If you're saying, okay, when my alarm clock goes off in the morning, I hit the snooze button three or four times, I don't want to start my day. I don't want to go face that hard workout. And that kind of procrastination, that kind of overthinking and having a debate in your own head. 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've had stories and journeys that are very different from my own so that I can learn from them, so that I can be inspired in different ways, and maybe even affirm some of my beliefs. And today's guest is Jocko Willink. 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 U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win and co-founded Echelon Front, where he teaches his clients how to be leaders in their respective fields. Jocko 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 your 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? The most difficult thing for me that I've been through is losing guys, losing guys in combat, losing my friends in combat. And it's obviously something that is completely jarring to go through its soul crushing.
And yet, at the same time, you have to continue with the mission. The world 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 in combat. Yeah, I mean, 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 why I ask is, it's very 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, Mark Lee, in 2006, and at that time, for the SEAL team that I was at, there hadn't been any SEALs killed in action. 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 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 process that you have to do physically to notify people. But there certainly wasn't any protocol that I had been taught or had discussed with people about what to do.
Because 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 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 war was still happening, the battle was still going on. And so we stood down the guys for a couple of days, and we mourned 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 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 that's what we did. Now, clearly it takes a little more time than a couple of days to process the loss of one of your brothers and of one of your friends. And I would say that that happened months later when I finally got back to America and had time to grieve properly.
But 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 answer was really, really useful. And I think for anyone who hears it, well, we moved by it and touched by it for sure. When you're leading in such an extreme environment, when you have to 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 manage yourself from a compassionate 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 on the seal teams, I was at work and there was something crazy was going on at work. There had been some guys killed overseas, there was the word was coming back.
And I remember getting home and 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, 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 talked to my kid. I realized that 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's 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 hundreds or thousands of people inside of an organization.
And even though lives aren't at stake, livelihoods are at stake. And people earn their money from the decisions that this particular 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 and their own suffering. Tell me, Jocko, were you always since you joined the CEOs, because you joined at a very young age, if I'm not mistaken, 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 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 the argument of whether you're born a leader or whether you're made a leader, the answer is absolutely both. And in my later years teaching the young seals, you can see some people are going to have some pretty good natural characteristics 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.
You 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 characteristic 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 carry over 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 it, you need to get louder. And he'd say, okay, I'm going to cover another training mission. And once again, I sent him another training mission and it was came time to him for him to make a call and he tried to raise his voice and it just didn't care.
And this went on for a few of these training operations and finally I said, hey, listen, I hate to say this. But if you can't project your voice, you're going to have problems. I don't even know if you can do this job. And he 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, Bill with a loud mouth.
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 them 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 bit, 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 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've 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.
It's 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. But what you need to do as a leader is first of all, work on your own skills. 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 compliments your leadership weaknesses so you can become a solid leadership team. Great advice, really, really great advice and 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, boredom. And we see these conversations going around and 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 anyone who's listening or watching this podcast to work through procrastination and overthinking? Okay, so there's really two components that I would address here.
The first one is straightforward. Look, if you're saying, okay, 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 workout. And that kind of procrastination, that kind of 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 what 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 realized 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 to 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, 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 say humble enough that if I make a decision or make a guess and say, okay, I think we should 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 goes, oh, 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 ask, people ask me, say, hey, I'm stuck in this nine to five job. I don't really like it. I'd 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 passion that I have?
To me, that's too big of a step because, you know, the thing that you're passionate about, other people might not be passionate 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 passionate on the side? You know, 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 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 sell. 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've got a great income coming from my passion. I 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 I call the iterative decision-making process.
And it's very beneficial to move through life, not trying to make big, giant decisions, but by making small decisions rapidly, listening to the feedback and then repeat that process. What I like about it is that it's doable for everyone. It's practical. It's right now.
Today, tomorrow, anyone could start living that advice right now. And it's not going to affect their current life. They don't have to change anything, they don't have to learn anything, they don't have to become anything different. Jocko, what would you say is the biggest thing you learned about yourself during your time as a 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 too much and what kept you going at that time? The biggest thing that you learned in the SEAL teams is that 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, I was not the fastest guy, I was not the strongest guy, I 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 into combat, maybe you think, hey, this is what I was born to do and I'm going to dominate in this situation. And you realize you're getting into combat, it's a very humbling experience.
So for me, my career in the military 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 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, were there hard days? Is there parts of the daily grind?
You're going out on, you got 120 pound rucksack on your back and you're marching for 10 or 15 kilometers? Like, 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 gig.
Yeah, no, I love hearing that. That's so beautiful to hear and it comes across very sincere. When you talk about the first thing that you were responding to around the idea of you were 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 of 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 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 was everyone like you and just blown away by the fact that they had more talented people around them? I would love to tell you that everyone had the open mind.
It was 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 always the case in really any organization. No, it isn't. 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 platoon. 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 and in my second SEAL platoon, we had our platoon commander, our platoon leader.
