If you're saying, okay, when my alarm clock goes off in the morning, I hit the snooze button, three or four times, and I don't want to start my day. I don't want to go face that hard work out, and that kind of procrastination that kind of overthinking and having a debate in your own head. And in those situations, I just turn my brain off and I do what I'm supposed to do. I rely on discipline, I'm going to make things happen immediately. I know that hesitation is going to bring me regret in two or three hours when I realize I wasted my morning doing something that I shouldn't have been doing.
Hey everyone, welcome back to on purpose. The number one Health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you who come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now, you know that, I'm always on the lookout to find guests that I can have really interesting conversations with and people who've had quite extreme and different experiences. I really love finding people who had stories and Journeys that are very different from my own so that I can learn from them so that I
Be Inspired in different ways and maybe even a firm some of my beliefs and today's guest is Jocko willing. Now he's a retired decorated Navy, SEAL officer and author and a podcaster. He served as a Navy SEAL officer for 20 years before retiring since his retirement. He co-wrote the book extreme ownership how US Navy Seals lead and win and co-founded Echelon front where he teaches his clients, how to be leaders in their respective fields.
Olds Joker. Also has his own podcast called leadership and discipline where he talks about his approach to business relationships and life Jocko, welcome to the podcast and thanks so much for your time.
Hey, thanks for having me, appreciate
it. Yeah, absolutely. I've been looking forward to this conversation. I've watched a lot of you interviews. With some of my friends seen a lot on YouTube and I'm fascinated because I love how you're bringing really deep truths and
Difficult breakthroughs into the world of work into the world of the mainstream life that we live today. And my first question to ask you, is what is the most difficult thing? You think you've ever done? Mentally or
physically, most difficult thing, for me that I've been through is losing guys, losing, guys and combat losing my friends and combat and it's obviously something that is completely jarring to go through its soul-crushing.
And and yet at the same time, you have to continue with the mission. The war doesn't end because you lose your friends, you have to keep fighting and so for me that was definitely Far and Away. The hardest thing that I've ever been through is losing friends and
combat. Yeah. I mean that that does sound like the hardest thing. Do you train for that or is that something you have to respond to in the moment or you deal with afterwards? How do you even process that the reason reason why I ask is it?
Different, the circumstances under, which you've lost friends. But this year, obviously in the last 12 months, a lot of people lost people, they loved. How were you able to lead through that? Continue the mission and when do you get a moment to actually experience whatever you need to experience?
Well? So, what's interesting about that, you know, I lost my first guy in combat Markley in, in 2006. And at that time on the, for the, for the Seal team that I was at, we, there hadn't been any seals killed
An action in. Well actually I was at Seal Team 3 and Seal Team, 3 wasn't around during the Vietnam war. So there had never been a seal killed in action so there was no real instruction on. This is what you do when when you lose a guy in combat. Now there was some protocols to follow in terms of. Hey this is what you have to do. This is who has to be notified. This is how the family gets notified. So there was protocols from a from a process.
You have to do physically to notify people, but there certainly wasn't any protocol that I had been taught or had discussed with with people about what to do because no one knew, no one knew. No one had experienced that in a long time. So I had to kind of figure it out on my own in that scenario. And you know what, I realized we had to do was was we had to go to work. We had to go back to work and
I know that that's a very difficult thing to do, but like I said earlier, the, the war was still happening. The battle was still, we're still going on and so we stood down the guys for a couple of days and we mourn the loss of Mark and we celebrated his life and then I got in front of the guys and I said, Hey, listen, this is
This is what we need to do. What we need to do is get our gear back on Lock and Load our weapons, and we need to go out and execute the mission, which is exactly what mark would want us to do. If he could talk to us right now and and that's what we did now. Clearly it takes a little more time than a couple days to process the loss of one of your brothers. And if one of your friends and I would say that that, you know, happened months later when I finally got back to America and had time to
We've properly. But that's that's the most difficult thing I've been through and that's kind of the process that I took to get through it.
Thank you, man. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm glad I asked you that question because I didn't know. I had no idea what to expect when I asked you that and that that answer was really, really useful. And I think of anyone who hears it will will be moved by it and touched by it for sure when you're leading in such an extreme environment, when you have
Lead your team through that when you have to lead the other seals through something like that. Now, when you're teaching leadership, when people are not going through the same extreme things, you've gone. How do you, how do you manage yourself from a compassion and empathy standpoint or a feeling standpoint of understanding people's problems? But realizing that you've gone through things that people can't even imagine. Like, how do you still relate to almost reality?
Feeling less extreme if that's even true. Yeah,
so I had an interesting experience years ago. I've got four children and at one point, while I was still in the SEAL Teams, I was at work, and there was something, something crazy was going on at work. There have been, there have been some guys killed overseas, there was the word was coming back. And I remember getting home and and, you know, one of my, one of my kids said to me, they had this problem at school, whatever that problem was. And I remember for a moment, I thought to myself.
You know, how can you even complain about this problem that you're going through right now? This doesn't even matter some kid called you a name or whatever. I don't even remember what the problem was and I realized I learned a lesson from it as I sat there and talk to my kid. I realized that.
You know what people are going through is that is their world. And so depending on who you are and what your situation is, people go through different things. And whatever is happening in your world, is the biggest emergency that's going on in the entire world, because it's happening to you. The other thing is we work with companies and I work with leaders all the time and they're in charge of, you know, hundreds or thousands of people inside of an organization. And even though lives are at stake Lively, hoods are at stake and people earn their money from the decisions that this
You're a leader makes and so there's a lot of pressure there as well. And I just try and always look at things and see other people's perspectives and not look down on other people's situations maybe because it wasn't as Extreme as my situations. Were I just try and pass on the lessons that I learned from those extreme situations? Because I know that they apply to things that might not on the surface seem as extreme.
