Transcript of Most Replayed Moment: Your Excuses Will Destroy You, To Be Disciplined Is To Be Free!

And at 19 years old, you applied to be a Navy SEAL. Okay, so I have to ask a very dumb question here, which is what is a Navy SEAL?

So there's special operations, which I guess from England, this is the SAS and the SPS. Those are the two units that we get compared to the most. And So a Navy SEAL is a part of the Navy, but you're the special operations component of the Navy. The term SEAL is actually an acronym which stands for Sea, Air, and Land, because even though we're in the Navy, we are trained to operate in the sea, in the air. In the sea, meaning we dive, in the air, meaning we parachute and repel, and then on the land, meaning we conduct land warfare operations. You take all those things, combine them together, and that's what our job consists of.

I was under the assumption that to become a Navy SEAL or to be in the SAS, you had to have 10, 20 years of military service. You had to have an established military service, and then you get some pop up on your computer and it says, Come to this building over here. And so to hear that you applied at 19 years old, I was like, oh, I didn't know teenagers could apply.

Yeah, no, I was 18 years old when I joined the Navy and I joined on a contract that got me sent to SEAL training, and it took a year to get through. So I was 19 when I finished that up. But there There's always debates about, well, don't you want someone that's more experienced? I actually love the fact that I was basically raised in the SEAL teams. It was just awesome. It was an awesome way to grow up. It was an awesome way to spend those years of your life learning the trade that you wanted to learn. I thought it was awesome, and I think it worked out pretty well. Usually, the percentage of people that make it through SEAL training is about 20 %. People that are under the age of 20, it goes down to about 5 %. So, yeah, I was one of those small percentage of people that are very young but still make it through.

And what is the characteristics that they're ultimately testing with the design of that training? What are they testing for?

Will you keep going?

In the face of?

Whatever.

Well, they call one of the weeks Hell Week, don't they? So they try and simulate hell by the sounds of it.

Yeah, they try and simulate hell. They actually were trying to simulate combat initially. When they created that week, they wanted to take as much combat simulation from World War II at the time and put it into a very compressed schedule so they could create these frogmen to go overseas and conduct operations because World War II was going on. And so they needed to compress the training cycle. So they compressed a bunch of combat simulation into, it's about five and a half days, no sleep, lots of physical activity, lots of stress, lots of pain, and lots of people quit.

How many people quit in that particular week?

I would say most of the people that quit, probably of... It's probably 80% of the quitters quit in that week.

It's been long discussed. I think there's a book called Grit, where they discuss That's what it takes in terms of character traits to get through these kinds of endurance tasks. People often think it's those that have the biggest muscles or that do the most, I don't know, cardiovascular exercise. But from what you've observed, and this is maybe a broader point about adversity in life, is there any similarities in the people that are able to get themselves through adversity?

There's some internal drive that you either have or you don't have. And if you have it, You won't quit. And if you don't have it, you're going to quit. And it breaks people. The other thing is you might be an exceptional swimmer, and you might be exceptional upper body strength, but you're not that fast of a runner. They're going to find that out. Or you might be a fast runner by a bad swimmer. They're going to find out what your weakness is. You might not like the cold. They're going to see it. You might not like the boat on your head. They're going to see it. They might see that you have a bad temper. They're going to find that and they're going to pick that thing to either make you come out the other side or make you quit. It's a pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty profound thing to look at from the outside and see it. Because when I was going through it, it was just I was young. I didn't care. I was going to do it. There was nothing that they were going to tell me that was going to make me quit.

I never thought about quitting. If they told me to get back in the water again, let's go. They told me to put that on my shoulder, let's go. Put the boat on my head, let's go. I didn't care.

Can you teach that? Let's go. We're going to jump back in the water, let's go.

