How To Build Unstoppable Confidence - Jocko Willink (4K)

0:00 I know that you're a fan of the Thomas Soul quote, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. What's that mean to you? That you're never going to completely solve anything in your life or in the world. And there's always going to be compromises that you have to make. And if you aren't willing to make those compromises or you don't keep your mind open for those compromises, you're going to run into some real problems. But if you look at it and the fact that, you know, you might put a little more effort over here, that's going to take away from some effort over there. You can't just do everything at once. So, yeah, no solutions, only trade-offs. How do you deal with the tension of feeling that other thing pull away from you, right? You know that you need to focus and you know that by focusing on one thing, another thing is going to start to drop away. But the classic

0:45 overachiever mindset is well, everything needs to be growing at all times. So, there's a an emotional pain of watching something stagnate or watching something fall behind. How do you try and navigate that? You just have to figure out what the priority is. And and at certain times, you know, certain things might be a higher priority right now than it is at some other point and something else picks up. And sometimes the family needs to be the priority. Sometimes the business, sometimes the other business, sometimes the health. Like you're just going to have to weigh those things out and re recognize that you can't do them all simultaneously at the same time all the time. It's just it's not going to work. So you got to figure out we're going to make some compromises. We're going to make some trade-offs. Yeah. the uh the sentence you can be anything you want but you can't be everything you want is so good for that and especially

1:32 if you like novelty like doing lots of different things ah this is interesting to me I curious I want to you go yeah okay dude but there is a limit right and when you start to it's the most obvious thing in the world if you spread yourself too thinly across lots of different things you can't be that great at all of them you can't be really that great at any of them after you start to spin it up after a while yeah and it's one of those laws of combat that you teach and used to teach in SEAL teams and now I teach to businesses prioritize and execute. Like you've got to figure out what the priorities are and then execute on those things. But you got to figure out what the what the biggest priority is at any given time. Like I said, whether it's this business or your family or your health, at certain times you got to say, "All right, I got to pay attention to my family right now. I can feel things are getting a little bit sketchy over there." Or, "All right, my

2:18 family seems solid right now. I got to focus on this part of the business." and then within the business this particular section of the business you go right on down the line. How do you think about uh moving between planning and execution in that way? Is it something that you can do at the same time or is it really important to sort of step back, give yourself that perspective and then go back in to actually enact the strategies? If you end up executing things yourself, you can only do so much at one time, right? I mean, if you're if you've got something going on with your family, well, hopefully your spouse is going to be able to take some action on that, whatever that thing is, and then you've got businesses, well, you've got departments inside your business, and you, you know, assign some plan to someone inside the business that's going to step up and take charge of that thing

3:04 and run with it. So, that's that's the fourth law of combat leadership, which is decentralized command, meaning you can't do everything yourself. you need to allow your subordinate leaders to step up and lead and make things happen. So that's a it's it's mandatory to do that if you're going to if you're going to execute on more more than one thing in life. Mhm. What about when it comes to working out what your priority should be for yourself? It seems like even that uh not being able to see the wood for the trees. I'm currently in the midst of this thing, but I need to actually is this the best place for my uh for my attention to be spent right now? Yeah. I I I think first of all, you got to be able to detach a little bit and take a step back and take a look at what's going on in the world and take take a look at what's going on in your world to go, "Oh, you know what? It seems like

3:50 this might not be the best thing." Cuz that's I think what happens is if you don't take a step back and you don't detach, then you're not going to recognize what's happening, what's going on, and that's how someone can work until they have no family left or pay so much attention to their family that they lose their job, go in the wrong direction. So, you need to be able to take a step back and actually assess what's going on. And you can't get drawn down into the weeds of any particular thing for too long, right? Like, you can do it for a little while. You can do it depending on the thing. You can do it for a day or a week or a month sometimes, but then after that, you got to say, "All right, I got to take a step back and and have a look." Well, the same thing goes for uh health, right? If you're going to launch a new business, probably not going to be in the best condition you've ever been in. I just going to tick over. Maybe I'll get a, you know, push pull leg session in

4:36 across the week or something like that. You go, okay, if I really want to find my future husband or wife, you know that I I imagine that my sleep's going to suffer. You know, I'm going to have to go out more. I'm going to have to be more social. Maybe I'm going to have to go to restaurants and like pretend to eat like a normal person. Uh it is a lesson that I think you can only learn with experience. It's very difficult to tell somebody you need to do this. It's really something that you learn through pain. You go, I I I let my foot off the gas with this one particular thing. Yeah. Look at what happened. Didn't go well. I'd better not do that again. I'd better not let my health get to the stage where I haven't slept properly for 3 weeks at a time. And look, you know, that was when I got sick. Yeah. And I think that

5:22 actually health is one that you you don't want to totally walk away from health at any time. And I think that's one of the reasons that I feel like I'm doing pretty good right now is I never I probably haven't taken more than, you know, two or three days off from working out in decades. You know what I mean? So yeah, I mean, okay, I had a surgery on my neck. So, okay, that was I took some time after that. But even after that, like after three days, I was in my garage gym walking around in circles like just trying to make something happen. But I I think when people completely abandon their health for a month or two months, I think that

6:08 can be I think that's where injuries start coming into play and you you lose you really go backwards. It's foundational, right? The other stuff that you're trying to do is build on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I guess actually using you as an example for sleep might not be a particularly good good idea there. Uh what's your advice for how people can be more confident in their decisions in life? Like where does confidence come from in your opinion? I think confidence comes from I well clearly some of it comes from experience but I think one of the one of the most profound things that you can do to become more confident is to become okay with saying yeah I'm not exactly sure what to do right now and if you can say that all of a sudden the