Yeah, I love how children are always the softeners and the ones that make us
make us realize how everyone has their own pain in their own suffering. Tell me Joker will you always since you joined the seals because you joined at a very young age, if I'm not mistaken were you were you always a natural leader? Did you see yourself as that? Was that something that you became through the experiences, you had? Because we always obviously there's always this argument of, are you born a leader? Or do you become a leader? But I want to know about you did, you always feel like you had that natural
instinct?
I'd say I had a pretty decent proclivity for leadership. And you know the argument of whether you're born a leader or whether your made a leader, the answer is absolutely both. And in my later years teaching the young seals you could see some people are going to have some pretty good natural characteristics that are that are very nice to have for leadership. Some of them will be lacking some of those. And the fact of the matter is most of the characteristics that first of all, no one is born with
Every perfect characteristic for leadership, that doesn't happen. So you get some people that might be really articulate and that's a great thing to have. If you're a leader you might have somebody that is very good at simplifying problems and that's a great quality to have as a leader might have somebody that's very charismatic that's a great quality to have as a leader. So you might have some of these characteristics a little bit more, a little bit less than others. You know. I got a funny example about this. I had a guy because another another character
I think that's nice to have as a leader, especially in a combat leadership, situation is having a loud voice and I know that might sound trivial. But if you're in a gunfight and you need to communicate with the other people, you have to have a voice that is loud, enough to project and carryover gunfire. And some people are born with louder voices than others, just like some people are taller than others. And I had one particular guy that was I was putting through advanced Seal training and he
was a very smart guy. He was very tactically sound, he was a good athlete and he was, he had the vocal cords of a mouse. And so, when it came time to make a call, he just couldn't project his voice and I started talking to him. After these training missions, I'd say, Hey listen, it doesn't matter. If you make a good call, if no one can hear you, it doesn't help you need that you need to get louder and he'd say, okay I mean you know, other training Mission and
Once again, I sent them out another training Mission and and it was came time to him for him to make a call, and he tried to raise his voice and it just, it just didn't carry. And this went on for a few of these training operations. And finally, I said, hey, let's not. I hate to say this, but if you can't project your voice, you're going to, you're going to have problems. I don't even know if you can do this job.
And he, you know, had a very grave look on his face, he was worried and then I sent him out on another training Mission and that moment in time came where he needed to step up and make a loud call to tell the guys what to do. And in that moment, he grabbed one of his other guys. He grabbed, you know, Bill builds a loudmouth and he told Bill, hey, get everyone to move to that building over there and Bill barked out that order and everybody heard it.
And I realized that he did what he needed to do. He complimented the weakness of his own capabilities with someone on his team that had a very loud voice. And that's what we need to do as Leaders. You're not going to be perfect in every category. So when you have an area that you're weak, maybe you're not very articulate. And I say, hey Jay, you know, why don't you talk to the guys and explain to him what we're doing, because you're more articulate than I am. That's perfectly fine or I say, hey, Jay, can you take a look at this problem? I'm a little
I'm seeing all kinds of options and I know you have a good way of simplifying things. Can you take a look at it and simplify it for me. And there's nothing wrong with that. So we all are born with some natural leadership capabilities and most of them we can improve. I mean, let's face it. If you're not very articulate, then you should write and you should read and you should you should practice speaking and you'll become more articulate. If you're not very good at simplifying things, you can start to address problems in a more simplified way and really make that your goal and you can improve in that.
If you got some skills that are a little bit harder to improve upon, like, how loud your voice isn't, and I was very lucky to have been born with a loud voice, its genetic and well, it's lucky until you have four kids and then, that genetic loudness can be a little bit hard on your ears. What do you need to do? As a leader is is first of all work on your own skills. Get his get as good as you can at the various categories. And then when you have areas of weakness, it's okay. Be humble enough to build a team that complements your leadership weaknesses so you can become
Solid leadership team.
Great advice, really, really great advice. And that, that story or that moment in time is a brilliant example for what you just shared with us. So thank you for sharing that. And one of the things that hit me when you were giving that example is this, decisiveness, the need to make decisions in really high pressure moments today. A lot of people have challenges with procrastination overthinking boy.
Boredom and we see these conversations going around around whether it's on Twitter or whether it's inside an organization or whether it's someone sitting on their couch and they're procrastinating, and they're overthinking seeing as you've come from a place where I don't know if you had any time to overthink or even a moment to procrastinate, how would you advise people in leadership or or anyone who's listening or watching this podcast to work through procrastination and overthinking?
Okay, so there's really
Two components that I would that I would address here. The first one is is straightforward. Look if, if you're saying okay, hey, when I, when my alarm clock goes off in the morning, I hit the snooze button, three or four times. And then I finally get out of bed and I brush my teeth for 20 minutes because I don't want to start my day. I don't want to go face that hard work out and that kind of procrastination that kind of, you know, overthinking and having a debate in your own head and saying, well you know, I did work out yesterday, I'm kind of sore from that.
So maybe you're rationalizing.
