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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 feeling off, might not be your training plan or your diet, might be something a bit more boring like your testosterone. So, if you're not performing in the gym or the bedroom the way that you would like, or you just want to improve your testosterone naturally, Tonat Ali is a fantastic researchbacked place to start. And when it's stacked with zinc, this can make a huge improvement to your testosterone production, your strength, your recovery, and your energy. Which is why I'm such a massive fan of Momentous's zinc. It supports testosterone, boosts vitality, and helps keep everything running like it should. And if you're still unsure, Momentous offers a 30-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it, use it every single day for 29 days. And if you don't love it, they'll give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 spite of not wanting to do the thing. Yep. Yep. And look, I've said many times, you can't count on motivation like it's not going to be there for you. Yeah. Or it may, but it may not be. And it's lovely when it comes along. If you wait for it to be there, it's you might be waiting more than you should. On the other end of that, you know, the person who is going through a string of Can I have one of those? You want a spare one? I want a drop, please. Thank you. What flavor is this? This is iced tea lemonade. Okay. You're still pasteurizing these, right? Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. That's hardcore. Yeah, that's good. That's coming from a Brit, you know, a tea. I know. Look, it's not the same sort of tea. It's not the same sort of tea. This isn't a [ __ ] Earl Gray. Uh, no, I appreciate what you guys did with this. We also did it with New Tonic. I really appreciate the fact that you didn't go heavy on the carbonation, you know, it if you're going to have this before a workout, the last thing you want is Yeah. What? Just throw out it. So, no. Yeah, that's lovely. Uh, do you have a sour apple one? We do. Yeah, that's my favorite one. It's a good one. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a popular one. Um, I imagine it's all well and good saying good decisions beget good decisions. You've got this infinite domino tumble that helps you to keep the momentum up. And yes, it is your responsibility to deal with the repercussions of the decisions that you've made, including the string of bad ones for the last quite a long time, if that's the situation that you're in. But it's not particularly reassuring or comforting, I don't think, to somebody who's in the [ __ ] So, what would you say to someone who's going through a bad month or a string of bad months and doesn't see any light at the end of the tunnel? What are your options? You know, like, okay, you're upside down financially. You relationship went back went south. You got whatever those things are. Your credit card debt is up. You you got fired from your job. Okay, you're you're in a terrible situation. What are your options? you what you have to do is well you kind of have to prioritize and execute right like okay I got all these bad things going on in my life what is my biggest problem right now and you got to say okay I got to start with solving that problem and you got to start to going back to I think it was the initial thing that we talked about take take action you've got to take action and move forward and if you don't you the this the downward spiral doesn't end. And if you allow it to continue to go down, that's where it's going to end up. And so you you just have to what are my options? Abandon the whole thing. Like no, that's not the option. That is not the option. What can I make better right now? And start to reassemble things and put them back together. Small steps. I remember uh advice to a friend that was going through a period of low mood and was feeling bad about not being able to get out of bed and wasn't able to show up and all of this stuff. I was like, "Dude, you need to literally see every single micro step. Like, you're in bed. You have gone to the bathroom a couple of times. You haven't seen sunlight in a few days. Uh you've been ordering Uber Eats to the door and like, you know, sort of looking at the floor as the the [ __ ] delivery guy arrives. Like you need to think about getting out of bed in the most rudimentary steps possible. So what's the first thing you need to do? You need to pull the covers off you like that is a step. Okay. Hey like I mean that's you know that's better than it was before. One foot out of the bed, two foot out of the bed, stand up, get a glass of water, put your shoe, you know d slow. You know there's something too. So people ask me about jiu-jitsu and and they they don't like to fight. They don't like the idea of it. they don't like the physical uh close contact, whatever the case may be. Like, and they'll say, "I don't like it. How long, you know, how long do I have to do it for?" And one of the things that I say is you have to do jiu-jitsu until you submit someone while you're training with them. And the reason I say that is because if you can train long enough that you submit someone, all of a sudden you go, "Oh, wow. I I made progress. Yes, I see I see the reward. And so with Yeah, do those little things, but do those little things until at the end of the day you go that was a pretty good day. Like don't because if you just get up and Okay, well I got out of bed and Chris said get out of the bed but I still freaking don't like Yeah, I still feel like crap. Right. Okay. Well, get out and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and you can stop when you get to the end of the day and you go, "Okay, you know what? Today was a pretty freaking cool day and I feel good." Then if you want to go back to living in the hole and ordering Uber Eats, go ahead. But at least give me at least give me the effort to have to make yourself have a good day. You know the uh idea around you do BJJ until you're able to submit someone that shows that you've been there for long enough to have made some progress. Friend made this point to me. It's such a [ __ ] smart point that I've never thought of despite the fact I've lifted weights for like 20 years. Going to the gym, muscular training in the gym is one of the only pursuits in life where during the act of doing the thing, you see the future progress of where you will be if you keep doing the thing. So, if I'm trying to learn Italian with you and we're on Duallingingo or whatever the [ __ ] the app is, at no point during the process of learning Italian do I understand what it would be like in 6 months time to be proficient in Italian. But if you go to the gym and you get a pump, you go, "Hey, if I keep doing this for 6 months, this is what I'll look like flat in a little while." And I think that that it's such an under spoken about uh dynamic of training. I really think that that is one of the biggest feedback loop mechanisms of why it happened. I mean, I guess in BJJ, if you've just learned um a particular movement and you've drilled it and drilled it and drilled it and then you get into rolling and you're like, huh, I've still got it, but next week you're like, where the [ __ ] does my arm like? I can't remember how the thing. So, maybe a tiny bit like that, but there's I don't think there's anything else. You don't get a pump preview anywhere else on the planet except for in the gym. And I think that that's a underspoken about dynamic about why people love it. Yeah, that's that being said, you don't see much progress, you know, the next day, you know. Yeah, you get a pump and depending on your physical makeup, like if you're if you're overweight, you don't see a pump, you know, which is a bummer. And so if you're overweight, you're not going to get any gratification going to the gym external. You're not going to see anything. So, you got to keep going. You got to keep going until you start making some progress. pull, you know, until you can do a pull-up. Once you can finally do a pull-up, okay, I've heard once that there's you can't be overweight and do a pull-up. Like, it's not it's not possible. So, pull-up's a good goal to have. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for years now, and it just got even better. AG1 NextG keeps the same simplicity, one scoop once per day, but now comes with four clinical trials backing it. In those trials, AG1 NextGen was clinically shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels within 3 months and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times even in healthy adults. Basically, they've upgraded the formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients, and clinical validation. Plus, it's still NSF certified for sport, so even Olympic athletes can use it. AG1 genuinely care about holistic health, which is why I've got my mom to take it, my dad to take it, and tons of my friends, too, and why I put it inside of my body every day. And if I found anything better, I would switch. But I haven't, which is why I still use it. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 90-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it and try it for 3 months if you don't like it. They'll just give you your money back. Right now, you can get a year's free supply of vitamin D3 K2 and five free AG1 travel packs, plus that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkagg.com/modernwisdom. That's a really good point. [ __ ] Do you see uh Truit Haynes do the 10,000 then one 10,0002 pull-ups? Yeah, he's I had Cam on the show last week and I'm just I'm like completely blown away by what his kids have done. One of them's a Ranger. Uh and yeah, and True Truit, correct? Um yeah, it's absurd, dude. I was I found that really interesting. Cam, it was he sort of really beautifully opened up in a way that I haven't heard him do it before. And he was like, I don't know how I feel about pushing my boys that hard when they were kids, you know. He's like, I regret in some ways doing them. He he told me this story. Um his son that's a ranger I think was maybe uh um prison warden or something like that. I had, you know, good stable steady job contributing law enforcement stuff. And uh he came home and said to his dad, he's like, "I'm gonna apply to Ranger School, I'm going to become a Ranger." And he's like, "Well, what you know, you've got, and it's all well and good, Cam telling his kids when they're kids, we don't settle for average. You're going to be an overachiever. You're going to work harder than everybody else. We're going to be elite, so on and so forth." But when you're faced with you're going to maybe enter a kinetic future, uh the rubber really meets the [ __ ] road with your principles then, right? Because it's your flesh and blood that's on the line. And he asked why and his son said his own words back to him and said, "Well, you know, we're pains. We don't settle for average. We don't, you know, agree with mediocrity. I'm going to be special elite." And uh Cam had this sort of moment where he was like, "Fuck." Like, "Maybe I've pushed my kids too far. Maybe I pushed them so far that they didn't feel happy or content with a normal a good normal job." Mhm. And what if my son goes off to war and gets [ __ ] ill, killed or injured over there because I've put them in this place? And it was a really interesting I've been fascinated for a very long time with the price that you need to pay to be somebody that you admire, you know, to be somebody that is an extreme performer uh that that is um in a position that most people would find enviable. Mhm. And this is another one of those things. you you don't understand what it is that drives people to do the things that they do. Now, some people have a beautiful balance. You know, they they do it from a place of self-love and wanting to maximize their time on this planet. And it's this, you know, wonderful uh upward trajectory toward a goal that they believe in. But for a lot of people, it's running away from something that they fear. insufficiency, a need for validation, uh comfort, control, um recognition from the teachers that didn't believe in them, the bullies that got them in school, the parents that didn't give them enough attention, what, you know, whatever it is. And I think it's it's just a really lovely redress for most people to think, okay, I think I want this thing, and as we said at the very very beginning, what's the price that I need to pay in order to be able to get this thing? Do I want to pay that? Do I want to pay that price to be true at Hannes? What do I need to do? Well, I need to have a childhood where I'm made to carry a rock up a [ __ ] hill every night after school for like 10 years. Do I want that? Like, do I want to be working so hard that my hands are three times as his hands were the size of your hands? Um, you know, that's where I need to be. Um I just say it was it was really really interesting from Cam you know somebody who is an extreme performer somebody whose sons are also extreme performers to just look at okay it it was really really interesting reflection. Yeah. What what one one thing that's very interesting when you look at like uh basic SEAL training, right? So basic SEAL training, it has something around an 80% attrition rate and it is a it is a tough course of training. And one one thing that is just completely makes no sense whatsoever is in a SEAL class, you'll have a kid from, you know, Massachusetts whose both parents went to Harvard. He went to Harvard and he, you know, spent his summers on the Cape in their third home because the other one's in Vermont, the whole nine yards. And he makes it through SEAL train. And then there'll be another kid from New York State who is also equivalently, you know, a Princeton kid and he played whatever sport at Princeton and he'll quit. So, so you have two silver spoon kids. One of them will make it, one will not. Go to the complete other end of the spectrum and you have some kid that was raised in the bario in LA that grew up, you know, a gang banger or at least gangbanger adjacent and he'll he he'll make it through training and then another guy that's LA gangbanger or gangbanger adjacent, he he'll quit. So you So it's really bizarre. And by the way, then there's the entire spectrum in between of what you just said, you know, oh, I'm going to make it. My girlfriend that dumped