you how do you manage your own ego with the success you get you know you've had success in multiple areas of your career from a seal to an author to a business leader to make executive coach and leadership coach how do you manage it when you are training CEOs from companies that have a hundred thousand plus employees and you're number one of the list and top podcasts how do you manage it daily because I've seen over and over again through my own experiences through the books that I cover on my podcasts the books I've read in my life if you want to open yourself up for a massive downfall just let your ego get out of control really if you want to let that happen yeah let your ego get out of control so every single day for me it starts drunk you know ground zero I've got it I've got a go forward with an open mind with a humble mind looking at the world you know it's classic like when I get asked a question I don't think to myself oh I know the answer this mean and I can ask questions all the time yeah and generally when I hear a question 99% of those questions that I hear I've heard in some form before sure but I'll go I've heard this before I know the answer I say okay well let me let me hear this what what detail is this person talking about what angle is this person coming at it from what can I learn from this question how can I assess this question so everything that I look at I try and look at from a humble perspective and if you don't do that in Rome I mean even when you're asking me questions about God right you're asking me questions about my beliefs it's like hey here's my beliefs I'm humble and I'm listening and my mind is open and this is what I've seen and this is what I can tell you about it sure how about sitting here jumping up and down saying they should not exist or you should believe that I'm saying you should stay humble you should keep an open mind about what's going on in the world I am I'm think you should do the same thing Wow how do you how do you say it's a month of mindset every morning you wake up with an open mind yeah and I don't get this whole like morning routine where I go and look in the mirror and say be humble no I don't do that but when you know you wake up and I'm just saying that the way I go about my business in my life is to say say to myself okay well I could be wrong about that I could be wrong about this you know huh it's I mean even even the the book that I wrote follow-on to extreme ownership huh the book is called the dichotomy of leadership you know it's interesting about this book so the dichotomy of leadership is like you can't be extreme in one direction or the other right you can't be if you're if you're in a leadership position you can't talk all the time right obviously as a boss you need to communicate you need to talk to your people but if you talk too much guess what happens people start stop listening to you you're putting out too much information they don't know what's important what's not so that's bad you can't go too far in that direction the other direction is you can't not talk enough and now no one knows what's going on Oh knows what's happening so you have to be balanced and that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership but probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself you know what am i there's another side to this is I used to tell the young seal officers that you have to be aggressive you got to be default aggressive that's how you gotta be mmm because when something's going on you got to be aggressive to make that get that problem solved and if you're not being aggressive then you're hesitating well then you can get killed okay so there you go and that's what I used to tell guys and as that's extreme that's an extreme yes that's the problem with it and so the question is can you be too aggressive yes absolutely you can hey there's a machine-gun nest over there let's attack it so you charged up the hill and everyone you've been too aggressive so what you have to do is you have to be balanced and that's probably so so even as I had these kind of mantras yeah like default aggressive can you do too much of that yes you can so you end up with this what do you end up can you be too passive oh yeah absolutely well now we're not making any progress now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver okay so that's bad so where do you want to be you want to be bounced even the idea of extreme ownership can you take too much ownership if yes you can really you yes you can but I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything two different things listen to this if you're working for me and I say okay here's the mission that I want you accomplished tonight here's the people I want you to take here's the weapons I want you to bring here's the vehicles I want you to bring here's the here's the route I want you to use to get to the target here's the method I want you to use to secure the target here's the route I want you to do to get back yeah so that's the plan now you take ownership and and go execute now can you really take ownership of that plan if someone else gave me the whole thing I gave you the whole thing right is that your plan no no yeah it's my plan so when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan what's your attitude well it's not my plan it's yeah and you're at an obstacle now New Year like a jackal didn't think of this you're right so now you just back away and you come back and say hey we failed the mission because you didn't think of this option Yeah right so that's me taking too much ownership so what I need to do is I say hey here's the plan here's the mission how do you want to do it hmm and now if you're a good leader you'll go get with your people and you'll say oh hey guys here's the plan or here's the mission that we have to accomplish how do you guys want to do it now you all come up with a good plan and you come back to me and you say here's the plan and I say that looks pretty good go execute and now when you've hit an obstacle in the field what's your attitude I need to adapt and adjust what's your plan you'll make it come up with this yeah yes so can you take too much of ownership the answer is yes you can so with just about every you you can name a trait right you can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait and you'll immediately see that if you go too far or that it'll become bad it'll become bad so you have to be balanced so even as I came up with a dichotomy of leadership I had to be humble enough to say to myself you know what being aggressive is really really good most of the time but if you're too aggressive that's not good yeah so like you said earlier you're constantly questioning everything and to me what that is that's that's humility that's you being humble enough to say you know what I really don't understand this that well yeah and and there's some things in my life that I don't get where as a poet as opposed to you walking around saying I already got this figured out I already know what I'm doing I already know where I'm going I already know what God is specifically I already know what's gonna happen to me when I doubt all those things but instead you're questioning everything which in my mind is a positive thing yeah that's good to know is there anything that is missing in your life you feel like something's missing I know I feel like I'm living a pretty good life right now I mean I'm totally blessed I mean I got a great family I got great kids I got a great company I got I got working with great people yeah no nothing you're healthy you know get to workout train I'm feeling good I'm the dream man yeah living the dream so you never feel like there's something myth missing free right now yeah if there is you're working towards it you're working on the next book you're building the business yeah well there's a difference between something missing and am I satisfied yeah right because I'm not satisfied I mean I always want to go like I never I never get done with the end of the day and go cool mission accomplished like it's not your clothes yeah yeah so you're not satisfied do you feel like nothing's missing