6:54 world becomes just a lot easier and you know if if we're in a meeting and we've got some you uh a project that we're going to get started on and it's something I've never done before and I'm the boss and I say, "Hey, Chris, I'm not really sure what to do right now." Well, that's okay. And you go, "Well, actually, I at my old company, we did the same thing, so let's make this move." And I go, "Okay, that sounds like a good place to start anyways." And so now we get started. Whereas if I come in and I'm like, "I don't want Chris to know that I don't know how to do this or I'm not sure of myself right now or I'm lacking confidence, so I'm going to pretend to be confident." I think that's problematic. So I I think look the no one knows everything. No one makes all perfect decisions. No one is understands every element of the world. So I think a

7:41 good way to gain confidence quickly is to admit the fact that you don't know everything and and just be okay with saying, "Yeah, I'm not really sure what to do here." Does that lower the pressure? Lowers the bar of self-expectation? Absolutely. I think it I think it lowers the bar of self-expectation. Not to a negative point where it's like, oh, I've got low expectations of myself, but if I was to be coming up here to to sit down with you and have this talk and I was thinking, what if he asked me about something I don't know about? What am I going to do? And I'd be a little bit panicked. And then you'd ask me about uh uh car racing, Formula 1 racing, right? Which we were talking about before we started this. And now all a sudden you said, "Well, hey, in Formula 1 the the the drivers do this. What do you think

8:28 of that protocol?" And I was like trying to formulate in my head, pretend like I know what I'm talking about when I don't. So instead, I just say, "Oh yeah, I don't know anything about car racing, so you tell me." And and that means the whole drive up here to come and sit down with you and get interviewed by you instead of me being paranoid that you might ask something I don't know about. and my confidence is now shaken. Instead, I'm rolling in here like, "Oh, yeah. If he asked me some stuff I don't know about, I can say, "Oh, yeah. I'm not really 100% sure about that. What do you know?" Or, "What's your opinion?" That's liberating. I think it's very liberating. Is that sort of humility? That's I Yes, I think that is humility. And it's something that you get, you know, when you're in the military, you

9:13 know, you can be in charge of people that have more experience than you. And if that makes you uncomfortable, often times people flex to try and act like they know more than they do when it's like, "Oh yeah, you've run these kind of operations before, Chris. Why don't you take lead on this?" Okay, I'm I'm the senior guy. I'm the boss, but I say, "Hey, Chris, you've already run these type of operations. Why don't you take lead on this?" No big deal. It's Does your respect for me go down or does it go up? Goes up. Exactly. As opposed to me saying, "Uh, here's what we're going to do, Chris." and I don't know what I'm talking about and you can clearly see this because you've done it 25 times and I'm an idiot. So yeah, I would say be more humble and you'll be more confident. It's really interesting to think where you're lowering the stakes. There's there's no

10:00 s in that definition of confidence. There's no such thing as not having enough confidence. There is just being yourself and then if you are yourself and you meet the limits of whatever your competence is, your understanding, hand it off to someone else or say, "Hey, does no one Oh, brilliant. No one here knows what to do. Uh, you know, a good example of this, the first ever cinema production that we did, so this is our cinema series, fancy cameras and big team of people and stuff. Uh, the first one we ever did was in San Antonio. We did it in the Alamo with Jordan Peterson. Uh, and we're setting up. We've got the cameras here and it's the first time we've done anything like this. So, the production's a little bit more uh spit and sawdust, let's say. and we're about to get started and the guys do the sound check like we did before where you started screaming and uh they

10:46 could hear on the background they were like there's someone speaking there's someone speaking on the channel what the [ __ ] is that like is that it's a local FM radio station how the [ __ ] are we picking up it was two mics plugged into a a couple of inline uh amps and a a [ __ ] recording device and we're trying to work out like is Is it the power? Is there a radio station inside of the building and it's somehow sending radio signals through the socket in the wall or whatever it was? And uh no one knew. And this is this is actually a a rule for life. If you have a problem, and I guess chat GPT would probably be a really good solution for this now because it's good at at searching lots of stuff. But if you just put the problem that you have in and then the word Reddit afterward almost always. So

11:35 sure enough, one of the guys did and what it turned out to be was if you've got very long XLR cables that attach to these microphones and they cross, they turn into an antenna. And sure enough, took them out, put shorter ones in, made sure they didn't cross, went away. Holy [ __ ] But no one in there. I've seen this before. You listen to me. It's like uh uh just everyone's searching different [ __ ] like unplugging stuff, trying to change things around. Yeah. There's a sense of humility in the fact that, hey, I don't know what to do. I'm going to go on the web and Google what to do. No factor. Yeah. Yeah. I um I like that idea that unconfidence comes from you positioning uh your level of expertise higher than

12:22 it actually is. Yeah. And there's there's like a whole cycle, too, because it's almost like a circular thing because if you want to be confident, you got to be humble. And then when you're humble, then you are more confident because you're okay with not knowing. You know, I had some guy ask me um it was about it was about meeting girls. Like it was a guy wanted to go out and meet girls and he was lacking confidence and and he's like, you know, I'm I'm 27 years old or whatever it was. I really want to meet my mate and I'm searching and I'm going out. And I said, "Well, first of all, if you walk up to a girl with the expectation in your mind that this could be the one, I mean, imagine the crazy pressure you're putting performance anxiety there. Total, you're

13:07 going to act like an idiot." And I said, "Man, just instead just go up and expect that what she's going to say is like when you say hi to her, hopefully she'll say hi back and maybe she won't. And if she doesn't, no big deal." like that's where you set the bar and and that's going to make you it's going to make you perform a lot better in that scenario. You know, there's another another interesting thing I was talking about lately and we we were just talking about bow hunting and I had this thing where somebody asked me about like how to actually execute in the moment and get your mind right when you have to perform. And I I didn't never really thought about this before and I actually thought through my whole life and what my attitude was.