me, she said I could never be a SEAL. Cool. And he's going to make it. Or my girlfriend who dumped me who said I'd never be a SEAL, she's right. I'm quitting. Like it it makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah. And and so trying to figure out like who's going to make it and who's not going to make it is really really hard. That's why you need to test. That's why you can't just do the genetic thing before and be like, you know, uh what was that movie where they could predict whether people were going to commit crimes or not? Yeah, I I don't remember the name of the movie, but what? Minority Report. Thank you. Um, you know, Minority Report for the SEALs. Well, you don't even need the test. It's like, we know that you're going to pass. we know that you're going to fail, but you don't know that. And the entire reason for the test is to see what happens when it all comes crashing down. Um on that point, you know, you spoke about the person that's everything is going well for them. We've also talked about the um infinite regress of good dominoes. After a while, I think a lot of people that have consistent success for a long period of time reach a little bit of escape velocity and I'm sort of floating out here. or maybe my life is very different to the one that I was used to before. How, especially given that's, you know, a big trajectory for yourself as well. How have you learn to keep your foot on the gas when things are going well, not when things are going badly? I think it's just exploring new arenas. So, you know, you're doing some stuff and there's something that looks like it might be interesting to me and I'll go try that thing out. and don't always win, but I'll give it a crack and see what happens. And I'm not, you know, I'm very I'm very much an iterative decision maker, meaning I make very small decisions at a time. I don't go all in on some chance. You know, I'm a little bit more methodical than that. And so, yeah, I see something that seems like it's a good opportunity or something that I'm interested in, I'll go give it a crack. And if it works, then cool, I'll do more of it. And if it doesn't work, then well, maybe I'll back off, right? So, by not making huge commitments, at least up front, it allows you to experiment with ideas, play around with different things. Yep. It's just essentially it's maneuver warfare, which is you look at the enemy situation and you probe for areas of weakness, and once you find an area of weakness, you put more resources behind that area and assaulting that area. And if you continue to get good results, you put more resources and you continue to do well. And and if you hit a a wall, and it's interesting that the terms that they use is surfaces and gaps. So like surfaces as I hit, it's like defenses. So if I hit a surface, no penetration. If I hit a gap, I'm going to exploit more. And that's pretty much what I'm doing and what I've been doing for a long time. Okay. So exploring first and then exploiting after it. Exploring first and then exploiting after. Yeah. I mean, certainly one of the lessons from today so far is this. I'm I'm not going to set the bar so unreasonably high that it's intimidating, that it means that it's hard to make the first move, that it's chaotic, that uh it's an irreversible door, you know, that I go through it and I'm like, well, if I've put all of my money into this business, there is no more money to put into any other business. It's the equivalent of that but for confidence for uh momentum for continuing going with good and bad momentum. So that's a yeah I think the small decisions is um like a lovely little framework on that. One of the other common areas I think that people are struggling with young men very directionless at the moment. What's your advice? You speak to a lot of young men, train a lot of young men. What's your advice to young men that are struggling with direction in life? It's interesting because when I hear this, I'm I'm always a little bit puzzled about who these young men are that are directionless cuz I work with a lot of different companies. I have a I have a leadership consulting company. I work with all different kinds of companies. And you know whether it's construction companies, energy companies, software companies, finance companies, like they're a bunch of young men out there and they are getting after it. Whether they're linemen, whether they're on oil rigs, whether they're software developers, like there's all kinds of people that are out there crushing. And so when I hear about people that would you say are lost or directionless? Directionless. Yeah. I mean, what do you want to do with your life? I guess that's my question. What do you want to do with your life? Because you got one life. It's It's going by quickly. And this is something that years ago I I spent a good chunk of my I guess it was my 30s training MMA fighters. And you know, we had a jiu-jitsu gym, we had an MMA gym, and so in the beginning when a when a a potential fighter would come in and they'd be 22 years old and I'd say, "Hey, how old are you?" And they'd say, "I'm 22." And and they'd say, "You know, I want to fight. I want to there's a fight card coming up. I want to be on it." And I was like, I'd tell them, "Listen, you got plenty of time. Like, get better, train, up your skills." And I said that for probably three or four years. And then after 3 or 4 years when guys would come in, I would start telling them the opposite, which is you need to get on it. You need to be in here every day. The you're you're almost out of time. You're 22. You're late. Because I realized I saw a lot of people that didn't have any sense of urgency in their life. And when you don't have a sense of urgency, things aren't going to happen. You need to make things happen. As we already discussed, they're not just going to happen for you. You're not going to become a good fighter unless you make it happen. And you're not going to do anything in life unless you make it happen. So if you feel like right now you're looking around with and you're lost or directionless, I would take about 15 minutes and figure out what the hell you want to do with your life. And I would start getting after it. So that's that's my advice. Take 15 minutes, figure out something that you're into, and go crush that thing and and make it happen. Yeah. I mean, for better or worse, life is really short. And it's this ridiculous irony that you only see in retrospect how short it is, right? It doesn't feel short at the time, but I bet when you get to your 80s and you look back, you think, "Holy [ __ ] that went by in no time at all." Yeah. I had that conversation with my with my mom a couple years ago and you know she said, you know, I was like, "Oh, how's it going talking on the phone?" And she said, "Oh, it's been a pretty rough couple months because this person died, this person died, this person died, and you know, you know, she's almost 80 or something like that." And so people die. And I I kind of I said to her, you know, Mom, all those people that you're talking about that are 80, 85, 87 years old, like they've had a full run at it. I'm like, I' I've buried my friends that are 27 years old, 30 years old, 31 years