yeah yeah I'd say that's a fair statement what brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most oh I mean my kids my kids are cool money - my wife and kids yeah I'm like my wife and kids are cool and funny and and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that yeah you know and I trained you Jitsu and that that's very fun and surf that's fun yeah guitar that's fun how are your kids again age twenty eighteen sixteen and ten and what's the biggest lesson you learned about being it about yourself being a father to them your kids are not going to be who you want them to be you can't train them - they're gonna be who they are and you can give them some course corrections a little bit but they're going to be who they who they are and the more you try and force them into what you want them to be the harder they're gonna push back and rebell Wow yep did you learn that the hard way or did you kid yeah so you tried to train them in a certain way or yeah somewhat and it's pretty obvious like from my perspective I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives and and they were we were talking we you know we went down the road because we're having dinner now so we're done talking about work but now everyone's asked me about you know parenting and everything else and and I said at the table I'm like hey who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted him to do and there's like one guy out of ten right because most people you know your parents are bad you do this thing then you do something else I mean I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old like that's that what probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do it not even the necessary ball park right they did want you know war yeah they didn't want that so here you go yeah see yeah that's so the more you try and kind of pigeon or your kids into being something that you want them to be the worse off its gonna be it's it's the same thing with leadership it's the same thing with leadership if I'm if I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat the more resistance I'm gonna get from it whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them the better it's gonna be received like when people ask me how do you get people to buy in well you you allow them to come up with come up with a plan yourself what if what if in your mind you're like you really know that plans not that good it depends on how bad it is how bad is it or what's at stake hmm if you're if you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you're gonna give them and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with that and tract doesn't really matter I'd be like hey hey give it a shot here's a couple I might give you a couple adjustments and and give you some coaching on it and then you go and you do your thing and you come back and like I don't know we didn't land it and I say well what do you think let's debrief and now we talked about it said you know you said this and you said that here's some other ways to go about it I might even actually have you do it to me so then I could sit there and take some notes and say hey here's some other things that might have worked now if you were gonna meet with a big client that really was gonna have value to our company I'm gonna I'm gonna eat it up in yeah I'm gonna step in and be like okay let's think about that what's their reaction gonna be and by the way that's one they're not gonna say no don't do it that way I'm gonna say give me that tell me that again and let me hear let me give you some objections that you might hear from them and all of a sudden I'll let you come up with the solutions even though I'm sitting there going to have what he needs to say is this no I'll let you come up with a solution so then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed and then you're gonna feel like you want what you did that's great which is great and gives you more ownership more respecting yourself confidence belief how important is is feedback for leaders getting feedback from peers coaches or employees team members feedback does how you get better yeah no feedback no improvement so and if you're not humble you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it so if you think you know everything you're not listening you're not asking for it even when it gets told to you you don't you don't listen to it yeah so feedback is is built upon being humble what would you say is in your way to getting to the next level what feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have I mean the weird thing about me is even though you might think look at me and think oh who's gonna tell this guy anything right the reality is if any one of my friends my team anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command if they think I'm wrong everyone said hey I don't know if that's a good plan so even you know when I was attacking the commander in it so I'm in charge and I'm the head seal for this 40 seals I'm the main guy yeah anyone on that chain of command those guys were all come to me and say hey I don't know if this is a good way to do it and you know what I'd say why not what do you think what are you thinking how do you think we should do it my mind is open if my plan is bad please tell me they would know that hmm so my my friends my family they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long they're not intimidated or scared of you no that's good no so how does a leader cultivate that with his family friends team in order to welcome the feedback of the information you know what you do is when somebody gives you feedback you listen to it this is like you know just the other day we have a we have a leadership event that we do two or three times a year but the thing that I was telling this group of people was as a leader you should be listening ninety-eight percent of the time and talking 2 percent of the time so every time you come to me and you said hey Jocko I don't like this plan I don't say shut up and do it my way I say I say how would you want to do it yeah tell me what you don't like about and then tell me how you want to do it so therefore the next time you have an objection you're like you know the doors open you know that I'm gonna be open-minded and listen to you and that's how you build it every time you shut someone down from list from from speaking their mind you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not gonna get the feedback in if there's no feedback as we just said you're not going to improve what are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills right off the bat two things you can think of and what are two things that one of the leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders so one of two things they can add yeah Singles number one is listen which which we just talked about so that's fresh on my mind and you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position they should be talking all the time wrong answer wrong answer I'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies and I'll listen for 38 minutes and at the end of those 38 minutes I'll have already thought through every discussion that's been had you know you want to argue with him and he's arguing with her and guess what I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important meanwhile you're expending all your ammunition she's expending all her ammunition he's given up everything he's got I'm learning all their thought patterns I'm learning the the pros and cons of each one of their arguments and I do that for 38 minutes and in the 39th minute I say hey here's what I think we should do mm-hmm and guess what because I've done a accurate assessment and listened I'm actually going to be able to make the best decision yeah it wasn't because I was smarter it wasn't because I had better tactical understanding it's because I actually shut my mouth listen to everyone spill their guts learned everything that they knew and did a good detached mm assessment of what the right thing to do was so listen and the other one is the word that I just used which is detached which is not getting emotional