13:54 And if you need to perform, you need to be very very humble. And like if I've got an event that I've got to do, I've got a mission that I've got to do, I've got to train, I've got to prepare, I've got to plan. And that whole all of that is driven from humility, right? I I I don't think I'm ready. So I'm going to I'm going to prepare more. I'm going to rehearse more. I don't I'm not thinking clearly about what the enemy will do. So, I need to come up with a better plan. Like, I'm going to be very humble and I'm going to therefore prepare very hard and very extensively. But at the moment I put my night vision goggles on and I and I I lower them down over my eyes, there's like a switch that goes off that I am 100% going to win. M and where the the

14:40 the reason this ties into bow hunting is I was up at one of the one of the total archery challenges. If you haven't been to one of those, go to one of those. Um they're really cool. They set up all these uh 3D targets all over usually ski mountains and you shoot and it's cool. It's a lot of fun. Bunch of awesome people there. And I had just gone through this answer to somebody about how to actually execute in the moment. And I realized you go up to take a a shot, like first of all, going to tack or going hunting, you're training all the time because you don't want to miss the shot. You got to be humble. You you know how hard it is. You're going to be out of breath. The pressure is going to be on and so you got to train train. Prepare prepare prepare. But when you get up there and you like knock your your arrow onto your bow, you've just got to be like, I'm going to slay this

15:25 right now. And I started consciously thinking about that at TAC and TAC's really they set up courses that are shots that are totally ridiculous and you know you you can lose five 8 10 arrows hitting rocks and trees and everything else. Yeah. And I went up with that attitude and I I shot the whole course with one arrow which is look is there luck involved? Yes, there's luck involved but still it's like that attitude of hey I'm walking up. I've trained, but now I'm going to just go slay this thing. And all that performance anxiety is gone. You go up, get confident. Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to punch this thing right through that target. No factor. And you do it. And I think that's a good thing to think about when it comes to execution. Like, yes, be humble, be

16:12 prepared, but when you knock that arrow or you put your night vision goggles on or you step into that meeting to do that presentation, you should be like, I'm about to slay this right now. How do you avoid the uh humbleness and the humility turning into performance doubt? Because I think it I think it has to be a conscious decision that you make that when you go in there and for me again it was very uh almost like getting into character, right? Like I'm getting I'm knocking this arrow or I'm putting my my my night vision goggles down. I'm that's that's the switch. I'm going you know what you go on stage now, right? So hey, do you prepare prior to Yeah. you're like, "Oh, I got to do my notes and get everything set up." But when you walk out on stage, like when you put that mic on, you should be like, "All right, it's go time, and I'm going to slay this

16:59 situation that I'm going into." I wonder whether this is part of the advantage of uh Beyonce's got an alter ego for on stage. Uh Kobe alter ego for on the court. Oh, 100%. And I wonder whether that allows the humility in practice uh sort of godliness in in performance. Have you ever seen the uh Facebook post that Kobe put after he ruptured his Achilles? I'm going to read this. It's so [ __ ] good. This is such BS. All the training and sacrifice just flew out of the window with one step that I've done millions of times. The frustration is unbearable. The anger is rage. Why the hell did this happen? makes no damn sense. Now I'm supposed to come back from this and be the same player or

17:45 better at 35. How in the world am I supposed to do that? I have no clue. Do I have the consistent will to overcome this thing? Maybe I should break out of this rocking chair and reminisce on the career that was. Maybe this is how my book ends. Maybe father time has defeated me. Then again, maybe not. It's 3:30 a.m. My foot feels like a dead weight. My head is spinning from the pain meds and I'm wide awake. Forgive my venting, but what's the purpose of social media if I won't bring this to you? No real image. Feels good to vent. Let it out. To feel as if this was the worst thing ever. Because after all the venting, the real perspective sets in. There are far greater issues and challenges in the world than a torn Achilles. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Find the silver lining and get to work with the same belief, same drive, and same conviction as ever. One

18:30 day, the beginning of a new career journey will commence. Today is not that day. If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear. I've always loved that quote. That's mama mentality. We don't quit. We don't cower. We don't run. We endure and conquer. I know it's a long post, but I'm Facebook venting. Lol. Maybe now I can actually get some sleep and be excited for surgery tomorrow. First step of a new challenge. Thank you for all your prayers and support. Much love always. Mamba out. Kobe Bryant, 13th of April, 2013. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I bet again, he's a great example. He wasn't walking around arrogant thinking, "Hey, I'm so good that I don't need to practice." No, he was the opposite. Practicing more than anybody else. And that way, again, going into the game, give me the ball. You

19:18 know, give me the ball. It's It's clutch time. It's go time. Give me the ball. I'm going to make this. And that's the same with Jordan. Same with Larry Bird. Like, you look at the greats. They all practiced insane. They they were insane when it came to practice. They tried to beat everyone at practice. They'd stay after practice. And when game time came, they would, first of all, talk smack, right? Larry Bird was famous for talking smack. But give me the ball cuz they know that they can make the shot. This episode is brought to you by Nomatic. Summer is here and travel season is in full swing. But let's be honest, your backpack was probably built for a school field trip, not international adventures, which is where Nomatic comes in. I've been able to travel the world with this bag right here because it's designed by people who actually understand the chaos of being on the move. Everything has its place and no

20:04 space goes unused. It's compact enough to fit under the seat, but somehow fits everything that you need when you're on the go. And if you're still on the fence, their product will last you literally a lifetime with a lifetime guarantee. So, this is the final backpack that you'll ever need to buy. And you can return or exchange any product within 30 days for any reason. So, you can buy a new bag, put your possessions in it for a full month, and if you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back. And they ship internationally. Right now, you can get a 20% discount and see everything that I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomadic.com/modernwisdom. That's nomatic.com/modernwisdom. You spend a good bit of your career in situations that would cause most people to feel a ton of fear. I think that fear is related to this confidence, conviction in my decisions.