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 imposed 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 and 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 luckily, 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 mutis are not very well looked upon in the military. As a matter of fact, the punishment for a mutiny is death. They execute you. Now, look, this was the 90s, we weren't going to get executed.
But it is a serious thing to have happened. And so they put a replacement officer in charge of our platoon. And when I heard about this replacement officer, this 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 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 155 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 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 gonna, how is this the 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 man, I'm the commander, he 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 still 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 was good, who was humble, but also getting to see the contrast between 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 the mark on my brain. Like I said, I'm still trying to emulate that good platoon commander to this day. That's beautiful, man.
And it's amazing to hear about it 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 the one that you all had removed. That's kind of what you expect or that's what you see in the movies or that's how it's presented and to hear your version of what you responded to and who you're 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 actually takes. When you're talking about the mutiny 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 inefficiencies in an organization.
People make bad decisions, they introduce 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 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.
One of them is trust, 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 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 to be able to influence you, then I need to allow you to influence me. 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 Jay. So if you're working for me, 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 you want to execute that project. And then I actually let you execute it.
You know, look, I'm going to 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 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, OK, I got it. What can we learn? What can we do different next time?
What can I tell the other teams to make sure 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 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 them on a mission that they didn't have any experience on it 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 them and I was going to let them run with it. And that's how I built trust.
And it's influenced. If you want to get those things from other people, 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 it's 1,000% the only way to do it.
And 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 the biggest mistake you made in leadership? What do you think was your moment where you looked at that and you were just like, oh man, I look back at that as one of my ones where I lost and I failed and I didn't get it right.
And how did that impact the next time you addressed 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 Extreme Ownership and we had a situation unfold where there was a friendly fire incident.
There was a friendly fire incident that took place. A friendly Iraqi soldier was killed. So one of the Iraqi soldiers that we were fighting alongside, one of our compadres, one of our comrades in arms, one of our Iraqi soldiers was killed. I had one of my seals get wounded, a couple of 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 first time I had ever decided that the best thing to do when you make a mistake is own it. That's something I learned from the early days of in the seal teams. If you make a mistake and you try to make excuses, 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 consequences in that particular situation were so awful that it was painful 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 task unit, 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 moment in my life that I remember of realizing. You said something in your introduction.
It was like a confirmation of something 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 moves to blame someone else 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 you lose the respect of everyone around you. And therefore, the team can't do its job anymore, you fail the mission. I mean, that sounds like another, you know, intense experience.
And, you know, you're practicing extreme ownership in these really intense experiences. I know you've shared this before, but for our audience, explain extreme ownership, but 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 describe 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 Jay and Jay's 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 kisses up to Jay, and that's why he gets promoted. I could 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 held by Jay, my boss? It's a horrible position to be, and I feel powerless. Now, if I say, OK, I'm up for promotion, I don't get promoted. OK, let me take ownership of that.
I must be doing some things that Jay sees 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 to 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 timelines been off on a couple of the big projects, and you've actually been late a few times.
And meanwhile, I got Fred over here, he hits the timeline 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 and the timeliness of my projects, I actually improve. So at the next time there's an opportunity for promotion, you look at me and say, hey, way to go. You fix those problems, you're getting promoted. So that's the difference.
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 we have that complaint or insight. I'm going to play that video to someone.
I completely agree with you. I love that example of putting it into that space because it almost when you hear it that way, you're like, oh my gosh, that sounds so obvious, that would be the right thing to do. But that's never our response. 99% of us will do the opposite.
Like, oh yeah, they got through because of this and justifying it. You said 99% of us, and it's an instinct. An instinct is to protect our ego. An instinct is to 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 do my kids say? You know what they say? They say, the milk's spilled.
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. I wrote about this in the last leadership book. I wrote Leadership Strategy and Topics.
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'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 attacking you or trying to undermine you or insulting you? Absolutely. There is a risk that you could get into a situation like that.
But guess what? You listen to what people have to say. You apply it without emotion, you apply it without ego, and then you can look at it and you can analyze whether this is an actual thing or whether perhaps maybe it's there we go. Maybe Jay is trying to cut me down because he feels like I'm climbing a ladder really fast, maybe I'll get promoted above him.
So you're trying to come and 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 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 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 all 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 front lines.
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 avoid those kind of ego also getting in the way or 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 front line people to make decisions on how we actually move in that election. 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 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 backstory first.
I spend all this time building a good relationship with my boss, building a good relationship. Listen, 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 get feedback so we can improve the process.
That's what we're doing. So all those iterations 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 of 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 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 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 of that, 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 dealt a good enough relationship with them. I haven't explained to them 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, because 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 we're being directed to do. And then I've got to build that relationship up with 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 these issues.