not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter if you can take a step back and look around you're gonna see infinitely more than you can when you're in the weeds staring the fire fight in the face looking down the sights of your weapon shooting if you're doing that you can't see anything else just think about that metaphor right there if I'm looking down the sights of my weapon and I'm shooting my world is this big the minute that I stop shooting point my weapon at high port take a step back and actually look around I can see infinitely more so apply that to a meat is just a meeting that we just talked about that a 38 minute meeting all this chaos is happening sure I'm the boss I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion but what am I really doing then what I'm really doing then is in the weeds and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening so that so there you applied there to your personal life if you and I are arguing you're my friend and you did something and now we're starting to escalate an argument and I'm starting to get emotional am I able to listen to you anymore am i able to logically figure out what's going on if I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad and now I'm starting to raise my voice is that is that whole situation going in the right direction now no it's not it's not so what I need to do is take a step back detach calm down listen to what she's saying and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without without saying you need to calm down or you're too emotional no no no no no because if if you come to me and you're mad about something you come to me whether it's whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner and you come to me and you say the dang the supply department did you give me the stuff I needed if I say they calm down right if that's my reaction then you realize that I'm against you right I don't get it and so now it's me and the supply department against you no one understands no one understands so I do a little technique what is that yeah I call I call it reflect and diminish so I'm gonna reflect your emotions back to you but I'm gonna diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating a citroen I would you do this with your wife so if you well if you come to me and you go this apply departments been late there two weeks late on this stuff I don't say calm down I say I said oh you got to be kidding me two weeks and you go yeah can you believe it ah that's horrible we got to put a solution we got to get that figured out in the meantime what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved right so we already now are on the same team so we can work together to find us we bonded on the opinions yes you felt the pain yes we're on the same team okay my wife what's gonna make my wife mad um the ice machine's not working right yeah she's not working it's your fault whether it's my fault we don't know the ice machine's not working by the way this is a real story this is today the ice machine is not working and she didn't get mad about it but the ice machines not working if I go hey chill out you have a refrigerator and the house and we just calm down right is that how's that gonna go it's not gonna go good now she's gonna get mad now it to me against her you know so instead the ice machine is not working aha man that thing is junk have you called the the repair guy you know what I mean I did all the sudden we're on the same team and she's like well no I haven't but I'm about to okay cool where as opposed to the ice machine is not working will okay you want me have I shipped in from Alaska they're princess right so so what did you call reflected diminish reflected what if someone's coming after you and attacking you not like the supply chain or the ice machine but it's like you didn't do this oh yeah this is your fault well you know guess what I'm gonna do what's a what you guess I'm gonna do later you come and attack me and tell me somethings my fault what do you think I'm gonna do you personally yes you would you would listen yes reflective diminished I would actually attach detach yes how do you detach your emotions from someone coming after you emotionally if it even if it was or wasn't your fault well there's a couple things that you've asked me now so that's couple minutes no it's all good because it's all excited because I can see like your your see your mind is spinning here you're you're absorbing you're like oh this makes sense if you're attacking my ego immediately as soon as I feel frustrated angry defensive all three of those things are red flags to me that that's why you go okay I immediately know I go when you when I feel the my bristling you wanna head yeah when I feel that I know it so I guarantee is 99% it's just my ego that I'm mad so what are you doing that I'm home immediately go oh that's your ego you idiot listen to what he's got to say let's let's win let's win so how do I win do I win by attacking you no no I don't win my attack you're the only winner you both live yes so when you attack me ulti to win you say whatever your attack is you say this is your fault I go you know what absolutely this is my fault here's here's the mistake that I made and I know it affected you in a negative way here's the things that I'm working on right now to remedy it what do you do are you gonna yell at me more or are you gonna sit you're gonna tell me it's my fault again not just a crazy person might say a couple more times yeah and it's the person I'll be like yeah I know this is you know I get this again this another question I get when it's sort of like similar to what you said earlier when you said yeah but what if it's not really your fault right the other one I get a lot is if you say hey listen Louis this is this is my fault that this happen you go you're right it is your fault and then people say what do i do then what do I do that if the person is blaming me how do I take ownership in and I'm like it's the whole point that's not the point the whole point of taking ownership is when you look at me and you point your finger you say this is all your fault I say yes I know that's what I just said this is absolutely my fault I'm the one that's in charge and these are the things that I'm gonna do to fix it that's where we're gonna start Wow so when someone blames you yes take ownership now if you have in the back your mind like you did earlier like eight maybe this isn't really my area like if you have that in the back your mind you're actually wrong you're actually wrong you're in charge and that applies to your life as well that applies to your life as well how you you know you got to take ownership of what's going on your life Lee you're not where you want to be and you say it's because the boss doesn't like your it's because the girl treated you this way or the guy did this and like all those things you got to take ownership of yeah and if you're blaming all these other external things you're not gonna make any changes and that's gonna be a problem okay let's talk about relationships with this I wanna stay with for a second get some say you say that there you're trying to think of a situation yes your buddy thinking like you're but I'm sure you've had many experiences with your wife right over how many years you didn't marry her it's 22 so I'm sure there's many times where you've expressed your dislike about something with her and she's expressed dislike of something about you is that fair to say not really no no what am i gaining from telling my wife something I disliked about her or about a situation or some she's not happy with that you forgot to do or or you guys not like that I don't really play into that whole bickering lesson right right it's amazing because I'm immediately just de-escalating right who deescalate it all just dis deescalate like what like what am I gonna gain am I gonna win an argument here's a question am I gonna win an argument with my wife no no I might win a short-term battle with my wife right what's that gonna do for me for the next week it's gonna be it's gonna be bad yeah I'm gonna suffer more so I'm not looking to win an argument