20:50 What have you learned about how to deal with and overcome fear? Go. Yep. It's you. When all that all that uh fear that's in your head, all the whatifs and the scenarios that you create inside your own mind that are way worse than anything that is actually going to happen, they all disappear when you go. So just just take action and and start moving forward. And it that is the that is the moment that can last a million years is waiting to go. And I found I'm pretty good at it now where oh I'm like oh yeah I know what that is and I'm going and then that's it. And once

21:37 you go, you know, driving even, you know, speaking of in being in combat, if we were driving to a target and you're, you know, so you're going to go hit a target somewhere and driving to the target, the closer you get, you're thinking about all the things that go wrong, all the bad things that are going to happen, all this stuff. When one of my guys gets wounded, what if they have IEDs in the yard? Like, there's a bunch of things going through your mind. Once you like stop, get out of the vehicle, you all those things go away. Yep. And you're doing the thing and you're not worried about it anymore. And so let's just go. That's that's that's the answer. So action is an antidote to anxiety, man. Action is an antidote to all kinds of problems in life. Yeah. You know, it's I was uh I I I ski and I was

22:23 up at I was up in uh Big Sky, Montana, and they've got this this, you know, challenging trail, and I was at the top of it, and you're thinking, "Oh, well, this could be the end of my ACL." And like all these stupid things are going through my mind and I'm like it's like as soon as I got there just boom just going just go. Is that something you always had? What that uh I feel fear immediately lean into it. How trained is that versus how innate is that? I think it's I think it's trained because you go through you go through situations and it's interesting. You know in the military they're probably doing it to you on purpose or maybe it's just the way it is. But okay, you're going to go repelling, right? Repelling is relatively it doesn't feel that crazy. Well, then you're going to fast rope, which is a little bit of a step up. And

23:09 then you're going to fast if you're going to repel off of a building, right? And then you're going to repel out of a helicopter. Then you're going to fast rope out of a tower. And then you're going to fast rope out of a helicopter. And then you're going to parachute. And then you're going to freef fall parachute. And all those things, they're all things that you can be afraid of. Even going back to like the obstacle course, which I think the tallest obstacle on the obstacle course might be the the the cargo net, which is a cargo net that you climb up. It's probably I don't know how tall it is, but it's tall enough that you are not going to be in good shape if you fall. And you have to climb up the cargo net and then you have to go over the top of it and then climb back down the other side. But even that, if you're freaked out or you're scared, you're going to get stuck there. And there's guys that do get stuck. they

23:54 don't climb over the top of it. Not a lot, but there's occasionally guys that say, "Yeah, this it's they're not it's not happening." So, the longer that you sit, you hang on and look and stare and contemplate the chances of you falling off, it doesn't get any better. So, eventually, you just throw your leg over and get over that damn thing. So, I think I probably just experienced it enough and was cognizant enough to recognize that at some point. Oh, yeah. This feeling of caution and fear and all that stuff in the back of my head. Yeah, I just need to get rid of all that and just go. It seems to go away when I move toward it. Yeah. Uh, it does go away. It 100% goes away. There's got to be something that you do that you're that makes you a little bit scared. What What's the stuff? Going out on stage is

24:41 one of those, you know, three and a half thousand people in London, this big event that we've been building up to for six months. And my least I my two favorite bits of it, three favorite bits of it, half an hour before I'm about to go on, as I go on, and then just as I finish and as I come off, one minute before I go on is [ __ ] awful. And it's the in the Humvey driving to the target with the people thinking about the things like [ __ ] just you know but you see uh greyhounds in the traps before they get set off. It's the exact same and that's a really really good way to put it the fact that the fear of the thing is only present when the thing hasn't started. I I wrote a kid's book

25:28 called Mikey and the Dragons. And the the story is, spoiler alert, the kid he's he he's uh his dad is the king. His dad dies. The kid now has to defend the village from the dragons. And you know, he's scared because he's only a little kid and he can't pick up the sword and he can't pick up the shield. It's too heavy. But he's the kid. He's the son of the king. He's the prince. He's got to go fight the dragons. And he gets a note from his dad that says, "Hey, stand up. go attack the dragons. You'll see that there's nothing to be afraid of. And he gets up there and enters the dragon cave. And guess what? The dragons are little tiny cute dragons. And but his fear is the same fear that we all build up for whatever that thing is, whether it's going on stage or whether it's jumping out of an airplane or whether it's taking risk with some kind of a

26:14 business situation. Well, the more you sit there and think about it, the worse it's going to get in your own head. So good. Uh, I wonder how much of it as well is fear of the unknown versus fear of the thing. It's like the story that I've told myself. It's the fact that there's uncertainty on the other side of this and that I like control. That here is order and there is chaos. And I don't want to lose some of this beautiful order by stepping into the cha. But as you do, you realize that it's not that you uh that that merges with you. It's that you push this out of the way. you know, kind of like how uh a little reality distortion sphere moves through and you locally, so this is it was my Twitter bio for ages to quote from Naval. He says, uh, I locally reverse entropy. I [ __ ] love that idea. You

27:00 know, you've got this entire universe entropy, this force that is going to destroy everything. The only thing that is not going to survive entropy or that is going to survive entropy, right? This permanent decline all the way down. and you think, "Yeah, briefly for my time on this planet, for however many decades I'm going to be here, I actually locally reverse entropy, the [ __ ] entire power of the universe bearing down on me." It's like, yeah, not while I'm here. Mhm. I really love that. I think it's a cool like uh cosmic middle finger. Yeah. And it's just the fact that you you can control a lot more than you think. And the world is happening and if you let the world happen to you, it's going to happen to you. But if you want to make something happen in the world, you can do that as well. It's a choice you get to make. Does being in

27:47 firefights and and driving in Humvees up to scary missions, does that make everything else seem less fearinducing? R I'm trying to work out how much carryover you get from a career of doing what you do to now. Is it permanently sort of reset a baseline of that? Yeah, it it kind of is, man. like what is the worst case scenario that's gonna happen and really the when the fear that I had in combat which was a deep horrible um one that you feel in your stomach knots is you fear that one of your guys