And like I said, I got a couple times in my career where I was told that we were going to do something in a certain way, and I just kind of explained why I didn't think that was a good idea and got to move forward in a more 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 on the receiving end, like you said as well, that your juniors or the people that are reporting to you, if they don't feel open enough to tell you as well, 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 appreciate you bringing this so much to the fore, because I don't think it's talked about as much as discipline.
And I spent three years living as a monk, and discipline was like our 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 a Navy SEAL, we get it, but 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 understand why we're doing what we're doing. The book I wrote about this is called Discipline Equals of Freedom. So you have to understand why you're implementing this discipline in your life.
Why are you implementing discipline in your life? It's because you want to reach a level of freedom, and that's what discipline gives you. And the obvious examples that I talk about all the time, one of them is financial discipline, right? We all want to have financial freedom, of course, everybody wants to 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.
You have to 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 discipline time management, by making a schedule, by sticking to the schedule, by not wasting time, doing things that provide you no benefit whatsoever. And 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 way that we work 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 in your life because there is such a massive reward for it. I think 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 equals suffering. And look, there is pain and suffering that comes with discipline. There is.
But 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 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 say like, oh, you're just, you know, you're 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 desires. And so I love that discipline equals freedom.
Everyone is listening or watching right that down right now because any area of your life where you don't feel freedom from based on what Jojo saying is from a lack of discipline. And so any area of your life where you're like, I'm not experiencing freedom. It's from a lack of discipline. And I can honestly say that that's so in line with we had something in our monk tradition called the regulative principles of freedom.
It was the same concept with 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 you're desires didn't control you. And so I love hearing that similarity and that connection.
And to hear you say is really empowering and I hope everyone. But let's say Jojo, 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 start building discipline?
Like what are the building blocks from a practical standpoint of discipline? 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 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 with your mind racing because you're not tired because you slept in. So wake up a little bit earlier in the morning 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.
Over time, 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 workout, it gives you some time to go for a run, it gives you some time to spend a little bit of extra time with your family in the morning before you have to go to work. There are so many benefits to it and what do you lose on the other end? At nighttime, 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 reinvention formula because what we're all lacking is time and what we're all lacking is time for ourselves and the only way you get that is by waking up earlier. What's 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 consultant, all the amazing things you've achieved out is 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 in the 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 institutionalized.
I had been in the military since I was 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, 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 work inside of a SEAL platoon, they work inside of a finance company, they work inside of a manufacturing company, they work inside of an army platoon, they work inside of a Girl Scout troop. These leadership principles, they apply everywhere. And I would never 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 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 or this thing? And when you find this wide varied application of stuff that you know so well, and I'm sure now, I love the Girl Scouts troop. I love that.
Have you ever done anything with a group of Girl Scouts? Have you actually given them like a talk or a keynote? I have three daughters and one son, and I've run all kinds of random team events for children. And yes, these principles, 100% apply.
I love that one. 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 your daughters in the room.
That would be brilliant. And that's what brought me to write the kids books that I've written. Is 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 gratification perspective, I get letters every day from kids all over the country and all over the world that say, 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 realized that when they put discipline in place and they live like a warrior kid, those principles, they work regardless of how old you are and where you are in life.
So that was very also, that was also a great discovery for me, which I realized while I was still in the military, that these principles, if you can teach them to 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, man. And I'm so glad that you're doing it because it's always fascinating when you've heard about someone, you've read about someone, you've 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're the one doing it and in the way that you're doing it as well. It comes across effortlessly, it's powerful, but it's got a really special heart. We end Jocko 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 that. I always say to my audience, you can be mentored by people you've never met.
And that's amazing that you're at the foreword for one of your idols. I love hearing that. Second question, what was your purpose when you joined 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 it 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 them the hard way like I did. Yeah, I love that.
All right, question number three. 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 $30 Timex watch and I see you post it all the time. Sometimes people comment, why don't you buy a nicer watch? If this watch is functional, it does what I needed to do. And so if you're walking around with a $1000 watch on, you might think it's cool.
I don't really care. We'll get a good shot of it. This is on Jockos Instagram page. Go follow me on Instagram.
OK, 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 of 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. That's a good law. There's lots of people been trying to teach that, lots of important people.
I'm glad you're adding it on and sharing it forward. Everyone, Jocko Willink, make sure you go and follow Jocko on Instagram. Check out his many books. He spoke about his children's books, his adult books.
Please, please, please go and grab a copy of what resonates with you. Jocko has an amazing podcast as well that you can go and listen to. All of the links will be in the description. Jocko, we need to do a part two.
This was too good, man. I love spending this time with you. Next time we go 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, Jocko.
Thanks, everyone, for listening. Make sure you share your insights on Instagram. Tag me and Jocko with what stood out. What were the wisdom points?
What were the insights that resonates with you? What are you going to practice? What discipline? Are you going to start from tomorrow?
Are you going to wake up 15 minutes earlier? Are you going to do that one push-up or pull-up? I'd love to know. I know Jocko would too.
So make sure you tag us and we'll see you again next time on on purpose. Thanks for listening.