I'm looking to resolve the problem Wow and that's what allows I mean the SEAL team sounds like a 90 percent divorce rate really you know yeah why is that because you're gone all the time you're underwater you detach emotionally you come home you you you just that's what happens it's a hard environment to I mean let's face it normal people have like a 50% divorce rate massive stress and you go on six-month deployment eight-month deployments it's hard to make it back to back to back yeah so how do you detach your ego is your wife doesn't come at you know my wife will do that all day long really so she's coming at you are attacking little things here and there how do you not let it affect you emotionally I were you like don't you see how hard I'm working or don't you see what I'm providing or don't you see that I'm showing up every day consistent don't you see that my egos out of control and I'm looking to fight you right now no I'm not gonna play that game so you just detach instantly yes if someone's coming I gotta be careful because if you're unemotional that's not good either right there's a balance yeah because if you just go if you just sit back and you show no emotions well try that sometime nice girlfriend okay when they get mad at you just go what's for dinner let's see how that works no no no you can't do that you've got to read you have to be my health yes yeah you have to be balanced but yes your ego is what plays into your ego drives all kinds of stupid things that you do yeah and and well here's what's interesting when you when you're truly confident when you truly are confident it allows you to be able to say you know what like if if you and I are working together and I've been doing this for 20 years and you've been doing it for four or three or two and you come to me and say hey I want to try this a different way if I'm really confident I'll be able to say you know what that plan sounds better than mine actually why don't you go and execute that Wow now what are you thinking me when I say that awesome yeah you think you're the man it's a full liter he's cooling it's me he crossed me trust me he respect he'd respect me and he's got confidence now if you come to me in the plan which by the way you can tell that your plans better than mine I mean it's evident for whatever reason yeah you company to that plan I go no we're not doing it that way I do it my way mmm I'd be like this guy sucks this guy sucks not only that but you realize that I don't even have the confidence to trust you and let me move forward an egomaniac he's got all those things so so I don't play that game with friends with business partners with your wife you don't play a game anywhere no I don't play that card you learn that to like your triggers like emotional pro over and over and over again son over and over again so did you used to be that way and you saw or you just saw from other people uh Khalif for me I was able to observe a lot hmm and the I had this situation unfold so I got a new book coming up which is an explained this situation I was in a seal platoon I was a follower so I was like no I was a one crews wonder so I've been on one deployment but it's still not super experience but and we had a platoon commander that was very inexperienced and had a massive ego and so this is a bad commentary so what did he do he would say we're doing it this way this is who we're gonna take this is the mission plan is the plan we're gonna use he would force all of that down our throats not just mine but ever even guys that were experienced even guys that had way more experience than him they were just he would force these plans down his down our throats and what do you think our attitude is the attitude that you just explained earlier we were totally hey this guy's sucks this guy's got a big eagle he doesn't listen to anyone else he's horrible he didn't respect him yet and eventually we had a mutiny against that Wow we had a mutiny we rebelled against and said we don't work for this guy really how often does that happen never hardly effort holy I mean that's the only mutiny that I that I saw in my 20 years was that bad that was that it was that situation so we have this mutiny and that was bad in you know time I was sitting there looking and I actually had an okay relationship with the boss you know because I'm a person that even as a new seal I realized oh you got to build a relationship with a guy that you're working with you got to make sure that that you're that you can talk to them that they'll talk to you that you understand what they were it's like you got to do that baseline of like and respect smart thing to do yeah so this unfolds and of course even though I had a relationship of a guy I didn't want to work with for it's hard right so he gets fired and I'm watching it going wow that weird because why did we hate that guy so much well the reason was because he didn't listen anyone he everything was his way he didn't treat us with respect he was one of those guys that like you know you take out the garbage you you know hey when we when we're traveling in a van the front seat is left open for me that was like one of his things right so all of us like what you're talking about so none of us wanted to follow him and that was that stood out very starkly to me then when he got fired a new platoon commander came in to take his place in this platoon commander that came in to take his place was was an awesome guy had this great reputation as being a badass he'll and I didn't know him but everyone knew his name Wow and he came in to take over and I was kind of like oh dang we're about to get tightened up you know then the guys getting sent in here to fix us so he shows up and I'm expecting this total beast to come in and he's this super he's not a huge guy he's got like a nice smile on his face very you know not quiet but not loud just kind of a humble guy and he said something longer hey I'm looking forward to working with you guys Wow and I'm like well that's weird and well then it turns out when we got a mission to a training mission that we were gonna go on like the very first one he's like hey you guys here's the mission you guys come up with a plan and we're like wow well you're supposed to tell us the plan right yeah because that's what we've been used to and by the way this guy had incredible experience combat experience he'd had brought about every job at a co platoon that you can have and there he was telling us to come up with a plan and we love this guy and we would do anything for him Wow so when I saw that stark contrast between these two leaders one of them who is arrogant and one of them who is humble that left a mark on me that never went away that's pretty cool yeah what is the most important relationship every person has in the world is it with their intimate partner their best friend their boss their parents their kids what do you think is the most important relationship that we are all are going to you know I think that's a weird question because it's just a weird question because as I was thinking about the context of it all these relationships that you have I mean obviously you've got your spouse right that's who you're gonna live with forever that's that's okay so that's that's a that's a big one yeah guess what you're working how long you work in everyday you know people are working ten hours a day if they don't have good relationship so the people they're working with that's a problem so I think I think I don't think it's mutually exclusive exclusive that you need to have a great relationship and none of the other relationships matter it's like no you you have a bunch of relationships and you should nurture and build those relationships with everyone because that's what's important right that is what's important you know and when you talk about whatever you were saying earlier about the hole and all this stuff it's like hey if you have good relay that the big hole you know if you don't if you don't have any relationships with people then you don't really have anything yeah I mean what are you gonna be alone in with a nice car right that's great it's cool you're gonna be alone in a nice