28:32 are going to get wounded or killed and you know fear of me getting killed I didn't really care uh you know I was over that I accepted it. That's what could happen. That's like my job. And not just my job, like, oh, this is what I signed up for, but that's kind of what I always felt like that was just who I was. But I'm okay with taking that responsibility for myself, but you know, putting that responsibility on your friends is not something that feels good. And so that gut-wrenching, horrible feeling is not something that I I don't think you're going to experience that in a normal job. And even with businesses, you know, I and I've look, I've had things go wrong at my businesses. We've

29:18 had, you know, made mistakes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, you know, I've had my team saying like reporting to me and telling me about this negative thing that happened. And I could see, you know, because I got great people that they're really disappointed and they really feel terrible, but I'm like, "Hey, no one's going to die and we're going to recover from this and everything's going to be cool. Like, we're it's all right." Rogan's got this insight. The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Absolutely true. And if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is a [ __ ] firefight in Fallujah. Uh or if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is accidentally spending 10 grand on the

30:05 wrong business credit card. Both of those you don't get. There's no Uber searchcharge discount or whatever for the worst thing that ever happened to you being less bad than the worst thing that ever happened to somebody else. And the where I really learned that was with kids because as kids are in sixth grade and someone, you know, uh, throws a rotten orange at them and it everyone laughs at them, that is horrible for that kid. And you know, when the kid comes home and and they're crying and and and they say and you go, "What happened? They got hit in the head and they called me, you know, orange head." And you go, "Oh yeah, don't worry about it. It's funny. That doesn't work. Like you you have to learn to you have to learn to deal with

30:51 them as if they've just been in a firefight. Exactly. Exactly. And and and you can help them get through it. You know, you can help them because it it helps it will help them when they see that perspective as well. Just like when I was talking to my team, it's like, "Oh, we had this horrible thing happen. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to the team collectively." Okay. The me sharing the perspective of like, "Hey guys, no one's dead. We're gonna be okay. we're going to, you know, no one's getting their bonus this quarter, but okay, me included, but that's all right. We're going to get through this and we're going to grow and we learn from it and we're going to carry on. So, giving people perspective can help them, but you can't just say, "Oh, your problem isn't really a problem." You can't say that. That doesn't work. Yeah. Denying, saying to somebody, the way that you feel isn't valid.

31:36 Is not a constructive way. It's that's not going to work out well. It's not going to work out well. with your partner that comes home and says, "You you you said that you were going to do this thing." It's like, "No, I didn't." It's like, "Well, in their world, you said that they that they and even the denial of that, it's like, look, I uh how about I go and do it anyway?" Even though, well, you know, there's just a million different ways of communicating like that. Uh, I want to know just on the firefight topic. Um, I've been spending a good bit of time reading more um like military history and and and trying to get a bit more of an understanding of there's a a great book called Atrocitology, which is the hundred greatest human atrocities across time. It's ranked by the the number of

32:21 people that were killed. I've been sort of trying to think about um that level of fear, that level of sort of kinetic uh engagement between people. What is it that normal people don't understand about what a modern firefight is like? What is it that they don't get about what it's actually like to be there? I think the the chaos of it and the not knowing what's uh so here's an example. We we would in training when I was running training, we would have guys shoot paintball at like really high-speed paintball guns. And so if you you were a a SEAL platoon commander, you're a SEAL platoon commander, Chris, and I would have my SEALs in the training detachment going out with

33:08 paintball and shooting your guys. And you had paintball, too, and you could shoot back. So I remember guys would come to me and they'd say, "Well, you know, we'd be in a in an urban environment, right? So, like a fake city that we have that's concrete buildings, but it's a fake city. And the platoon commander Chris comes back to me and like, "Hey, Jo, this is not realistic." Oh, why isn't it realistic? Well, we can't tell where your guys are shooting from because the paintball the paint guns don't have muzzle flash and they don't make a bang. So, we can't tell where the shots are coming from. And it's like, guess what? You're not going to know where you're getting shot at from. I mean, it's very similar to a paintball, actually. It's like, you ever been in a city and you hear a siren over your left shoulder and you start looking

33:54 over your left shoulder and all of a sudden it comes from the right because the way sound dynamics work. So, that's like one tiny example of how confusing and chaotic it can be. And and so I think seeing in the movies you some some they're doing it better and better now. Uh the movie just came out called Warfare, which was was directed and written by a SEAL, a guy named Ray Mendoza, who actually was the group of guys that came and took our my place and and my guy's place in Romani in 2006. He came and took his guys took our place. And so a few weeks later, they had a they they got hit on an operation and they had two guys get really badly

34:39 wounded. Um, but it was a really and a couple of their Iraqi soldiers, their friendly Iraqi soldiers got killed. It's just a very vicious situation. But when you see the movie and they he made it very realistic and it's chaos, it's chaos and confusion and guys are not know what's happening, screaming, wounded guys just screaming. And so I think that level of chaos and confusion is is what gets missed out on. And then what the leader needs to do is take a step back from that chaos and confusion, figure out what's happening and make decisions. So yeah, that's it. It's not as slick or sexy as it's been portrayed in movies

35:25 traditionally, but people are now catching up. Yeah, I think people are catching up now. Um I think people I think and and this movie warfare is a great example of oh, there's total chaos. Yeah, it's not neat. And and by the way, human beings with an incredible amount of training are still going to like do things that you don't expect them to do. And that that's that's real. So it's it's a good it's the Hollywood is is starting to catch up with that. And I'm just trying to think back of you know, Saving Private Ryan did a pretty good job. You know, that opening scene on the beach. There was definitely World War II veterans that were that sat through that. D-Day veterans that sat through that and said, "Whoa, like that you guys got it." And some of the some of the

36:12 effects that they did even in Save It Private in Saving Private Ryan where uh Tom Hanks is they're getting shot at and he's sort of like the the it gets quiet and slow motion type stuff and he's just kind of detached from the whole thing. He's just out of body experience and then someone shakes him. Hey, Luke, you know, captain, you got to get and and he kind of gets back in it. And that's kind of an uh leading indicator of what they're starting to get better and better at. Is that a common uh emotion to feel that? Yeah. Like, and even earlier we were talking about um like noise and when you're it with shooting your gun in a gunfight. Shooting your gun is freaking loud. But shooting your gun in a gunfight, you don't you don't