old. Like, that's that's horrible. And so people that got this full run, man. um be thankful that they got that full run. And right now, if you're a dude and you're 22 years old and you feel like you're directionless, get your [ __ ] together, man, and and go start making things happen. Yeah, that sense of urgency is such an interesting one. You know, we we are prepared prepared to sort of waste years trying to work out what would take us days to do. Um, it's it is it is I I understand why some people have degrees of regret around that because they think, "Fuck, like I I I don't know where that time went. I wish I'd known this thing sooner." But again, if action is the antidote to anxiety, the only way that you can work out what it is that you need to do is by hurrying up and doing it. And again, if the fear of failure, uh, the the fear of the unknown is worse than the actual thing. You know, it it all ties together, I think, everything that we've spoken about. And by the way, you fail. Like, yeah, you're going to blow some stuff. You're going to make some bad decisions. You're going to screw some things up. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Like, that does make for good stories, man. Go get them. Go make them happen. Don't sit around being afraid that you might screw something up. You're going to screw something up. That's guaranteed. Go do it. Get a good story out of it. And also prove to yourself that you're not made of glass. This was the first thing that I learned uh in striking which I'm sure that you at some point when you'd first started learned as well which is the probably as a a newcomer to any striking sport the most important day that you have is the day when you stop doing that when a fist comes towards your face because you realize oh actually if this happens it's okay y and it's that uh symbolically for your life right if I get punched on the nose my life continues and my nose is still there. Yep. Yeah. Go get yourself punched in the face a few times. It's going to be good for you. A quick aside, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year that monitor over a 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that then take that data, put it in a simple dashboard, and give you insights and actionable recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands. But with function, it is only $499. And for the first thousand Modern Wisdom listeners, you get another $100 off, making it 399 bucks. So you can go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. I've heard you say as well, comfort is a slow death. How do you balance the need for rest and recovery uh without letting comfort weaken you in that way? Yeah. Again, this is a good lesson I took away from training MMA fighters, which is you're in a fight camp, you're in a fight camp for 10 weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, it varies depending on when the call comes, whatever. But you get a guy, okay, and Chris, you're my fighter. And Chris, you know, we start your camp and you don't come into camp a slouch, right? You're in decent shape, but now we step it up. And now, because now it's really about your skills should be in the bank. We're going to hone some of the skills. We're going to make them a little bit uh focused for this particular opponent, but now we're just really getting you in good condition to fight. So, we got 10 weeks. We're we start, you know, we're doing two a days. We're sparring. We're doing conditioning workouts and you know, you've got your three training partners that you're sparring with. Sometimes you're grappling, sometimes you're punching, sometimes you're doing a combo. We we used to call it shootute boxing or or box wrestling. Like you're going to do the whole thing. And four weeks into it, five weeks into it, you come into, you know, you come into the gym and I'm watching you and the grappling guy that you normally tear up, he gets the best of you. And then we time you on the sprints and you lose to your sprint time by eight seconds. And I look at you and I go, "Hey man, tomorrow day off, go eat steaks." And I might even say, "Take two days off." Depending on how rough you look. So it's very obvious. It's It's so obvious when someone is overtraining it. It it anyone can see it. You don't have to be a genius. And so it's the same thing with like life. If you start going backwards in life, you're probably trying to take on too much stuff and you could use a breather. So, take a breather. Interesting that uh our ability to objectively look at the performance of somebody else compared with our ability to objectively look at our own performance. Um, and also, you know, the do I know if I'm selling myself short and if this is a moment where I need to push through versus I've gone too hard and it's actually time for me to rest and recover. I think this internal the balance between having an internal uh jock and an internal tyrant um I think is is a delicate one and it's one where you go [ __ ] like is this how how close to the red line am I here? Do I deserve the time off or do I not? That's another one of my rules is uh oh, you need a day off today. You can't take it today. You can take it tomorrow. So, if you wake up tomorrow today and you're like, I feel like crap today. Cool. Feel like crap today? Go do what you're supposed to do. If you wake up the next day and you go, "Yeah, I'm really I'm I'm hurting." Cool. Take that day off because you can get through today even if you need a day off. But if you really truly need a day off and you plan and and you take it tomorrow, I'm okay with it. That's a sick idea. James Clear, this is the best idea around habits, which is basically the inverse of what you're talking about. He says, um, never miss two days in a row. Yeah. That, uh, one missed day is a mistake. Two missed days is the start of a new habit. And, uh, it's just, it is one of the best ways even with, you know, it just stops anything spiraling. All that we've talked about this compounding down, compounding, it it stops that from happening. Uh, yeah. Two days off not allowed. I think trying to just be a little bit more objective with that. You You're able to see the numbers of your guys, the sprint numbers. They're not there. Do you ever do a weight do you ever did you ever have to do like a hard weight cut for anything or did you always fight a super No, I I I would at like my actual competition days in jiu-jitsu, there was the open class and then there was like the heavyweight and it was like 2123 was the weight. And so I I would have to cut like maybe 8 lb 10 lbs to get down to 213. But I was never a guy that was cutting, you know, 25 pounds. Now, I've had to do that with my kids cuz my kids all wrestle and I've and I've done it with a a million different fighters as well. So, um yeah, I've been through a lot of weight cuts, just not heavy ones. Yeah, the most I've ever cut was probably like 12 10 lbs, right? Yeah. I uh every single time that there's a UFC card on and some of the fighters have got a big YouTube presence, invariably the most played videos of watching them go through the weight cut. Like, people just like watching suffering, right? And um yeah, I I don't know what it is that's so