house that's great but you you won't be you won't be happy Yeah right that's you got a cooler got a nice car that's fun for like a week right so I think all important all those all those relationships are important what about the relationship with ourselves how how do we develop a stronger bond or relationship with ourselves again it might be weird question but yeah you're coming at me with weird questions I know I just like to go out there right what how do you build a relationship with your own self personally how do you build it with yourself do you have conversations with yourself to build a relationship with you Dee reflect what's meant by a relationship with you well we have relationships with other people right and I feel like we also have conversations in a relationship with our self the way we feel about herself the way we talk to ourself the way we show up for our needs or emotions is that something you think about it am i off I'm trying to understand yeah there's just a concept I don't I don't I don't think about this concept a lot okay now there might be something that I should be thinking about right yeah I'm curious do you have do you have a conversation with yourself daily or weekly or monthly where you check in and you ask yourself am i okay am i doing the things I want to do am i enjoying this process am i loving Who I am do I respect myself you know the relationship in the conversation with self you ever think about that yeah I'm not I'm not sure that I think about those things in a formal way and part of this - because I understand I think I understand where you're going with this so let me explain this to you when you're in charge of a military unit you you have something called commander's intent which is hey on this mission the overall thing that I'm trying to get accomplished is this is this thing whatever that thing is it's called it's called commander's intent and it's really the most important thing that you know everyone needs to understand and when I was a leader of a seal platoon or a leader of a task unit I didn't always have to say what the commander's intent was because I knew and they knew they knew me well enough that if we were doing this type of mission they knew what the most important thing was so I should still say it but everybody knew my guys could not hear a word for me go out of the mission and know what overall was important to me so the reason I say that is because I feel like I have the same thing with myself where I don't need to reinforce the fact that hey I'm here am i doing a good job I know what I'm trying to do I know that I know what I expect of myself so I'm not having that conversation every day I will say you know to your point if I felt like I was looking around saying wait a second something's wrong here right something's wrong if I had a super tune that did something on a mission that I didn't want them to do the next mission I'd be like okay guys here's the most important thing all right they weren't they weren't clear they weren't clear so I think if I found myself in a position where I was waking up every day going man this is this is not where I want to be or man this is I don't feel good about this then I would say okay what's my intent right what is the intent what's the goal what am i trying to get who am I trying to be then I might have to go back and kind of reestablish those things so yeah does that make sense to you because again this isn't something that that I think about it and I guess what I'm trying to say it's so deeply embedded in me you don't have to say that I'm not saying it to myself when you transition from a seal to I mean let me reassure I'm saying the terms right is are you transitioning from seal to is a former SEAL what's the actual language so I just retired I'm not retired seeing a retired seal did you have any challenge with identity or a clear mission after you retired of what you were going to be doing was that a struggle for you and that's six months to year to year period no it was simple it was clear no I I started working with companies above about six months before I retired gotcha and if that wouldn't have happened I was gonna be surfing and doing jujitsu I own a gym in San Diego and I was gonna be doing that which was totally good with me I was stoked to be doing that hang out with my family a bunch then this whole thing started to unfold and those that unfolded I I did get on board now what's good about your question I'm sorry for criticizing you a lot of times I'm requesting it's good about your question is is I talked about this with veterans all the time is when you get out of the military you need a new mission I don't know if it's a new identity but yes yes I believe you're right like people can rap too much of themselves around their identity as an athlete right yeah I played arena football that's me like that's not you right is it but a lot of guy I struggle with this for about a year and a half so they're not and a lot of guys that were friends of mine they lived on the glory days yeah there's a lot of seals retired seals would probably have lived on the glory days yes you so you got it you got a look at it and be like okay and and if that's what you want to do like I had a friend when I was at SEAL team two and he was getting closer to retirement I was like what are you gonna do when you retired he's like I'm gonna be the fat retired guy down the street talking about what it was like lorry days yeah yeah I was like that's awesome that's what he wanted to do and his family and you know he did what he wanted to do with his life that's cool like good good but what's bad is if you don't eat that because that's a mission right the mission is I'm gonna hang out with my family I'm gonna you know enjoy it that's cool that's a mission what's not a mission is like I don't know what I'm doing I don't know what my meaning is I don't know what my purpose is that can be a problem so to your point yes identifying what your new mission is gonna be you should do that yeah and then people say well what if I can't think of a new mission then my answer is well go help someone mmm well thank you if you if you if you're being serviced if you're can't if you get out of the military you get done with a job or you get done playing arena football and you don't know what else to do because let's face it there's some other things that comes like when you got done playing arena football all of a sudden you're like okay I need money yeah I need a house I know so so like that becomes a mission right but let's say like where you retired from the military you got a retirement check coming in you're not rich but you know you can survive or you make a bunch of money doing something then you get yeah yeah you you can't let yourself float around in that arena you've got to figure out what your new mission is and if you don't can't figure out what your new mission is the other thing that can happen is well I got money because I got this job that I don't like but that's not my mission okay if you can't think of what your mission is gonna be go help someone go find someone to help and that will become your mission and in that mission you'll find you not only will you benefit a group of people or a person or some other human beings in the world but you'll start to recognize where you can improve yourself and bigger parts of the world mmm love that what do you think is what is the biggest challenge that most people are facing right now in our world of why they have anger resentment frustration that they're not on the mission that they want to be doing what is the challenge that most people are facing internally or emotionally or mentally that holds them back from having a clear sense of purpose fulfillment do you think it's weird to ask a question about most people like what's holding most people back you see it seems like I talk to so many people and I know you do too and like different people have different things that are problematic for them yes that if you if you wanted me to answer that question to the best of my ability I would say what is preventing most people from moving in the direction that they want to