I in those situations, I just turn my brain off and I do it. I'm supposed to do. I rely on discipline? I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do. I'm going to make things happen immediately. I know that that hesitation I know that hesitation is going to bring me regret in two or three hours, when I realize I wasted my morning doing something that I shouldn't have been doing so from that component, turn off your brain, turn off your brain, and go do what you're supposed to do. That's what you need to do to overcome that procrastination.
Now, when it comes to decision making, I was, I was actually had a reputation in the SEAL Teams of of being very decisive of making decisions very quickly. But quite frankly, I kind of cheated. I had a method to cheat when it came to making decisions and the method was, instead of looking at a scenario and making a big giant decision about what to do.
I would make a guess on the, which direction, I thought we should go and then I would make a very small decision and make a very small step in the direction that I guessed was correct. And then I would analyze the feedback and if it was positive feedback and it seemed like the right move, I would make another small step in that direction and I would analyze the feedback again quickly. And I would make a, if it was positive feedback, I would make another small step in that direction. So I would make very small decisions but I would make them very rapidly and I had to stay humble enough that if I
If I make a decision or make a guess and say, okay, I think we should go and go in this direction to the left. Over here. I'm going to go to the left, so I start moving to the left and I read the feedback and the feedback is, oh, this this is not a good decision. You've got to be humble enough to say, hey everyone, I actually made the wrong assessment. We're going to start moving to the right. You've got to be humble enough to do that, but if you make small decisions very quickly, you mitigate the risk of making a big giant decision, a big giant commitment, you know, people will ask people ask me say, hey, I'm stuck in this 9 to 5 job. I
He liked it. I rather do this. Other thing that I'm really passionate about how do I know when it's time to quit my job and take up this other. This other passion that I have to me that's too big of a step because you know the thing that you're passionate about all the reply people might not be passion about there might be no market for it. So you quit this. Good job that you have with a steady salary and you step out into the world and you realize that you've made a terrible mistake. That's not what I like to do. I would rather say okay you've got a steady job.
You've got a good income how about you start doing a little something on that passion into on the side? You know you you you maybe produce a little bit of that thing that you want to make you make a hundred of them and you see what it does and if it's you get good feedback and people are buying that product that you made great. Maybe you can make 200 next time and see how those salad, and, and you can continue to do that and you make these slow steps and eventually, you can look around and say, wait a second, I make got a great income coming from my passion.
Can go ahead and step away from my nine-to-five job that I didn't really care for. So that's an example of making small steps and it's something that call the iterative decision making process. And it's very beneficial to to move through life, not trying to make big giant decisions but by making small decisions rapidly, listen to the feedback and then repeat that process.
What I like about it is that it's doable for everyone, it's practical its right now. Today tomorrow anyone could stop living that advice, right?
Now, and it's not going to affect their current life. Don't have to change anything that I have to learn anything that I have to become anything different Joker. What would you say is the biggest thing you learned about yourself during your time at the Navy SEAL and during that 20-year period, was there ever a time where you wanted to give up or you wanted to let go? Or you just felt like it was, it was too much and what kept you going at that time.
The biggest thing that you learn in, the SEAL Teams, is that you, you are not as good as you think you are. There's always going to be someone that's better than you at something. You know, and I was not the fastest guy was not the strongest guy was not the smartest guy, and so you're always surrounded by someone on your team that can run circles around you in whatever category whether it's shooting or diving or parachuting. So, it's a very humbling experience and it's the same thing with combat you go.
Go into combat maybe you think hey this is what I was born to do and I'm going to, I'm going to dominate in this situation and you realize you're getting the combat. It's a very humbling experience. So for me, my my career in the military was was an extremely humbling experience as far as times where I wanted to give up or I wanted to quit you know quite frankly. I never really had moments like that. I went through SEAL training. I wanted
Nothing more in my life than to be a seal. They would have had to kill me to get me to think about quitting and I guess it wouldn't have mattered at that point. I just what I wanted to do and so it didn't matter what they did to me and then in the SEAL Teams being in the SEAL Teams, that's the job that I wanted. And so every day to me was look where they're hard days, is there parts of the Daily Grind. You're going out on, you got, 220 pound, rucksack on your back and you're Marching for 10 or 15 kilometers. Like it's, it's hard.
It's not fun. Always but I always knew that's the job I wanted to do and so quitting wasn't really a part of my part of my
gig. Yeah I know I love hearing that that that's a beautiful to hear and it comes across very sincere. When you talk about the the first thing that you were responding to around the idea of you are humbled by being around people. How do you turn? What today we see as this competitive and comparison based culture
To a collaborative culture because at the end the day you guys have to work together, you have to look out for each other, but at the same time when you're training like you said, you can get lost in the comparison of like, oh, he's stronger than me at that or he's a better swimmer. You obviously took it very humbly which is beautiful. But how did you see did comparison ruin collaboration? And how did you make that switch for a lot of the people you were leading? Is that what a lot of the seals struggled with or were? Whereas everyone like you and just blown away by the fact,
That they had more talent and people around them.
I would love to tell you that everyone had the open mind. It was in are able to put their ego in check. But that's certainly not always the case. It's not always the case in the SEAL Teams. I work with companies all the time and teams and it's not. It's not always the case in really in any organization 910 and unfortunately, it is the downfall for people and it can be the downfall for teams and I was very, very fortunate. I was in a seal platoon. It was my second seal,
And so I was, you know, 20-something very, very young, 22, maybe 22 years old, and the youngest guy, and the most Junior guy in my first two seal platoons. Any my second seal platoon, we had our platoon Commander, our platoon leader. He was
He was, he was, he couldn't put his ego in check and he kind of came up with his own plans, and then dictated his plans to us and impose his plans Upon Us, didn't ask for any feedback didn't even listen to the feedback when it was given to him, it was his way or the highway. And we ended up really just not wanting to follow this officer and it actually ended up that we had a that we had a mutiny with this officer. We had a mutiny in the
The the troops us young seals went to his boss and said we don't want to work for this guy. He doesn't take our input. He doesn't listen to anybody else, he's arrogant and we don't want to work for him. And and luckily our our commanding officer, the guy that was overall in charge actually got rid of that platoon Commander.