36:58 go, "Oh, that's loud." Now, you might start to catch a glimpse of that sometimes where you're like, "Oh, my machine gunner is right here and he's dumping rounds." And you go, "That's really loud right now. We're getting hit with blink, by the way, which hurts." So, you there's just these these things that are happening that there's a lot going on and yeah, sometimes your adrenaline's going and you start to slow down and see things moving in a slower manner. Time kind of slows down. Sometimes you start hearing some things that you might not have heard or not hearing things that you would hear. You know another another big thing is you know we in modern days we have these radios and we have headphones with noise cancelling headphones and guys would start to pass radio traffic on the on

37:46 the radio. So if I needed you, hey Chris, come down to the first floor of this building. I need I need you to set security for me. And I would say that on the radio to you. Hey Chris, you know, hey Chris, come down to the first floor. I need you to say. Meanwhile, you're up there on your machine gun. You don't hear a damn word that I say. And so what I have to do is I have to pass word verbally like Chris and Chris. And it it like wakes you up because everything that's going on the headphone just because Oh, wow. You got a patent interrupt. Yes. Yes. So it's just background. It's ambient [ __ ] lift music. Yes. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, what about dealing with uh the level of adrenaline sort of during and after? Because, you know, you hear about um I was talking to a friend, Brown Belt and BJJ, but fought in Mai for a long time.

38:32 Went out to Thailand to fight and we were watching uh Chris Eubank Jr. versus Connor Ben boxing fight that happened the other week in the UK. Probably one of the biggest, you know, uh the two sons of two very famous boxers who had a huge rivalry and now they're doing it and it's sort of been this big buildup and all this stuff. It was super epic. I mean, and it was one of those walkouts that takes 5 minutes to happen. And there's a a the dance bit and the both of the dads are with the sons. So, it was, you know, it was real sort of hairs on the back of your neck stuff. Um, but I asked Josh, uh, "Hey, man, do you want to be first or do you want to be second in terms of walkout?" He said, "Well, typically the the, uh, champion would come out second, but but I was like, yeah, I get that and I've always seen that, but which one do you want to be? Do you want to get into the ring and sort of get a sense of the space or do

39:17 you want to come out second? And he was like, "Dude, you always want to be second because you're stood in the ring, the adrenaline's already been at its peak and you're just getting cold, slow, the adrenaline's not there, you've already had your moment, now you're watching this [ __ ] have his moment." Um, so I wonder the same when it comes to how long can you sustain adrenaline for through a a combat mission? And what happens when you got we have a five minutes where we regroup at one corner and then you're like, "Okay, [ __ ] I've got here we go. We go back up again." It is like a roller coaster. But what what you were just saying and what we talked about previously, walk out second cuz then the guy that walked out first gets to spend an extra 4 and 1/2 minutes contemplating what's about to happen and living in his own fear,

40:03 right? He's running through that fear loop and freaking out. Whereas you haven't even walked out yet. So, let him sit out there on the big stage and let him freak out about it. I'm sure that they take their time as well. It's like your your workout's 5 minutes. It's like, "Yeah, we're going to start, you know, 90 seconds late." And it's like Mousashi showing up 4 hours or 3 hours late to a sword fight. Like, oh yeah, you and I are going to fight. Cool. I'll be there at noon. Show up at 2:30. Yeah. Do you just sit there and freak out? So, it's a good plan. Um, but yeah, that adrenaline, that up and down of that adrenaline, how how did you manage that? Well, what's interesting about that is you would think like if I said to you, "All right, Chris, you're going to go down on a patrol right now." someone there there's going to be enemy trying to kill you. You'd think to yourself like, "Okay, well, I'm going to be freaking locked on for this whole two hours, right? Like, I'm going to be 3 hours. I'm going to be totally locked on." Well, after an hour and a half and

40:51 nothing's happened yet, and you're hot and you're tired and you're sweaty and you're carrying 100 lb worth or 60 lb worth of gear, you start to go, "Dude, do I really want to take a knee at this corner? Do I really need to take a knee at this corner right now? Meaning, you're going to stop and you'd like to lower your profile a little bit, but after an hour and a half, maybe you'll just stand and hold that thing. So, we It's interesting. We talk about complacency and how you can't let you can't get complacent, right? Well, and people say, "Well, you know, in combat, of course, you'd never get complacent." It No, absolutely. People get complacent in combat. So, when that adrenaline runs out, you have to have the discipline to say, "Oh, I'm getting my corner. I need to take a knee to lower my profile. Period. End of story. I got to I got to

41:38 follow the protocols no matter what. Does that uh suggest that different roles within uh military units are the different people disposed to different roles? I mean this is obvious that certain people go toward spotting, sniping, being the door kickers, being the people that sit back and do more planning, people that drive fly drones, people, you know, all the medics, all the rest, whatever it might be. But I have to imagine that within that uh you may find when somebody gets into operations that actually I'm perfectly competent to all of the skills, but my nervous system just does not agree with this. So I'm going to have to adapt over time. And maybe I do need to be somebody that's sat up top and needs to hold

42:24 sustained focus at a sort of a lower uh rate for a longer period of time. Or maybe I'm the sort of person I can't hold it. I I'm good in bursts. I'm like the Usain Bolt of the [ __ ] special forces. I kick a door down, do a thing, and then All right, we go again. Um I imagine that that must be something that that happens during training and uh during operations, too. Yeah. And you're going to find like you mentioned being a sniper. Being a sniper is a is a job of patience. And so if you're a person that's freaking hyperactive and you don't like to sit still for a long time, being a sniper is going to be a horrible job for you. Whereas being a breacher where you're going to walk up to a door, someone's going to say breacher up and you're going to go kick that thing in or blow it up in the next 14 seconds. That's a job for short short attention span Chris. But if long attention span