I think that's one of the few things that you learn in basic SEAL training is to shrug your shoulders and go forward. One of the things they do is they'll line you up on the ocean. And this is in California. Sometimes people think that California is nice warm water, but it's not. It's 55 degrees, and I don't know what that translates to in center grade, but it's cold. And one of the things they do is they'll line you up and they say interlock arms and you get arm and arm with the guy next to you, and they say forward march, and you march in the water, and they say take seats, and you sit down, and they leave you in there. It's called surf torture. You just sit there. After a while, they'll pull you up out of the water, they'll line you up, and the doctor will come down and see if anyone has hypothermia. If no one has hypothermia or signs of hypothermia yet, get back in the water. And they just keep doing that. So, yeah, what you learn to do is, okay, I'm going to go forward. I can't get out of this.

I'm going to go forward. I'm not going to quit. So I'm going to go forward, bring it on. And I think if there's anything that you learn, it's to keep pushing through things that suck. And I would love to say, Oh, keep pushing through adversity. But this isn't adversity. This is just things that suck. It's one One level below adversity. Adversity is when you're having a challenge. This is just something that's going to suck and you're going to have to push through it.

You talked about the role that having a why plays. I was thinking about if I just lost my girlfriend or I'd gone through some severe rejection or someone in my life had died and my parting promise to them was I was going to do this, the role that having some reason to carry on plays in how we handle adversity or things that suck. Have you seen any patterns in Is it important? Because there's books behind me that literally say, Start with your why and those kinds of things.

Yeah. And that's anything from, Oh, my girlfriend dumped me. I'm going to prove her wrong, to something that's much more significant, which is my girlfriend died and I told her I was going to do this, and I'm going to do it for her. Both those things, depending on the human being, can be a strong enough why to get through. And I have friends that were... I have one friend that was in Vietnam. He was in Vietnam. And when he showed up to SEAL Training, he didn't know what it was. He thought he was volunteering to be a diver, a diver that would do construction under boats. He thought that was what it was. And so he showed up and they're like, this is seal training. He's like, what's a seal? And they explain it to him. And then he went and made it through. All that torture, all that mayhem. And why? Because that was what they were telling him to do. And he was, okay, that's what we're doing. Let's go. So again, I would love to be able to give you this profound anchor that people need to have. But it's like, do you want to do this or not?

Which is what I think a lot of it boils down to. Do you actually want to do this or not? Do you actually want to do this or not? Because if you actually want to do it, what's going to stop you? Nothing. And if you don't really want to do it, what's going to stop you? Just about anything that comes up, just about any obstacle that gets in your way becomes an excuse. It becomes a reason. It becomes a rationale for not proceeding down that path. And this is interesting, too. When you talk to people that went to SEAL training that didn't make it, most of the time, it's some reason. There's a medical reason. There's a family problem. There's very few people that look at you and say, Oh, I quit because it sucked, which is what, by the way, which is what happens to the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people that don't make it through seal training, and by this, I mean 80, 90% of the people that don't make it through seal training, they didn't make it through because they quit. Then there's a small percentage that had a medical problem, and then there's a small percentage that got performance dropped, meaning they couldn't perform the runs, the swims, the technical aspects of the job, and they failed, and they get dropped.

But the vast majority of people, they quit, but they don't usually say that. Even in their mind, they probably don't believe They probably believe, well, it was my leg, and once my leg was hurting, I knew I was going to have a hard time on the runs. I wasn't going to be able to make the runs. That's why I quit. But it wasn't really quitting. It was because my leg. Like I said, it's a Very strange and really a mystical thing.

Excuses. You're talking there about people making excuses. What have you come to learn about the nature of excuses? And if they are our friends, our enemies, if they're ever useful.

Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you if you let them.

It doesn't sound like a friend.

No, it's definitely not a friend. It's definitely not a friend. It can seem like a friend, just like your friend that keeps feeding you drinks at the bar can seem like a friend. But are they really helping you in any way, shape, or form? No, they're not. They're not. So when your excuses make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you didn't execute on what you needed to execute on, Then they can make you feel better. But they're not helping you. They're not helping you at all.

Is that when you think about Extreme Ownership, which is the title of this book here in front of me, is our excuse is the opposite? Excuses in blame. Is that the opposite of extreme ownership?