Now, when that happened, it was that's basically a mutiny, right? It's basically a mutiny. And I'm not sure if, you know this, but mutinies are not very well looked upon in the military. As a matter of fact, the the punishment for a mutiny is deaf, they execute you. Now, look, this was the 90s, we weren't going to get executed, but it is a serious thing to have happen. And so they put a replacement officer in charge of our platoon. And when I heard about this replacement officer,
Replacement officer was a guy who was kind of a legendary seal at the time. He had risen up through the ranks. He had been stationed at all the different types of SEAL Teams. He had combat experience in a time when not too many people had combat experience. So he was this like legendary seal and when I heard that he was coming to take charge of our platoon, I thought to myself, okay, they're taking this guy and they're putting him in here to straighten out these mutineers and we're in
we better brace for impact with this guy, so we're sitting in the platoon space and I see this guy for the first time, this legendary seal
And while I was a little bit taken aback because first of all, he was probably a hundred and fifty five pounds. He was probably five foot six at the most, so he's this small guy. And then on top of that, he was like the oldest person I'd ever seen in my life because he was probably about 36 or 37 years old. And, of course, I'm only, I'm only 20, whatever. And we're looking at him, like he's an old man, and I'm thinking to myself. How is this old man? This little old man going to. How is this the legendary?
Legendary guy.
And he comes into our platoon space.
And he says something along the lines of hey gents, it's really nice to meet you all. And I'm really looking forward to working with all of you.
And so right there, I knew that there was something different. He didn't say, hey, I'm taking over. I'm now in charge, you're my men, I'm the commander didn't say any of that, which is what we were used to. From the previous Commander. He said I'm looking forward to working with you guys. And that humility that he had, that he showed even though he was this legendary guy, he was so humble we and he acted that way all the time and we would do anything for that guy and would follow him to hell and back. And he's the guy that I
Try and emulate today. So as far as me recognizing that you better be humble, if you want to be in a leadership position, I absolutely learned it from not just from that. Platoon commander. Who is good, who is humble, but also getting to see the contrast between the The Arrogant platoon commander and the humble one. And then, the way we felt about the Arrogant one, and the way we felt about the humble, one left a mark on my brain. Like I said, I'm still trying to emulate that. That good platoon Commander to this.
Day. That's beautiful man. And and it's amazing to hear about it in the in a space where I think there's a big misconception about masculinity and the seals or the military and the idea that everyone has to order each other around and there's commanders. Like like the one that you all had removed that you that's kind of what you expect? Or that's what you see in the movies or that's how it's presented in to hear your version of what you responded to.
Who you trying to become even in yourself? I mean, that's an incredible lesson for so many young people out there as well hearing what it, what it actually takes when you're talking about the Mutiny. And and one of the biggest things I see as a cause for inefficiency in companies and I work with lots of organizations as well. More from a mental health stress and well-being space. When I'm working with people, one of the biggest things I find is that a lack of trust is the cause for the greatest in efficiencies in an
Ization. People make bad decisions, they introduced the wrong people, they connect in the wrong way because they don't trust each other. How did you when the fact that your lives are on the line? What were your principles and methods of building? Trust in such a, you know, high-stress
environment. So there's a few things that I've been talking about lately together and they're all very related. One of them is Trust.
Mistrust, one of them is listening, one of them is influencing and the other one is respect. And what's interesting about these three is that everyone thinks, well, you know, I I want to, I want to gain trust. I want people to listen to me, but if I want Jay to listen to me, what I need to do is I need to listen to you.
So, if I want you to listen to me, I need to listen to you. If I want you to respect me.
I need to give you respect if I want if I want to be able to influence you then I need to allow you to influence me and and then the last one is trust so if I want you, if I want Jay to trust me, I need to give trust to J. So if you're working for me, how do I how do I let you know that I trust you? Well, I say, hey Jay, you know what, we've got this project that we've got to do. Why don't you take charge of that? Let me know how
Want to let me know how you want to execute that project and then I actually let you execute it, you know, look, I'm gonna give you some oversight, I'm going to check out what your plan is, but when you come up with a plan to me, if your plan is, if your plan is going to be functional, if it'll get the job done, I'm going to let you run with it and when you realize that I trust you to do these things, you start to trust me as well. And by the way, when the plan doesn't go exactly as you thought it would go and maybe there's some hiccups along the way. Do I jump?
Down your throat and say I never should have let you do this. No, I say, okay, I got it. What can we learn? What can we do? Different next time, you know what can I tell the other teams to make sure that that they learn from this experience? So I give you trust and you start to trust me back and that's exactly what I did when I was in a when I was in a sealed leadership position I would let my subordinate leaders I would task them with things and I would trust them to get it done, right? Like I said, this doesn't mean I would send him on a mission that they didn't have any experience.