compelling about that. It's the same. Have you watched the tour to France Unchained documentary on Netflix, bro? Oh, well, check it out. It is so [ __ ] good. So, it's like Drive to Survive the Formula 1 thing, but it's about the tour. And the beautiful thing about that is it's protracted suffering, right? It's protracted uh storyline and narrative. And there's stage, I don't know, 25 stages, something like that of the tour to France. Tons of them. Some of them are speed stages. Some of them are hills, some of them are, you know, all and you get to see the ups and downs. There's this sort of permanent risk of injury. There's a permanent risk of crashes. There's always some catastrophes, especially that start at the very, very beginning. And you get to see it's not like in powerlift. This is why there'll never be an amazing powerlifting documentary because the uh sport is done in 3 seconds. It's like you went down, you came back up. Well done. Or you didn't, right? And either way, it's over. We like seeing the same as the weight cut. You know, you're going to check in 1 hour and you're going to check in 2 hours, you're going to check in 3 hours and get back in the sauna, get back on the bike, get back in the bath. But they towels back on you, wrap the [ __ ] thing around your head here, have some ice, spit it back out into the, you know, all the way along. And we love to see that narrative as it goes. I wonder what would h I mean, they do those um uh BJJ matches that are no time limit. Yeah. Right. And some of those go for three, four hours, which to me is awesome. It is. It's like that's the ultra endurance race. It's the ultra endurance race. It's also the That's kind of There is no excuses, right? There's no It's just you and another person. There's no time limit. And I think those are a very good way to do it. Yeah. Uh interesting stat that I found out. The US Army's recruitment numbers just hit the highest levels in 15 years. Mhm. What do you think's driving that? I think probably the new administration coming in. So, I think you've got a administration and and you know the that is very pro-American and patriotic and I think that that's definitely helping those numbers. What do you make of Pete Hegath and everything that's going on there? I think Pete is I think people are I think establishment people inside that inside that world are scared because he is a change agent and I think he's bringing change and I think he's aggressively bringing change which hey when you aggressively do things sometimes some things are going to get like there's going to be some collateral damage and that's one of those things that I think he has decided is worth it and so I think he's making aggressive change and I think some people don't like it and that's the way it is. Yeah, there's some report thing that I saw the 120 high ranking roles or Oh yeah, I think he got rid of a bunch of flag officers. Uh admirals and generals. Yep. Yeah. Uh, nine fourstar general positions and 80 one, two, and three star roles. Check. That sounds like a lot. Do you know I mean I don't know if they have this information readily available, but I remember when uh in World War II in World War II, I think we had less generals and admirals than we have. Right. Yes. So that's ridiculous. Yeah. And you got this increasingly topheavy. Yes. and and and it's every everyone you know the military is an organ is a human organization and so when you have the ability when people's human nature takes over and I want to I want to build my organization to be a little bit bigger than someone else's organization because it's going to benefit us and it's going to make me better and it's going to make our our chain of command higher then people do that and they've been doing it for a long time yeah the goal of reducing salary expenses by streamlining upper ranks reallocating leadership respons responsibilities to lower ranking officers. Uh Army is expected to absorb a significant share of the reductions while the Marine Corps and Space Force will see minimal impact due to their already lean leadership structures. Yeah, the Marine Corps stays lean. Um I'm not I don't know too much about Space Force. The Army and the Navy probably have excessive, you know, jet flag and general officers. And again, he's right. You shouldn't have you you should have junior people in charge of things that are commensurate to their level of responsibility. It doesn't take an admiral or a general to do certain jobs that you know a lieutenant colonel or a or a major. If you look at what the majors did in World War II, it's like insane compared to what a what's a what level is a major at? An04, right? So that's like the first field grade officer in the Army or the Marine Corps in the Navy would be called a lieutenant commander. That's what I was. I was a lieutenant commander in the Navy. But if you look at what those guys did in World War II, it's like insane. And we, you know, we we just I think it's a good job getting back to that. I think it's awesome. Bring things closer back down toward the battlefield as well, presumably. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder I wonder how much of it is just this difficulty this inevitable bloat that comes along with any organization that's been around for ages. Yeah, 100%. What are you going to do? Like fire this like this there's no role for us to um elevate you into. You remember when uh Elon Musk took over Twitter? Everyone remembers it. He fired what did he fire? Two/34ers of the force. Yeah. It was like threequarters of the of the team. Even 10 Asian guys running the entire company and and people freaked out like oh it's never going to survive it. I mean obviously it survived and it it in many aspects got better but you're right when Jack Dorsey started Twitter there was probably three employees right and then over time it grew and he hired engineers I'm sure in the beginning and software engineers and programmers and eventually eventually he hired someone that was in charge of something that didn't really matter and then that person hired a team and then that person hired five more people and so you guess it's it's bureaucratic bloat that happens and has it happened in a Department of Defense. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so Pete Hgsth comes in and says, "Yeah, yeah, we're not doing it anymore." Which is very contrary to what a normal bureaucrat would do. Cuz a normal bureaucrat would say, "Oh, you're putting me in charge of something. Cool. I'm going to make that something as big as I possibly can and bring as much money as I can." He invited Doge to come in there and have a look. Tell me where we can save money. And if you don't think there's money that can be saved in the de department of defense, you're crazy. Like, of course there is. How much how many billions of dollars are unaccounted for every single It's insane. Totally insane. It's totally insane. So, I I think seeing that attitude and I think is what's helping the recruiting a lot. The uh funny thing about the Elon pivot that maybe even relates to this and to the level of recruitment as well. I remember Elon put some job listing out saying um if you want to work harder than you ever have at anything, the most difficult problems, 18our days, etc., etc., uh apply here, twitter.com/job or whatever. And the responses were this is uh industrial revolution era style uh tyranny. Um there is no respect for workers and all the rest of this stuff. And I was like, hey, look, I not everybody is built to do that. And if you're not built to do that, then I imagine that this looks like a threat to you. But you don't understand what it's like to be in the top 0.1% of coders on the planet to whom if you were to say you're not allowed to do this, you would be robbing them of a source of of real uh well-being and pleasure. There are people who live to do that. They want to sleep under their desk. They want to be able to work on the hardest problems, so on and so forth. and you get to attract that kind of talent, but you never get to attract that kind of talent who are the most efficient, who are going to come up with the best kind of ideas for as long as there's all of this [ __ ] bloat and bureaucratic red tape and and [ __ ] Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that you think, okay, Twitter, maybe it's important, maybe it's not. I think we can all agree that [ __ ] national defense is pretty important, right? So if there's a if there is a place where you should not be allowing bureaucratic [ __ ] and bloat and unnecessary uh roles to be in there, it's probably in the Department of Defense. Yes. And and like I said, there's going to be some collateral damage and people will freak out about the collateral damage, but when something happens and you oh yeah, we we got rid of this program and it turns out that program was actually something that looks like we should keep. Okay, cool. We'll bring it back. It's not it's not that big of a deal. And it passed the test, by the way, because everyone, ah, that's not let's not get rid of that program. Okay, cool. Yep, you're right. Show me the show me the numbers. Yep, let's bring that program back in. So, I think that it's something, you know, it's it's revolutionary what's happening in the government and yeah, I think it's going to go well. What do you think the future of warfare is going to look like? you someone who's spent uh a lot of time on the ground in kinetic situations, but are we on the verge of some new revolution with how this sort of war is going to be fought? Uh yeah, absolutely. And if you watch what's going on in Ukraine right now, it's new. It's a new form of warfare. And so, you know, the drones, have you heard about the drones over there? Have you heard about these drones that are powered by uh fiber optic cables? or they're not powered, but that's how they're controlled because the radio signals can be disrupted and so you have to have a direct line and they're using fiber optic lines. So when the drone flies, it's it's dragging like a fiber optic cable behind it, but it's tiny. It's like the size of a of a hair. Oh. And so there's on the battlefield there's just all these spid spiderw webs everywhere. But this is just things are going to advance. They're going to advance very rapidly and we we'll see what happens. You know, I've called it for a long time that we weren't going to need manned fighter man fighter aircraft anymore, but we're still making them, but I mean that that just can't last that much longer. And then you go to ground warfare like, okay, we're going to have some robots that are coming and then you have drones on top of robots. I mean, drones are drones are robots. They're It's weird that making something fly is so much easier than making it walk across along the ground. So yeah, it's drones. And they'll make drones that it's it's going to be a new form of warfare. And so what we need to do is the most important thing is keep an open mind and not get the same thing I said about iterative decision-m, right? Like you can't go all in on some specific type of drone right now because that drone is going to be obsolete when they figure out a way to eliminate the fiber optic cables or whatever the case may be. And and I would, you know, in the back of my mind, I always think that ultimately like you are going to need a human with boots and a gun that's going to go and secure and hold a place, right? I still think you have to have that capability at some juncture when the robots are done or when the when they figure out the defense for the drones, the defense for the robots and they figure out an EMP that disrupts all the digital and all those things just flop over and die or whatever the case may be. So, you got to train that uh soldier to be able to be on the ground and go and make things happen. But as time goes on, I am definitely seeing less and less probability of that. Something you still need to prepare for, but less and less probability. The the robots are coming. I wonder, you're apparently one of them. Uh I wonder whether this next 10 20 years or so uh is going to be an exciting time to be behind the scenes in the military because you know we had what from you could probably tell me better but I would imagine something like from 19 50 to 2000 maybe sort of mid 2000s largely slowly iterative technology similar kind of battle formations you're you're making small adjustments here and there. Uh look at me manplaining to you. Um, and then 2020, 2020 to 2025, a [ __ ] a whole world of change. And you think, huh, I now a lot of the previous plans are out of the window, which means that you need new tactics, you need new strategies, new approaches. And I wonder I wonder who is the person that's in charge of coming up with those new tactics because yeah I mean experience like yours that understands what's going on. How applicable is that now moving forward? Where are the principles that you can use and where are the ones where you think ah that's we're in a different world now? Yeah. Well, as I look at it, you know, again, the principles that I talk about and the principles that I teach, they're all still applicable. They're they're 100% applicable, but you're applying them with a new technology, which is what always happens. Like you you the the principles of warfare don't change just like human nature doesn't change. Like it it doesn't change. Warfare is based on humans and humans apply human nature to everything that they're doing. So, but but I think one of the most important things that we have have to do is like I said, keep an open mind because things are going to change so rapidly and if you get caught in one idea of warfare, you're going to miss the one that that flanks you, right? Okay. You're going to overcommit to something that doesn't end up being Yeah. Yeah. Dude, it is uh it's [ __ ] wild. I had um Joe Londale, part of Anderil, who's also part of Palunteer. And um I had him on and he was talking about these [ __ ] bullets from space. There's like bullets that can be fire, these rods that can be fired from space now. And that, you know, like it's this weird blend between ground warfare and space warfare. And the it's it's insane. So yeah, I between the evolution that you've seen of these tanks are worth millions of dollars. These drones with a little can of C4. Yeah. Are worth less than a grand. And there's particular weakness vector spots on the tank. So