move is a lack of discipline mmm and no one wants to hear that answer it's the harshest answer it's not sexy it's not fun yeah it's not it's not cool it's not good clickbait because the reason it's not good clickbait is because well you can put this as clickbait the one reason most people don't succeed right right but then as soon as they you click on that click bait minute says discipline they are they really married yeah they don't want to hear it then what the easy way yeah because of what they actually actually when they see that word discipline it's actually slap in the face because they know it's true mmm they actually know it's true discipline in what ways of their life discipline in your life just what we what not in which way should we not have this for sure right if you want to make progress in your life you got to have discipline mm-hmm that's how you get there discipline is the root of all good qualities yeah I mean what what what are you gonna get without discipline already can be a good physical shape without discipline are you gonna be financially successful without discipline are you gonna are you gonna become more intellectually powerful without discipline no you can you think of any other goals that I could possibly achieve without this book if you have them please let me know it's not going to jump into it but I also think discipline gives you the most self-respect belief in yourself top or name for sure builds those qualities of like yeah I got this I can do something hard consistently and I can resist temptation that's a lake ratification very true that's true and that's a that's a very interesting point that you bring up because when you take a military unit or a court or any team of any kind you take a team of any kind and you want to give them more confidence and give them more pride what do you do you put them in challenging situations that require them to come together and be disciplined as a team and then they become stronger and they become better than they develop pride and confidence those are all positive things so what do you do as an individual human maintenance the same exact thing the tougher things you go through the more confidence you're gonna have the more confidence you have the better you can get can you go too far of that yes you can you can get let your ego get out of control and you can believe all the all the crap that's yours that that you're being told hey that was great you did great it's like no actually I did okay yeah but I'm gonna work and try and make myself better there's extreme discipline yes there's absolutely extreme discipline yeah there's there's people that have there's people that are so disciplined that they have no joy they have no they have no do it they can't have fun anymore that is the that is the minority yeah the minority is hey I have so much discipline there are a few people like a few people like that I'm sure I know I know some I'm sure you yeah yeah the other end of the spectrum is like I have so much freedom but I you know my life is a disaster because I do whatever I want you know who does whatever they want homeless people on the streets that are addicted to drugs yeah lazy people they're doing whatever they want yeah they have total freedom but they've become a slave they become a slave to their addiction they become a slave to their financial situation they become a slave to their emotions all those things are negative the the other the right place is the balance and what most people the majority of people need a little bit more discipline in their life so if you were to ask me and I wasn't to attack you about asking me a weird question what's the number one thing discipline that's why I wrote the discipline equals freedom feel man this one equals freedom you want freedom in your life you wanna you want to achieve what it is you want to achieve how do you do that you do it through discipline you do it through hard work you do by knowing what it is you're supposed to do and you do it yeah do you and I'm assuming you're gonna say that yes to apply discipline every area of your life it's not just I'm disciplined and my nutrition and fitness but discipline in relationships discipline in finance discipline so it's learning and mastering multiple skills that you're gonna be discipline that is what I'm I agree with everything you just said except for the word master okay because we're not gonna right we're not gonna match for anything it's very difficult like you know somebody asked me that on social media how do you master discipline I'm like you don't mmm you don't you keep working at it though every day yes yeah continue to improve and grow you better yeah you got the opportunity what happens if we stop being disciplined in our life if we think we've made it we think we've achieved something and we stop repeating the discipline patterns that got us there this is a rhetorical question because we all know the answer you stop being disciplined you're gonna you're gonna start to devolve mm and become less and become worse and become weaker and become lazier and become more pathetic as a human being do you become more discipline year after year or do you just say okay I'd stay consistent with my discipline personally I think I'm pretty consistent with my discipline I think what you said earlier about getting more discipline here more discipline there I might ramp it up in some area things yeah and where I can focus like oh I need to get more discipline than this cool make a run at it you know like like here's a good one like I write books you write books can you write a book without discipline it's very hard very hard right itself very hard and how often are you like oh super cool I'm gonna go write today like it's not it's not a joy every sometimes it is sometimes it feels good and I get that but generally writing is for me generally writing is not the premier thing that I'm looking to do every day so how am I gonna write a book I have to have the discipline to say yep I'm gonna go I'm gonna go write this that's what I'm gonna do yeah so when I'm writing a book back to your question you know hey I have to impose discipline in that area cuz I've got a due date either I made it up or my publisher made it up or whatever here's what I want this done by cool I'm gonna write a thousand words a day that takes me about an hour a day if I don't write a thousand words a day I look up in a month and I got to write 30,000 words now it takes 30 hours and you can't my brain doesn't like to do that I'd rather just write a thousand words a day yeah so so I'll focus my discipline on summer that doesn't mean I'm focusing on writing you know laying on the couch until in potato chips and chips that's not happening yes you stay disciplined in all areas your life yes this want to be successful in every area yes pretty basic concept I know it's it's I wish it was yeah this is something more magic about it you've got a number of books that a dichotomy of leadership you've got extreme ownership you've got a few others it's kids books as well we've got a new book coming out soon what's the topic January January 2020 it's called leadership strategy and tactics and they can pre-order it now yes something right yes they can pre-order it now now get the book yeah what's the thing you're most excited about in your life is it the books is it the the consulting is as being it to ad is it well effort on the beach yeah I mean the it's winter time so that when waves are coming which is nice to the other bigger waves I don't know in the winter time yeah yes okay yes I'm not so in the winter time you get you get the the swells from the big storms so that's that's always exciting amazing and you know I'm what am i excited about I'm exciting the fact that I'm here I have today I have tomorrow and and there's plenty of men and women that have sacrificed to give us this opportunity to be here mmm and so I'm gonna take advantage of it yeah I love that there's a couple questions don't ask you to wrap this up this is a question I ask everyone at the end it's called the three truths so you get another weird question for you and we'll roll with it so imagine