Greens on at all and not check out what their plan was going to be. No I would of course make sure they had some experience. Make sure that they were headed in the right direction. Make sure that their plan made sense, but if it was in the ballpark, I was going to give it to him and I was going to let him run with it. And that's that's that's how I built trust and and like I said it's all four of those things. It's respect. It's trust, it's listening and its influence. If you want to get those things from other people, you have to, you have to allow them to
Start with
yourself, that's a brilliant way of thinking about it. I love hearing the idea of having to give what you want to receive first, and, and it's 1000% the the only way to do it and and it's, you're so right that you could spend your whole life waiting for someone to respect you and waiting for someone to trust you and you're doing everything to get them. To feel a certain way about you and it just you can waste your whole life waiting around for that. What would you say is
E the biggest mistake you made in leadership. What do you think was your moment where you looked at? And you were just like, oh, man, like I look back at that as one of my ones where I lost and, and I failed, and I didn't get it right and how it did that impact. The next time you address something like that. Did you have one of those moments where you just felt like that was the worst.
Absolutely. So, and I wrote about this in the first book that I wrote about leadership, which is called, which is called Extreme ownership, and we had a situation,
Unfold. Where there was a there was a friendly fire incident. There was a friendly fire incident that took place. A friendly Iraqi soldier was killed. So one of one of the Iraqi soldiers that we were fighting alongside one of our one of our comp Rod, Compadres one of our comrades-in-arms, one of our Iraqi soldiers was killed. I had one of my seals, get wounded, a couple other friendly. Iraqi soldiers were also wounded. So it was a terrible situation and
I was the guy in charge, I was the guy in charge and even though there was a bunch of little tactical mistakes that were made along the way, and there was plenty of blame that could have been placed on a whole bunch of different people. It really didn't matter because I was the guy overall responsible for everything that happens on the battlefield. So absolutely, I came away from that, you know, I felt sick to my stomach, it was awful but I had to take ownership of it and look it wasn't like that was the
The first time I had ever decided that the best thing to do when you make a mistake his own it, this is something I learned from the early days of in the SEAL Teams. If you make a mistake and you try and make excuses, it's you're going to get crushed even more. So it's a culture where taking responsibility is taught and it's the right thing to do but it's just the the the consequences in that particular situation were so awful that it was it was painful to to take ownership. It was painful to look myself in the mirror and say
This is all on you. So what did we do? Well, I took ownership of the situation. I told the, the, the task, you know, I told my guys, this is the mistakes that I made. And here's what we're going to do to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again and then we implemented those Solutions but certainly that was a
That was a, that was a moment in my life that I remember of realizing, you said something when you in your introduction, it was like a confirmation of something that that I had already known. But it was such a heavy confirmation that that was the right thing to do. When you make a mistake, you take ownership of it, you get that problem. You figure out what a solution is and you get that problem solved. And that's on us as a leader. And so often because of our egos, we feel like the right move is to blame
Nelson and point fingers and that just does not work. It makes you look horrible as a leader. It makes the problem, not get solved and it you lose the respect of everyone around you and therefore the team can't do his job anymore. You failed the mission.
I mean that sounds like another, you know, intense experience. And you know you're you're practicing extreme ownership in these really intense experiences, I know you
I shared this before but for our audience, explain extreme ownership. But with this, with this lens of a lot of people today, if they try and take ownership, they end up destroying their own self-esteem or holding themselves back. Whereas the way you described extreme ownership is that actually it propels you forward and pushes you forward with that skew, explain to our audience, extreme ownership, and how you're able to do that with it rather than just beat yourself up.
Yeah, so
Let's take a workplace environment and I'm working for J. & J is my boss and I'm up for promotion and I'm hoping I get promoted and the promotion board comes out. And it turns out I don't get promoted, Fred gets promoted instead. Now, what am I going to do? How am I going to handle this? I can say, well, you know, Jay doesn't like me or Fred. He cheated on the examination or he's, he's, he kisses up to Jay and that's why he got promoted. I could point.
Point fingers all day long, I could point fingers at you, I could point fingers at the whole organization and if I point fingers at everybody else and I don't take any ownership of it, what am I going to change? How am I going to improve? What control do I have over my own destiny? If my whole Destiny is is held by J my boss.
It's a horrible position to be and I feel powerless. Now, if I say, okay, I'm up for promotion, I don't get promoted. Okay. Let me take ownership of that, I must be doing some things that JC's that I can improve upon. Hey, Jay, can you do me a favor tomorrow? You know, can I come into your office during lunch for 15 minutes? I just want to kind of go through what your expectations are. I know I didn't get the promotion, but believe me, I'm hungry and I want
Next time that opportunity comes up, I want you to be thinking of me, can we sit down for 15 minutes and can you give me some critique points on what I could do? Better.
And you say, of course. You say of course yeah Jocko. Come on in, and we sit down and you say, hey look, you've got your time, your timelines, been off, on a couple of the big projects and and you've actually been late a few times. And meanwhile I got Fred over here. He hits the timeline every always and he's never been late and I say, got it, Jay got it. And what do I do? I make those adjustments, I buy another alarm clock, I start paying more attention to my projects in the timeliness of my projects. I actually improve so that the next
There's an opportunity for promotion. You look at me and say, hey, way to go. You you fix those problems, you're getting promoted. So that's the difference. We either, we either take ownership of what's going on. We figure out how we can fix it and we do fix it or we point fingers blame other people. We don't change and we say stagnant, we don't make any progress.
I'm putting that straight into our recruitment retention and reward video. I'm going to play that video anytime.