the drones find those. Then the tanks patch that up. Then the drones get better. Then the tanks put nets on the front. Then the drones have little blades that cut through them. You know, it's uh it's like watching the evolution of a predator and a prey, but happening month by month, you know, with a change and a change and a change and a change and a change. Yep. And if you think you know everything and you think you've got the problem solved, you're going to get caught. So, keep an open mind. Interesting. You know, people always talk about this how um war drives forward innovation uh because there's real mortal consequences. Like, I want to fly. That's nice. It's like we need to protect the skies. that's slightly different. You know, if [ __ ] uh the Wright brothers were around only a couple of years later when World War I had started, it's like maybe they would have got a bit. I mean, they went pretty quick. Um but yeah, I and you're seeing now exactly why that's the case because people are coming up with all manner of garage solutions made with cellar tape and cable ties to fix really really what was it the they were talking about a Javelin is a million dollar uh missile meant to shoot down a $500 drone. That's it. It's not a good way to win wars. No, but these EMP things uh that Joe was telling me about, I can't remember. It's like gadalinium or this special type of um um element that's inside of this super high frequency capacitor that deploys a really targeted pulse and it can shoot these things. Like this is [ __ ] insane. Uh so yeah, you know, it's not been that long since you were Yeah. on the and to your point like I would I will watch a World War II movie or a Vietnam movie and I'm like oh yeah I see what's happening like I I done something like that right there you know and and now you go well I didn't have that happening I didn't have a freaking drone flying over me trying to drop a grenade on me or just just the advances are so rapid yeah or a guy I would imagine now that in some of the special forces you some point in the not too distant future there'll be a [ __ ] head of robot operations or something. There'll be a guy who's got a a [ __ ] suit and a laptop and a drone and he can deploy all [ __ ] out of a Batman belt. And and and honestly, I mean, when I think about this, I I always wished that instead of creating space force, they created a cyber force, like a a totally separate cyber warfare because basically we're talking about the conflict of ideas, right? That's what's happening in war is essentially the physical manifestation of a conflict of ideas. And so what does that mean? That means information. And now we have your information versus my information. So what does that boil down to in this day and age? It boils down to cyber warfare and information operations. You know, uh how can I make the people on your team believe the ideas that I have instead of your ideas? That's media propaganda. propaganda, cyber, internet, that's what it is. And so I wish that we would have started an arm of that instead of Space Force. And but people get really scared because when I say, "Hey, Chris, what I want to do is I want to develop uh a weapon system that changes the way you think or the way your people think or the way the enemy think, people, that makes people really nervous. You're more comfortable. Most people are more comfortable if I want to make a weapon system that will, you know, massacre a bunch of you in a in a brutal way. Yeah. I want to fire bullets of space that will take out whole neighborhoods or whatever. People are more comfortable with that than me saying, I want to develop something that is going to change the way you think and change the ideas in your head. That for some reason makes people more scared. But in my opinion, that should be what the focus is rather than just upping the physical mechanical massacre. You're looking to get sort of further up the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Further up the stack. Preemptive the whole thing. Text Tulsi. Tell Tell her she can I'm sure she can [ __ ] find a few billion dollars. Tulsi's working on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but no, Cyber Force is I mean I have to assume that this is contributed to through uh uh every different agency at the moment has little wings that are on to this. But you're right that it is a war of ideas that starts a war of bullets. And if you can try and cut off at the knees, I this a point to do with uh cut off at the knees. Uh when you think about are there aliens in space? One of two answers. Uh one is no there aren't and the other is yes there aren't. So either we're completely alone or there's others out there. Both answers are equally terrifying. And I think when you look at um some of the western anti-westernism and I have to assume that we are able to create eastern anti-esternism and Russian anti-Russianism as well. Uh there's one of two answers for that. One is this is because of foreign actors that are encouraging us to think badly of ourselves and to fight among our own group. And the other is we're doing this to ourselves. And the same as the aliens thing, both answers are equally terrifying. Holy [ __ ] We're either being puppeted or we're turning around and kicking the ball into our own goal over and over and over again. And uh something that is able to step I mean [ __ ] me. Was it Hitler had gerbles? That was his like you know this is not new but the technology is yeah that's you know what what success would Hitler have had if he wasn't if he didn't have gerbles? if he wasn't so good with propaganda, if he wasn't so good with media, if he didn't have control over all that, well, he wouldn't have had near the success that he had. So, I would recommend we And again, that sounds terrible, right? Well, Hitler did it. It worked, right? Yeah. It's like, well, that type of warfare is how he had a massive amount of success. It was psychological warfare that he was using inside of his own country to convince people to think a certain way. Hearts and minds. telling the this cliche of winning hearts and minds. It's not just hearts and minds of your own people, but it's, you know, decreasing the hearts and minds of the enemy. Oh, maybe should we be doing this? Is this actually what we should? And I mean, you it's a a really really good point to bring up because the two main conflicts that we've got going on at the moment, Ukraine and uh the Middle East, nobody can agree on what's happening. Nobody can agree on why it's happened. This great idea, it's called knowingness. So uh a lot of the time issues of belief and dogmatism in the modern world are laid to the feet of misinformation. So uh poor information is the reason for this being that and say well if only if the problem is misinformation the solution is better information. Right? If you understand something that isn't correct we just need to give you something that corrects that misbelief and away we go. But knowingness, which is believing that you have an answer to the question before the question has been asked, it's like an anti-intellectual curiosity. It sort of insulates you from uh updating your beliefs. It's a way bigger problem than