the many years from now it's your last day you get to pick the day and it's you get to be as long as you want and you've achieved everything you want it's a hypothetical well right you've achieved everything you've gone after all your dreams you've had failures and successes but most of things you wanted to accomplish you made them come true and it's your last day and you've got to turn the lights off and you go somewhere else afterwards but this world this body is gone and for whatever reason all the things you've created the books the bestsellers all this work it's got to go with you to wherever you go so no one else has access to this content information anymore the videos all that stuff is gone it's with you somewhere else but you have to leave behind three lessons that you know to be true from your in this world in this life that you would share with the rest of us three three things you know to be true or lessons you would want us to learn what would you say are those three truths for you that should be a super hard complex question but it's actually very straightforward and simple for me number one is take ownership of everything that's going on in your world that's extreme ownership that's what it is I wrote a book about it with my buddy lave babban there you go number two discipline equals freedom that was my second book why did I write that book because if you want to have freedom in your life then you got to have discipline and lastly you got to be balanced that's the dichotomy of leadership if you go too far in one direction or the other you're gonna screw things up so balance the dichotomy of our life the trilogy of books there you go very truth yeah I love it bad I'm sorry but that's perfect it's if you know it's like there's a reason why those books that there's a reason why I wrote those books there's a reason why those titles are what they are like when you asked me earlier you know what do you what are you trying to do what's your mission my mission is to teach people the lessons that I've learned right so in trying to teach the lessons that I've learned the biggest lessons that I've learned I put them into books they're actually in order of the way I believe them right the first one is taking ownership that's everything that's going on in your world the second is discipline equals freedom and the third one is the dichotomy of leadership be balanced mmm that's powerful you're doing it man I love it what's something that you're very proud of that most people maybe don't know about you something that I'm very proud of yeah maybe something something you're proud of that maybe a lot of people they don't talk about that much or then maybe people want to think about that you've done or that you that you haven't done yeah I mean obviously I got I got four kids and my kids are pretty awesome yeah so it's weird when I've had my podcast for almost four years and when my podcast first came out like my oldest daughter was 16 and then you know 14 and then 12 and then six and people would ask me questions about parenting and I said the jury ain't out yet that's right I don't know how they're gonna turn up I don't know if they're gonna be successful or not and also I don't even know how you're defining successful because if I got if I have my kid that has made a bunch of money and holds a bunch of property but it's miserable how successful are they they're not and how successful it was I as a dad not very so as my kids have gotten older now it's been four years of four critical years you know going from high school through into college for two of them and then you know the other ones growing out of a high school yeah right so I can I can I'm assessing them now and I go yeah you know what those kids those kids are good to go and and so if there's something that I was proud of it's the fact that my kids are right now see me be on a good trajectory in their lives that's cool which which feels good that's great to be proud of that that's powerful yeah my wife who was you know around for all those years where I was gone all the time she's the one that was raising them you know she's the one that instilled in them a lot of the values that they have so even though I could say I'm proud of it it should really be my wife saying that nah man yeah that's cool though well you got to take ownership right extreme ownership well that is another thing is when when good would good things happen you don't take ownership of them em when the team does something well and the boss says hey jock a good job with your team I don't say that was me it was the team yeah so when good things happen you put it on other people yeah when bad things happen you take extreme ownership yes it's powerful I took good leadership qualities feel it is indeed wanna acknowledge you for a moment for showing us the way because you are a straightforward guy yeah I love that you were the way you respond to me and my weird questions for you and I really acknowledge you for the way you transition from your mission of being service to this country and to humanity in the way that you did for 20 years two decades and transitioning into serving a different way into the corporate world and to just everyone just a listener or reader of your content you're really in service in a big way as well I would say probably a bigger way because you can reach more people now and I really acknowledge you for sharing these wisdoms with us the truth with us the lessons that you learned from combat and allowing us to apply in our life would think it's really important that you're doing this and I appreciate it very much make nology for it so thanks for for all that you do make sure you guys pick up the books the pre-order the the newest book or get one the previous ones extreme ownership the dichotomy of leadership make sure you check them out check out your podcast and where's the best site to go and learn about all this stuff or they can follow you online and so Jocko podcast.com is the podcast of Ashkelon front dot-com is my leadership consultancy and then Origen main and where J my and E is I have a company up in Maine where we manufacture while we manufacture clothing we manufacture jiu-jitsu keys we manufacture jeans which I'm wearing right now I manufacture boots which I'm wearing right now when we manufacture jiu-jitsu geese which is the uniform that you train jiu-jitsu in and we do it all in America so we've we've we've got we've taken an industry which I grew up in New England and that used to be sort of the the Center for textiles in America and and really one of them the world and it all went away at all went overseas and so over the past few years myself and a friend of mine business partner we've been rebuilding that and these his towns up there have been ravaged by the by the industry going overseas yeah and we're gonna back we literally are bringing it back we literally bought looms we've sunk we found our first loom in an in a there's about a five hundred thousand square foot abandoned factory Lewiston Maine and took that loom which hadn't been hadn't been used in probably thirty years found the old-timers that knew how to work on them refurbished it and started weaving our own material with with with American cotton and now we've got looms that we brought back from overseas we started with our built building boots as well so it's really cool what we're doing up there we we started off obviously with no employee we have close to 60 folks up there in the factory craftsmen crafts women a lot of them are female and it's it's we're rebuilding the economy of that town and we're bringing manufacturing back to America where it belongs it's a great man yeah but you've got all that at Jocko podcast calm as well there's links to these other plays yes these other places cool so that's my man and I'm doing great stuff I appreciate it and working on it appreciate you a final question you know what's your definition of greatness my definition what is my definition of greatness of greatness is to help out other people yeah there you go thanks man appreciate your book thank you thank you [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 313,144