I'm anytime we have that complain or inside. I'm going to play that video to someone. I I completely agree with you. I I love that example and putting it into that space because it just it almost when you hear it that way, you're like oh my gosh that sounds so obvious that that would be the right thing to do but that's never our response you know 99% of us will will do the opposite of like oh yeah they got through because of this and justifying
it. You said 99% of us and and it's an instinct and
Instinct is to protect our ego on instinct is protect our ego. So, like I said, I got four kids. If one of my kids is in the kitchen, and I walk into the kitchen and the milk is spilled on the floor. What a my kids say, you know what they say? They say the milk spilt, an inanimate object, did this not me? It was the milk. So we all have this Instinct of our ego, trying to protect our ego and it's a horrible thing. And you know, I wrote about this in the last leadership book, I wrote leadership
G and tactics. One of the sections is, how do you take criticism from someone that you don't respect or you don't like and it's very plain and simple Jay. If I don't like you, I don't respect you and you come to me and you say Jocko, you know, you're late on your projects, what should I do with that?
Well, I should put my emotions in check put my ego in check. Listen to what you have to say and then actually look at you and say thank you for that feedback. That's how we improve as human beings. Now is there a risk that someone is is attacking you or trying to undermine you or insulting you absolutely that. There is a risk that you could get into a situation like that but
S, what you listen to what people have to say, you apply it without emotion. You apply it without ego and then you can you can look at it and you can analyze whether this is an actual thing or whether perhaps, maybe, it's, maybe it's their ego. Maybe Jay is trying to cut me down because he feels like I'm climbing the ladder really fast. Maybe I'll get promoted above him. So so you're trying to comment undermine me. That's okay. Listen to what people have to say. Analyze it, without ego without emotion.
Say thank you for the feedback and move forward.
I love that you keep mentioning the the presence of ego. One of the ways I think the ego also plays out which I'm interested in the form of the military is you've got people that are on the front lines that are actually like physically there on the battlefield. And then you've got people sending orders and making decisions who may not be on the actual front lines. How did you will build that?
Respect and Trust of recognizing that everyone was playing their role because I find that the ego often is, well, I'm on the frontlines. I'm the one who's actually going to lose my life. You're comfortable sitting there in your Ivory Tower. You've got nothing to worry about. How do you, how do you avoid those kind that kind of ego also getting in the way or or, you know, is that common at all? Does that exist?
So luckily inside the military inside the US Military and inside most modern militaries today,
There is something called decentralized command, which means the senior leadership is giving the broad strategy of what we're trying to accomplish, but they're allowing the Frontline people to make decisions on how we actually move in that direction. So that's what usually happens. Now occasionally there are situations where you're told to do something that doesn't make much sense and maybe it doesn't make any sense and maybe it's going to put lives at risk and you don't agree with it. So
So what do you do in those situations? I've had those situations happen to me very seldom. Do they happen to me but they have happened. Well, let me give you a little back story. First, I spend all this time building a good relationship with my boss building, a good relationship. Listening, when my boss wants me to do something cool, I get it done, I get it done on time, I do it correctly. When my boss wants me to do something else. I do that. I do that correct. They do it to the best of my ability. I give feedback, so we can improve the process. That's what we're doing. So, all those it.
Radiations of of Performing my duties correctly. They build the trust that we talked about earlier. So by the time you fast forward, six months or a year and my boss says hey this is what I want you to do and it doesn't make sense. I press pause and say hey boss. Can I ask you a couple questions about what's going on here? This is what you want me to do. This is what you're asking me to do. Can I can I explain some of the secondary and
Tertiary effects that are going to transpire if we do what you're asking me to do. I want to make sure that you know those things, because if that's the direction you're giving me, I want you, I want you to understand how it's going to impact us on the front lines and 100% of the time when I explain things up to the chain of command, to my bosses, they said, oh okay. Well we didn't I didn't think about or I didn't know about that. Thank you for telling me because by the way, if my boss doesn't know what the impact is going to be for me, whose fault is that?
It's my fault because I haven't built a good enough relationship with him. I haven't explained to him what's going on. I haven't given them the clarification of those impacts in the first place, so developing a good relationship up and down the chain of command caused. By the way, I want to make sure that I have a relationship with the people below me in the chain of command. So they can tell me the negative impacts of what were being directed to do. And then I've got to build that relationship up the chain so I can pass those forward. So, if we build good relationships and as you mentioned earlier, if we can build trust up and down the chain of command, we don't really have
Have these issues and like I said, I got I got a couple times in my career where I was, you know, told that we were going to do something a certain way. And I just kind of
Explain why I didn't think that was a good idea and got to move forward in a more effective effective and more efficient
manner. Yeah, no, and it's good to hear that it doesn't happen too often but I'm glad that you expanded on what if it does happen because like you said in the work environment or in our day-to-day lives, it can happen quite often. And and on the receiving end, like you said as well, that your Juniors or the people that are reporting to you, if they don't throw open enough, to tell you as well, then then you made a mistake.
As a leader, one of the things that massively stands out that I hear you talk about a lot when I've been watching your videos recently, and I'm I appreciate you bringing this so much to the fore because I don't think it's talked about as much is discipline and you know, II spent three years living as a monk and discipline was like our, you know, a big, big part of our lives. And I'm so grateful to have had that training because without that training, it would have been so easy for me to lack discipline as well.