43:11 Chris, patient Chris will, you know, will guide you as a SEAL to be a sniper as opposed and then and then also like you've got joint tactical air control, which is the guy that's got multiple aircraft overhead and he's got stuff going on on the ground, but he's got to take he's got to detach from that and he's got to put these aircraft, he's got to stack them in the proper way, keep them uh out of each other's way in the air, and then he's got to find targets on the ground and direct various aircraft. So there's a lot of cerebral processing that has to happen. So depending on who you are, you're going to sort of get guided to a job that is suitable for you. Yes. So I I've been thinking about this after a a cool genetic test thing that I did that looks

43:58 at all of the different alals that you've got and then maps them to what they're predictive for. So, some of them are to do with uh dopamine response, others are to do with how you process vitamin B12. Some of them for me uh to do with how you process cortisol and adrenaline. And uh my one of the jobs that it said would not be good for me would be something with huge peaks and troughs. So, as long as I can sustain focus, I could be someone that was holding it for a long period of time. But if you've got these massively intense periods and then these big dips, uh my nervous system isn't uh built to come back into land very quickly like that. I would love I was I knew that we had this episode. I'd love to see what your results would be with that. My ability to clear adrenaline, cortisol, not so good. I have to guess that you

44:43 and the rest of the guys that you were with would be uh whatever the equivalent of like a a super super spreader event for being able to bring that back into land. It's fascinating. And there's no genetic test on that thing to get in the seal teams. So we end up with guys and you can see them like you can see a guy that gets really I don't know if this is the same thing, but you have people that get really emotional about things and then some people that don't and everything in between. So I think some of that has to I mean certainly I would think that if your adrenaline is pumping your emotions are heightened, right? And then if your adrenaline is not pumping then you're more emotionally calm. I I would think that that would be accurate. So you get you end up with both people in the SEAL teams. And yeah, like someone that's super hyper emotional is

45:30 probably not going to be ideal sniper. Not that they're not cuz there are guys that are emotionally let great snipers too. But you know if you've got someone that as you grow right as you get older you must learn to regulate some of that stuff too. I'm I'm assuming so that you are harder to disrupt knockoff base. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I mean that that's the fascinating thing that you realize when you see the building blocks of who you are, which are, you know, this 20,000 pairs of alals or whatever it might be. And like, huh, I always wondered why [ __ ] like gluten didn't agree with me. Ah, huh, I always wondered why I struggled to sleep after something exciting happened on a nighttime. I always wondered why, you know, whatever.

46:15 I would like to run another experiment where we like you give me I give you this test and then I just make stuff up and tell you cuz I hear about people who uh do like Whoopstrap and they get told in the morning you didn't get good sleep last night and then they start feeling like oh man I'm really dragging today and then they get told oh you slept great last night and they they feel like they have more energy and pretty soon they go wait a I I got told I didn't sleep well, but I had an awesome day and I did, you know, I performed well in my stuff. So, I'd be interested to tell you like, oh, you're you're emotionally just stable. You're locked on and see if you were like, oh, yeah. There's a a great book called The Expectation Effect by David Robinson.

47:02 Just popular science book. It's about four years old now. And uh he looked at a study where they did exactly this. So they gave uh a cohort of people two different groups. One group has a particular genetic predisposition that allows them to blow off CO2 more efficiently. And that means that for V2 max work, they have uh they're much more effective. Other group does not have this mutation. They mixed them up and split them into two parts. So each group had equal proportions of people with and people without. You can see where I'm going to go. They told group one, "Hey, you've got this genetic mutation." Remembering 50% of them don't. You're going to you're going to crush this. It's going to be amazing. Group two, you don't have this genetic mutation. It may be a little bit more tough for you to do. Remembering 50% of them do. The

47:48 group that were told that they did, but didn't have it outperformed the group that did have it, but were told that they didn't. And he came up with this synopsis, which is your expectations are even more powerful than your genes. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the monster experiment? No. So they said the exact same thing except for it was with kids with speech impediments. So what they did is they said, "Hey Chris, listen, you know how occasionally when you're talking you kind of like stutter a little bit?" And of course everyone stutters a little bit sometimes. So I say, "Hey Chris, that's because you're a stutterer and it's probably going to get worse as you get older." And sure enough, when they told kids that, they they developed stutters and had it get worse. And then other kids, they were they said, "Oh yeah, you've got a the kids with actual stutters, they say, hey, you got a little bit of stutter

48:33 right now, but it's no factor. It's just you're going through the phase." And they would come out of it. And this turned into a big giant lawsuit cuz it gave kids like permanent speech impediments, which is just awful. Yeah. That's Yeah. Hence, they call it monster. uh which is interesting because there's also that thing which I have heard and read which is when a kid does something good you don't you don't compliment them on their talent you compliment them on their hard work effort yeah which this is a little bit of the o opposite right if I say hey you know Chris you did a great job because you're so talented then you're like oh cool I don't have to work that hard but that's a little bit of the opposite right a little bit of the opposite If your workouts feel flat, your recovery is slow, or you've just been

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50:05 description below or heading to live momentous.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's l i v o m n o us.com/modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What do most people misunderstand about discipline equals freedom? Um I don't know. I think it was pretty simple to understand. I agree. But I I it's with simplicity comes an awful lot of opportunity for people to Yeah. I I I guess there's always people that, you know, as they're trying to fish for a contrarian thing to say, which I think you kind of have to fish for it. I think you have to work for it to get with that

50:51 statement. But oh, there's such a thing as too much discipline. And if you have too so much discipline in your life, then you're won't be enjoying your life. And cool. Yep. If you are so disciplined that you never go out and you never uh eat a pizza, cool. You're you're you're that might you might be bummed out. Yep. You can go too far with it. But generally speaking, if you have an occasional pizza cuz they taste really good and once a month or whatever you go down to the pizza place and you get a pizza, cool, good for you. That's going to be awesome. And that's the reward for freedom. I think it's I think it's pretty straightforward. And I guess I guess if I was to fish a little bit more, I would say