That is the opposite of extreme ownership. Extreme Ownership? That is the opposite of Extreme Ownership. Extreme Ownership is this went wrong, this failed, didn't accomplish this. It's not the fault of my boss. It's not the fault of my girlfriend. It's not the fault of my parents. It's not the fault of the weather. It's my fault. I'm going to take ownership of it and I'm going to fix it. That's what extreme ownership is. This is a very difficult thing to do because it hurts. Because when you look around at your life and you look around at your job and your financial situation and your relationship and your physical health, and when you look at all those things and all the problems that you may have with those things, and you say, The reason I have all All those problems is because of me. That can hurt. That can sting. And a lot of times, our ego rejects that and makes excuses and lies. And then we don't have to change anything. And then nothing changes.

If someone was on the extreme end of that disease of excuse and blame and all of those things, is there anything that you could do or you would advise them to do to walk back from there to get over the other side? Because I think we can all think of people in our lives, and maybe even ourselves at times, who have gotten into a chronic pattern of using excuses and blame as a form of self-defense because we don't want to turn that mirror back at us and have to confront reality. I think sometimes, if I think about some of my closest friends, those that have the lowest self-esteem will use excuses and blame the most because it's personal Responsibility might not, in the short term, at least, do anything for my already low self-esteem. So I'm going to blame the world as self-defense. What's step one to get out of that?

Well, unfortunately, what happens a lot And you may or may not have seen this, but I would assume you've seen this at some point in your life. People, and this is a term, there's a term, it's rock bottom. This is a term that we hear for someone that's addicted, someone that's an alcoholic, someone that's physically let themselves go, someone that's put themselves into a situation with their finances or their work or whatever, where they reach rock bottom. And that rock bottom, what happens is I I believe what rock bottom is, is as you look around all the excuses that you've made, they're not there anymore. And so now what rock bottom is, you realize that this problem, whether it's alcohol, whether it's your finances, the problem is you. And And normally, or hopefully in the best case scenario, rock bottom is the beginning of the upward climb, the upward path. Sometimes rock bottom leads to disaster and complete abandonment of hope. But when the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, it hurts, but it's also unbelievably empowering because if these problems are because of me, then I'm capable of fixing these problems.

So even though extreme ownership hurts and is painful, it's also liberating because now you have control over your fate and over your destiny, and that is a glorious thing.

Discipline is freedom. The title of your book here Discipline equals freedom. Now that seems like it's untrue because when people think of discipline, they think of rigidity and taking away their freedom, having to be disciplined. Why does discipline equal freedom?

Because the more discipline you have in your life, the more freedom you will end up with. So if you lack the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up being a slave to disease. If you lack the discipline to work hard, save your money, you will end up a slave to finances. If you lack the discipline to manage your time correctly, you will end up with no free time. If you have self-discipline, if you have the discipline to save your money and work hard and invest your money properly, if you have the discipline to manage your time correctly and not waste a bunch of time, if you have the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up with freedom. I know it's a counterintuitive, it's contrarian, but I've seen this over and over and over again. If you want freedom in your life, you have to have discipline.

There's going to be some kid listening to this now. I always think about the personas that are listening, and they are eating Doritos off their belly.

Spit them out. Spit them out. Start now. Because if you're a kid right now and you're eating Doritos off your belly, I know they taste good and there's some immediate gratification, and I get that. But I'm going to tell you, it starts right now. Throw that bag of Doritos away. Get rid of it. Go do some pushups. Go spend $12 at the hardware store and hang up a pull-up bar in your room and start doing pull-ups. If you can't do one pull-up, hang on that bar, and you're going to start to get a little bit stronger. You're going to start to get a little bit healthier. You're going to start to get more focused. You're going to start to become more resilient, and you're going to start to be able to do a pull-up, and you're going to start to eat healthy all the time, and you're going to start to understand the world better, and you're going to start to progress in every aspect of your life. And you'll see that if you have that discipline right now, you're going to end up with freedom. And if you don't have that discipline, and you keep you've eaten those Doritos, and you don't work hard, and you don't exercise, and you don't apply yourself, you're going to end up shackled.