When you talk about discipline, how many people listen to you and go Jocko? Yeah you're in your Navy SEAL we get it but like this play I just find discipline is so unpopular today because it's not the sexiest thing to talk about. It's not the easiest thing to get people to do. When people are struggling with self discipline, where do you start? Where does someone start? When they haven't had that training that you've had,
I think like many other taskings and missions that we get in life. We have to
And why we're doing what we're doing the book, I wrote about this is called discipline equals Freedom. Are you have to understand why you're implementing this discipline in your life? Why are you in implementing discipline, your life. It's because you want to reach a level of freedom and that's what discipline gives you. And the the obvious examples that I talk about all the time, one of them is is financial discipline, right? We all want to have Financial Freedom. Of course everybody wants.
Have Financial Freedom, but if you want to get to Financial Freedom, what do you have to have? You have to have Financial discipline, you have to have the discipline to work hard, you have to have the discipline to save your money, after have the discipline to invest your money properly, you have to have the discipline not to buy stupid things that you don't even actually need. And if you can have that kind of financial discipline, you'll end up with Financial Freedom, same thing with time.
Everybody wants more free time. How do you actually get more free time? You get more free time by having more disciplined time management. Well I'm making a schedule by sticking to the schedule by not wasting time doing things that provides you no benefit whatsoever and if you can if you can have that more discipline time management you'll end up with more free time and this applies to everything that we do it applies to our health. It applies to the to the way that we work in.
Inside of an organization, it applies to the skill sets that we have it applies to everything that we do. So I think understanding why you need to implement discipline into your life because there is such a massive reward for it. I think that's where well, that's why I start with that. That's why I start with discipline equals Freedom. It's not discipline equals pain, it's not discipline equal suffering. And look, there is pain and suffering that comes with discipline. There is but it's not. That's not what you're doing. That's not why you're doing it. You're doing it because
Discipline will give you freedom in the
end. I'm so glad that you wrote that book and you have that Mantra discipline equals freedom because it's such a, it's such an interesting thing. Usually, we think of discipline as a restriction, we think of Regulation as like, you're like controlling yourself and you're like, not expressing yourself. And people will say, like, all you just, you know, you like in a prison you're suppressing yourself. And actually you're spot on actually.
Thinking that you can do whatever you want and spend as much money as you want and eat what you want. That's actually not Freedom, that's being a slave and that's being a prisoner to your to your desires. And so I love that discipline equals Freedom. Everyone is listening or watching write that down right now because any area of your life where you don't feel freedom from based on what Joker saying is from a lack of discipline. And so any area of your life where you like, I'm not experiencing Freedom, it's from a lack of discipline.
And I I can honestly say that. That's so in line with we had something in among tradition, called the regulative principles of Freedom, it was the same same concept of the idea that we had certain regulative principles that we had to practice. And they were seen as suppression from a modern perspective but actually, they were so freeing because now your desires didn't control you. And so I love hearing that that similarity in that connection. And to hear you say is really
Empowering, and I hope everyone, but let's say a joke or let's say someone just doesn't know how to build discipline, right? Like, I feel like it's a muscle, it's a skill, it's a habit, like anything else. How does someone stopped building discipline? Like, what are the building blocks from a practical standpoint of discipline?
I've got, I've got my recommendation that absolutely nobody wants to
hear. I want to hear it.
The recommendation is.
Start getting up a little bit earlier in the morning and start going. Yeah, it's earlier at night so we start getting in the reason I say get up in the morning earlier first because people you can't just decide you're going to fall asleep earlier, right. You'll lay in bed you know with your mind racing because you're not tired because you slept in. So wake up a little bit earlier in the morning and and take 15 minutes, take a half an hour do some physical exercise. Do something that you.
Would normally have to do during the work day or when you got home from work, so you can spend more time with your family, just start getting up, 20 minutes a half an hour earlier than you normally do overtime, you can, if you keep kind of pushing that you can end up waking up an hour earlier than you normally would and that gives you time to get some work out, gives you some time to go for a run. Gives you some time to spend a little bit of extra time with your with your family in the morning before you have to go to work. There are so many
If it's to it and and what do you lose on the other end at night time, instead of looking at social media for an extra hour, you'll be asleep and it's a beneficial thing. So, I would say set that alarm clock a little bit earlier. When you wake up in the morning, go and do some exercise, 15 minutes, 20 minutes an hour, whatever you can fit in to start with. And I think that is a great place to start building
discipline. I completely agree with you. I think waking up earlier is like the best
action formula because what we're all lacking is time and what we're all acting is time for ourselves and the only way you get that is by waking up earlier. What something Joker that you learned only after being a Navy, SEAL that being a Navy. SEAL, couldn't teach you being a father, being a leadership Consulting, you know, all the amazing things you've achieved all those. What did what have you learned in the afterlife almost that you didn't learn during being a
seal? So when I got done with my career,
SEAL Teams I was asked to go and talk to a company Executives about leadership and I had no idea. I had never been, I mean I was an institutionalized I had been in the military since I was, you know, 18 years old. I didn't even understand anything about civilian companies. Nothing I didn't know anything about them. And this very first time that I presented these leadership, principles that I talk about all the time and I've written about the very first time I presented them when I got done.
Done. The CEO of the company. Came up to me and said, I want you to talk to every division of my company and that was like the icing on the cake, because I could tell by the looks on people's faces by the questions that they were asking that the leadership principles, that that work inside of a seal platoon, they work inside of a finance company, they work inside of a Manufacturing Company, their work inside of an army platoon. They work inside of a Girl Scout Troop, these leadership principles, they apply everywhere and I
Never have known. I wouldn't have known that. If I had stayed in the SEAL Teams I would have just continued to use them and utilize them in that one category but they're applicable any everywhere and that was a real blessing to figure out very quickly after I retired,
it's incredible, isn't it? How we think what we know only applies to this area this thing and when you find this wide varied application of stuff that, you know, so well. And I'm sure now you, I Love the Girl Scouts troop. I love that that would have you ever done anything?