51:39 that the idea that discipline is natural or it's uh innate innate. And actually my middle daughter who's a jiu-jitsu player, she was she was actually speaking the other day and one of the things that she said was she was speaking about discipline and she said, you know, I was with I was training my dad and I we went to the gym the other day and we were we were both training and I was training with, you know, the the the guys that I train with and she was training with the people she trains with and it's a Sunday and we're training. and we're both like really tired when we're done. And we get done and we're kind of sitting up on the mats and we're talking and and I look at her and I said I was I said uh not one part

52:25 of me wanted to come train today. Like 0% of me wanted to come train today and I'm so so glad I came and trained cuz you know you always feel great when you get done training. But so my daughter went and spoke to this group and she said you know my dad you know Mr. discipline who's been on this path for however many decades. My dad didn't want to train and he had to go, hey, doesn't matter whether you want to do it or not, you got to have the discipline, go do it. And and he did and he got done with it. So, and I think that's a good thing to remember that discipline isn't just, oh, this person is quote more disciplined than than this other person. It's like, no, this person is choosing discipline, this person is not. That's the way it is. Mhm. So I think that's an important thing to remember. You have

53:11 the option of being disciplined. You you don't have the option of being born 6'4, right? You don't have that option. You either are or you're not. But you do have the option of choosing discipline or not. So discipline not necessarily something that you're born with. I don't think so at all. I think maybe there's some small percentage of it. Maybe this person's a little bit more innately disciplined than this other person, but I think it's a choice. Well, how much of it habit as well and momentum, you know, as you said that I think this is one of the vicious cycles that people get into and it's also why you see people that have unbelievably outsized uh results in life and those who kind of have consistently bad results in life

53:57 because each positive experience is self-reinforcing. It tells you a story about the sort of person you are and you start to build on good habits and these good habits show you more good habits and you get a little bit more confidence and you get a little bit more and you say well this is part of my identity now I actually can push myself a little bit so d and you're like holy [ __ ] like you know it's the 1% per day increase and you end up at some unbelievably big number by the end of the year but you also see the opposite and this is how you get you know very diverging outcomes from people that started at relatively similar places. Certainly, and this is something that I've said for a while and is discipline begets discipline, right? If you make a bad decision in the morning and you decide you're not going to get out of bed, you decide you're not going to work

54:42 out. When you get to the office, the donuts are that much more tempting and you're probably going to eat one. Whereas, if you woke up early, you worked out, you got a little bit of work done before you even showed up to work, you show up to work, and now there's donuts. You're like, I don't need those right now. You you you just make better decisions. And that's on the front foot today or on the back foot. Yeah. Exactly. So, and yeah, the compounding thing for sure. And you you make one good little decision that leads to another good little opportunity. And and you know, I'm sure you have friends like this, too. I have friends that made just small decision after small bad decision after small bad decision, and they end up in terrible, terrible places, which is awful to see. An interesting pivot on the make one good decision begets another good

55:28 decision is when you've got a difficult conversation to have. My friends Alex says uh the life that you want is on the other side of the difficult conversations you're unprepared to have and he uses this analogy of when you know you work up to it for ages and the stress and the you know you're in the Humvey um metaphorically driving up to the conversation and you finally do it and you go I feel amazing and then immediately like a psychopath like a serial killer you look around you go what other bad conversations can I have and you're like seeking out targets for like I need ring my mom and tell her that she did that thing. You know, I've got that guy that didn't deliver the Amazon parcel correctly and I need to speak to this supplier blah blah blah. But, uh, you it's the same with that. This sort of momentum thing is a big deal. And it's why

56:16 in that vein when I don't feel like going to train jiu-jitsu or I don't feel like waking up or I don't feel like working out, whatever that thing is, that feeling that I mentioned to my daughter of like, I'm so happy I came and trained today. I know that feeling so well that it just totally overrides the Oh, so you're projecting yourself. Yeah. I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I know how much better I'm going to feel in an hour, in an hour and a half." I know that feeling so well. And I also know the other feeling, which is, man, I didn't train today. You know, I it was Sunday and I decided I needed a day off. It's like, no, train. I know that. And I think that is very helpful. What's still driving you now from a discipline perspective? Well, I mean, in

57:01 jiu-jitsu, it's just I love jiu-jitsu. Hey, you know, and again, if if you want to do something, how much discipline does it take? You know what I mean? I love It literally takes more discipline to not do the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you get injured and your arms, you you know, you can tell that your arm every time you train it's getting a little bit worse. It takes more discipline to be like, "All right, I need to take a day off." I you with the neck. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, yeah. I mean, I enjoy doing these things. I enjoy working out. Do I enjoy working out every single day? Nope. And that's when it's like, oh yeah, but I know the results of the long run. And I think that's a that's an important thing that I've talked about and again talked

57:47 about this with my with my daughter is like if you give up a little bit today like you can't get it back. Like if you skip a workout today, you can't you there's no possible way to get that back. When you let something go, it's gone. And Rome wasn't built in a day, but Rome didn't fall apart on a day either. It didn't fall out fall apart because of one thing. It falls apart just a little bit at a time. Yeah. Nobody gets fit overnight. Nobody gets fat overnight. Exactly. And so you can't, you know, you can't submit. You can't submit. You have to you have to get in there and keep it going. And I know the results of not doing the thing are are not good. And I

58:34 enjoy doing the thing. So in order to keep doing the thing, you got to do the thing. Yes. It is. It's this endless [ __ ] infinite regress of doing the thing. Yeah. Yeah, I um I I kind of get the sense as well with that story about not wanting to go to the gym. I do think that that's the difference between discipline and motivation, right? Motivation. I didn't want to do the thing. Discipline. I did the thing in

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