You're going to end up shackled by a boss that you don't like doing a job that you don't like to do with sicknesses and diseases that you don't want, relying on People that you can't even count on, alone. And you don't have to. But if you have discipline, if you have discipline, you will attain freedom.

And it starts with just spitting the Doritos out.

Starts with spitting the Doritos out. Yes, indeed.

One of the things you do, which is... I mean, you're super famous for it, is this idea of waking up early. Now, I'm not someone that wakes up early.

I know. You know alarm clock and you're usually up by 11: 00.

So no meetings before 11: 00. Okay, got it. I stay up quite late. What's the best case you could give me for changing that? And do I need to change that? Because what I do is, I flew into LA, I'm jet lagged. I'm flying back in a couple of days. I'm going to be jet lagged when I land as well. So what I'm trying to do is just protect my sleep at all costs because I've come to learn that it's really the foundation of my performance. So if I'm unslept and I show up at work, the chance that I'm not going to show up correctly in a variety of ways, emotionally, creatively, whatever, is high, and that for me is the greatest risk. In the last year or two of my life, I've just said, Okay, prioritize sleep, because then everything else seems to follow. But when I heard that you wake up sometimes at 4: 45 or 4: 30, pretty much all the time, and I've literally seen you on social media upload your alarm clock day after day after day. I go, shit, maybe I should rethink.

No, I think if you've got a system that's working well for you, then I wouldn't change anything. If you feel like you're performing well, you're physically healthy, you're getting all the work done that you need to do, you're a naturally more of a late night, late morning type person, I'd run with it. It's If you were telling me, Yeah, sometimes I get up, sometimes I don't, sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't, I don't work out every day. Sometimes I feel groggy. If you were telling me that thing, I'd say, okay, pick a time and start waking up at that time every day. It doesn't have to be 4: 40. It could be eight o'clock, it could be seven o'clock, it doesn't matter. It could be eleven o'clock. But try and go to bed around the same time and try and wake up around the same time. And that's going to be a great foundation for everything that you're doing. I would say when you wake up in the morning, do some exercise because I think that is very helpful in getting your day started correctly.

What are your non-negotiables in your life in terms of habits, routines, disciplines?

I wake up early and I work out every day. That's the minimum requirements in my life. Train jiu-jitsu. I don't get to train jiu-jitsu every single day, but if I can train jiu-jitsu, I'm going to train jiu-jitsu. I'm going to work out every day. If I can surf, I'm going to surf. I obviously have to work every day. I work every day doing something. I've got a bunch of different companies. I got to write books, podcast. So I work every day.

Are you ever undisciplined?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chocolate chip cookies. They're a A discipline lapse for me. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm not a cyborg.

Struggle sucks.

Depends on how you frame it. Right? It depends on how you frame it.

Because I'm thinking about you stood at the beach and they say, walk out, Jocko. Link arms and walk out. You describe that as sucking.

Yeah.

But what you're also saying is there's huge value in things that suck. On the other side of something that sucks is something worth cherishing.

I would say not just huge value, but the value. The value. You want to know if you're talking about young men that might not have any direction right now, go do something that's hard. Go try and accomplish something that's hard. You may win, you may lose, you may succeed, you may fail. I'll tell you what, you'll be better. If you avoid those things that are hard, if you don't accept that challenge, if you don't step up and step into that cold water, and you sit on your couch and eat Doritos, I can tell you this is not a good move. This is not a good move. Don't do that. Don't do that. Just get up. Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is. Move towards that challenge and go attack it. And you may be successful, and you may not be successful, but you will be better. And the next challenge, you're going to be more prepared for. And the next challenge after that, you're going to be even You're more prepared for. And you're going to fail, and you're going to fail, and you're going to fail, and you're going to fail, and then you're going to win.

And that's life. Life without those challenges. It's just existence. Don't just exist. Go live.

What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.