With a group of Girl Scouts. I have you actually given them like a talk or a
keynote? I have I have three daughters and one son and I've run all kinds of random team events for children. And yes, these principles are a hundred percent apply.
I love that one, that that would be something. I would pay to watch. That would be amazing. Like, I'd love to see how that goes down, especially with you with your door as in the room. That would be brilliant
and they do. That's what that's what brought me to write the kids.
That I've written is yes I was out there, trying to find books to read to my kids when they were younger and books just didn't exist that sort of talked about these principles that we're talking about about discipline, about hard work, about taking care of other people about being prepared. There, just wasn't books out there that had that message. And so as soon as my first adult book, came out this I was immediately writing my first kids book and those books honestly from a, from a, from a
Russian perspective. I get letters every day from kids all over the country and all over the world. That's a I did my first pull up today or I got an A on my math test or I made the hockey team or whatever they set out to achieve they realize that when they put discipline in place and they Live Like a Warrior kid, those, those principles they work regardless of how old you are and where you are in life. So that's that was very also that was it that was an awesome.
Also a great discovery Discovery for me, which I realized while I was still in, in the military that these principles, if you can learn them, if you can teach him to a an eight-year-old kid, that eight-year-old kid has a real leg up on moving in the right direction. So I've been real blessed in the fact that the things that I've learned in the military translate very well, if you can look at them through the right
lens, absolutely men. And I'm so glad that you're doing it because it's interesting, it's always fascinating. When you've heard about someone, you've read about
Someone you seen them and then you actually get to experience them even though we're not with each other. Physically, you know, it's amazing. I'm so happy that you are the one doing it and in the way that you're doing is, well, it comes across effortlessly, it's powerful. But it's, it's got a really special heart we and Yoko every on purpose interview with the final five. These questions have to be answered with one word or one sentence maximum. So, there's a cap on the amount of words that are about to be used. So, this is your final five.
The first question is, if you could meet any leader in the world Dead or Alive, who would it be and why
it would be Colonel, David hackworth, who was an American soldier in the Korean and Vietnam War. He wrote a book called about face, which I ended up writing a forward to and I would never got to meet him. He died in 2005, but he was my mentor. Even though I never met him just through his
books. I love that. I love that. You said,
Said that I always say to my audience, you could be mentored by people you've never met and it lets that's amazing that you wrote the foreword for one of your Idols. I love. Love hearing that second question. What was your purpose when you join the seals and what is your purpose? Now
when I joined the seals, I wanted to be a good seal that, was it and as you can imagine that drove a lot of my decisions and what I realized about the definition of a good seal, when you really break,
Get down. What makes a good seal is a good seal looks after and takes care of his teammates and what am I doing now? What's my purpose? Now, it's the same thing. I'm trying to help people as much as I can pass on the lessons that I've learned so that they don't have to learn the hard way like I did. Yeah, I love that.
All right, question number three, what's thing that what's one thing that you think people value that you don't value?
I
think there's a lot of things that people value that I don't value, I guess. One thing is, I'll make it real easy watches. I wear a wear, a $30 Timex, watch and
I see you post it all the time.
Sometimes people comment, why don't you buy a, you know, a nicer watch. This watch is functional. It does what I needed to do. And so if you're walking around with a with a thousand dollar watch on, you might think it's cool. I don't really care.
We'll get a good shot of it. This is on Joker's Instagram page. Go go follow me.
Joker willing on Instagram. Okay? Question number four, what's the best piece of advice you ever
received?
when I got to Seal, Team One,
the the master chief that was in charge, so the senior enlisted guy,
Told us.
Show up on time. Don't forget anything. Keep your mouth shut and keep your ears open. And especially the part about keeping your mouth shut and keeping your ears open listening, is the most underrated skill in leadership and as a human you should listen a vast majority of the time. So I think that's great advice.
That is and Fifth and final question. If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be?
Be good to your neighbor.
It's a good law. It's lots of people, been trying to teach that lots of important people. I'm glad you're adding adding it on and sharing it Forward. Everyone Jocko willing. Make sure you go and follow joke on Instagram. Check out his many books as he spoke about his children's books is adult books please. Please, please go and grab a copy of what resonates with you Jacque. Has an amazing podcast as well that you can go. And listen to all of the links will be in the description Joker. We need to do our part to this was too good man.
An, I love spending this time with you. Next time, we got to be in the same room to feel your energy but honestly this has been such a joy. I learned so much today and have an even deeper appreciation for you as a person and what you're doing in the world. So thank you for taking out the time to be on on purpose and I hope we get to meet soon.
Thanks Jay. Yeah, I know we're not located too far apart next time, we'll do it
face-to-face. Absolutely. Thank you, Jessica. Thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you share your insights on.
Ram tag. Me and Joko with, what, stood out, what were the wisdom points. What would the insights that resonates with you? What are you going to practice? What discipline are you going to start from tomorrow? You're gonna wake up 15 minutes earlier? Are you going to do that one pushup or pull up? I'd love to know. I know. Joker would to so make sure you tag us and we'll see you again next time on purpose. Thanks for listening.