Rating: 4.9035349 out of 5

Keywords: lewishowes, the school of greatness, business, self help, motivation, Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership, Navy Seal leader, leadership, improvement, responsibility, team work, chain of command, War, jocko willink, navy seal, jocko podcast, lewis howes, jocko willink motivation, discipline equals freedom, jocko willink podcast, self improvement, self development, inspiration, motivational videos, jock willink interview, how to build self discipline, self discipline, overcome fear

Id: DgNzZsGZ96Q

Length: 95min 17sec (5717 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/unbelievablepeople]

Starting at the 32-minute mark of Lewis Howes' podcast, Jocko was asked, "Do you believe in God?"

He answered:

"I think when you're overseas in a combat situation, depending on what your version of God is going to be, but what I will say is this: You will see absolute pure evil overseas. You will see it. What we saw in the Battle of Ramadi was abhorrent behavior by forces of evil that seemed to be non-human in many ways. And then the other side of the spectrum, when you're in combat you're going to see some level of good and pure goodness, when one person will sacrifice their life to save other people. That's not normal, right? That's not a human instinct. It's an instinct beyond being human. Whatever that word means, good, evil, God, Satan, I've seen it."

Asked if he believes in a higher power, Jocko said, "There's something in the world, whether it's inside people's heads, whether it's external, I don't know. ... When I hear people saying God doesn't exist or God 100 percent does exist, I don't know."

Personally I appreciate that Jocko doesn't talk much about politics or religion. So many people get tribal about those two topics that they won't listen to anyone who disagrees with him. Jocko knows he has valuable lessons to pass along and doesn't want to get bogged down in topics that would make some people tune out what he has to say.

[u/FullSend28]

He did answer it later by saying he doesn't know, i.e. he's an agnostic. Kind of interesting to know but not really super surprising either given that he hardly ever brings up faith or religion at all on the podcast.

[u/[deleted]]

I appreciated the interviewer pushing him on this topic to get a clear answer. Now the answer is clear, there is no clear answer coming from Jocko. LOL

He said he doesn't think about these things. That to me says more than anything else he said.

[u/writing_spruce]

I too appreciate that Jocko doesn't talk much about religion. I see that "getting after it" exists outside of that domain, as in, you can be getting after it no matter what you believe in. Getting after it is a stronger binding for a group of people than other characteristics, such as religion.

If I could, I would rather my neighbors be people who believe that discipline equals freedom, no matter what their religion is.

Aside from that, I also like to think that Jocko takes the Constitution seriously and through the 1st amendment respects his listeners' choice of beliefs.