misinformation because if it's misinformation, you can fix it with new better information. But if it's knowingness, you're completely you're completely averse. You know, there's no penetration. There's no way that I can get through to you. And this is the I think the the odd uh realization when people are so [ __ ] ardent. We know that the fact is settled around this. We know the fact is settled around the Middle East and this is why it happened and we know the fact is settled around Ukraine. It's like hey dude you're saying that you know the fact is settled. No one can agree on the facts. How the [ __ ] can the facts be settled? You think that your fact is settled. somebody else has a different I mean even people talk about like what do we mean by facts now we're in like such a a posttruth era it's insane insane it is and it doesn't surprise me maybe even that I don't know what to believe maybe apathy confusion nihilism uncertainty maybe that's the outcome maybe the outcome isn't even to give you some sort of narrative that you're supposed to believe maybe the outcome that you're trying to get to is I don't know any narrative to believe. Mhm. And that makes you more malleable and more manipulative down the line. Yeah. Well, I think in in this case is just trying to have an open mind about what you see happening and not not completely buying into any narrative and just kind of seeing what's happening and understanding that that's the way things are going to go. Like we're going to have people killing each other. This is un the unfortunate horrible uh aspect of mankind is that we have wars and we kill each other and we we've been doing it the whole time. So that's a beautiful horrible thing when the when the Yeah, it is. But when when the uh collateral damage is broadcast to the world, you know, I even Vietnam, we would have got uh Magnimar the Magnamara fallacy. The entire point, the problem with that was looking at the wrong numbers, but people were seeing the numbers. Right now you're seeing every civilian casualty, every building that was hit accidentally or on purpose or is, you know, a tactic and oh, they didn't send a message that said that you need to leave 10 minutes before or they used a particular size of arament that wasn't permitted for this area. you get into this tied up in red tape and legal ease about what the specific and it's just you're drowning in information and you're seeing I guess for the first time ever you're seeing collateral damage which I have to assume is a byproduct of every kinetic conflict in human history. uh seen that the the big on the big I mean all kinds of mistakes to talk about in Vietnam but one of the things was the battle of the Irang Valley um which was like the first major like like engagement 1965 US military against the the Vietkong and the North Vietnamese. And when we got done with that battle, we had killed like a thousand of them and they had killed a hundred of us. And what McNamera and his uh what was their crew called the Anyways, the nerds, they they had some name for them. Um anyways, what those guys calculated was, "Oh, Kelly, see we can kill a thousand of them. They only killed a hundred of us, so we can beat them." M and what they didn't realize is that you kill one American and we are devastated and the Vietkong and the North Vietnamese and the communists were like, "Oh, you killed a hundred of ours. Cool. We have 100 more." And so we were we had different a different datam to start with. We had a different premise of what we were willing to sacrifice. And so this is what we're seeing around the world is like what is what are these various sides willing to sacrifice for their cause? And we in America look at it and we have a totally different perception analysis of what it what it is on on any sides. We have a hard time comprehending other people's conflicts. And we've gone into, you know, we go into countries, oh, of course, everyone's going to want this. Everyone's going to want this outcome. We don't understand their perspective. And so, we don't understand what outcome they actually want. And when you go in and try and impose your outcome on people, they don't like it. That doesn't work with your kids. It doesn't work with your employees. And it doesn't work when you try and do it to whole nations. So, you have to consider that as you make moves. M you know who you should have on the show? A guy called John Lyle. So he wrote a book called The Dirty Tricks Department. It was a a book about the founding of the OSS and the insane tactics that they used in World War II to try and stop World War II. So one of my favorites was they found the gardener who grew the vegetables that were eaten by Hitler at the Eagle's Nest. Eagle's nest. And there was a psychological profile done of Hitler saying that he had a fragile hold on his masculinity. So they tried to get this gardener to inject the vegetables with female sex hormones so that they Hitler's mustache would fall off and his voice would go soprano and he he he would lose his mind and then they would win the war. So that was one of them. Um I didn't realize that uh uh I think it's foxes in Japan are a symbol of foroding. M so they wanted to create glow-in-the-dark foxes and put them onto the shores of Japan so that they would demoralize the Japanese, but they couldn't get a hold of them enough foxes. So they like use raccoons instead. They're like, "Okay, we're going to get these raccoons and we're going to paint them with luminous paint like foxes." But then they put them in the sea and all the paint washed off. So then they got a PA system and a huge fox head on the side of a ship and they were broadcasting. So like it's just so good. But he's got another one coming out which is the OSS came into the CIA and then I think this one is the the transitions through that. So interesting. But when you think about all of the different strategies psychologically that have been tried to be okay, we're going to try and interject here. We're going to try and interject that. And I certainly prefer prefer those over I prefer painted raccoons over bombs. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they might be the same. Jo, dude, you're awesome, man. I appreciate the heck out of you. Thank you for coming here. Thank you. What have you got coming up next? What can people expect? You've got uh uh Chris Pratt uh doing starring as the dramatized version of one of your books. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. Is that filmed? Finish. It's uh filmed. Yep. So, we already filmed it. Um we filmed it in August, September, October. We filmed it up actually around here in LA and uh Pomona area. And yeah, we we filmed it. Um it's in the editing process now. It's and it's, you know, so I've seen like the it's it's it's going to be awesome. It's gonna it's going to help a lot. Dad, executive producer, Hollywood, man. The triple threat. Yeah, I guess. Uh, yeah, dude. I can't wait to see that. It's awesome. Chris is great. And, uh, I appreciate the [ __ ] out of you for coming here. So, thank you. Thanks, brother. Good seeing you, man. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode with Joo, how about David Gogins right here? Come on, press it.