Jocko Willink - Parenting, Apex Kid Myth, Failure, & Leadership

14:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:If you're interested in trying Body Health pre-workout, which I highly recommend, go to bodyhealth.com and use the code LION20 to get 20 % off your first order. This is an interesting one. and this question is, as I just think about, you know, as a parent, it's an interesting landscape, this idea of leadership and developing and helping raise adults. What do you think a daughter should learn about men from you, both good and bad?

14:45Jocko Willink:I think, I think that your daughter is going to pay attention to the way that, let me, I think my daughter's paid attention to the way I treated my wife you know and so I think that they should see oh this is how I should probably be treated when I'm interacting with a man I would say that's probably the main thing and

15:10yeah that and a good rear naked choke and arm lock I mean especially nowadays right

15:17Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Right. You know, because facing fear, I mean, we do, we're in a totally different landscape. And by the way, don't take this the wrong way. My first choice for the podcast guest was actually Helen.

15:30Jocko Willink:Yeah. Yeah.

15:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But I said, I'll settle for you instead. Yeah.

15:33Jocko Willink:No, I, I actually, I said to her, Hey, you should come and watch and maybe you could, you know, provide some conversations that I'm not going, I'm not going anywhere near it. Yeah. Yeah, the fear thing, you know, I was interviewing a guy a little while ago and we were just talking about the fact that if you ask a guy when the last time he was afraid, he's going to be, you know, one time, oh, I was doing a static line jump. They're going to have to think about it and it's going to be probably years, probably years. And if you ask a female when's the last time she was afraid, they're not going to have to think about it very long.

16:11Jocko Willink:And it's going to be probably within the last month where the car broke down, walking out of a store at night, whatever that thing is. But you're right. It's a totally different mindset that you have to have for sure. Do you think that there's different frameworks for each? Yeah. I can tell you right now with my son, he was like a rogue child that was just out doing whatever 24 hours a day. He would leave on his skateboard or on his bicycle or on foot and just go with his buddies at eight nine ten years old seven years old eight years old nine years old gone and My daughters are not let through that Like it was like okay.

16:51Jocko Willink:Where are you gonna be who's going with you? It was totally different. Yeah

16:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Do you think it's just a protective mechanism?

16:58Jocko Willink:Yeah, I think it's a protective mechanism and I think probably you know we you would imagine like a young girl is going to have a much higher probability of being victimized than a young boy. Maybe that's not totally accurate, but in my mind, that's definitely the way it seemed.

17:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:What about trust? Trust, you know, we have to or hope to trust our kids. If they break that trust, we learn to trust them again. But an employee and I've heard, so you remember Desmond O 'Neill and Abby Horace, former Secret Service. And I always think about this statement that they said, and this was that good people can do bad things. And, you know, I think oftentimes we think good and bad is very black and white. But if someone close to you, let's just say one of your buddies on Echelon Front did something that made you really question their their your trust for them do you think that's

18:03Jocko Willink:something that can ever be rebuilt yeah it can be rebuilt over time and but and i mean obviously depends on the violation that was made there's some people that are going to make violations there's hey like that's you you can't do this anymore like you can't you're not going to we're not going to interact anymore but most of the time you know people good people good people will make

18:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:what'd you say good people do bad things yeah good people do can do bad things good people will

18:30Jocko Willink:make mistakes and do some things that may not be completely good but good people don't do things that are off the rails like bad so i think there's a big there's a big delta between those two there's like a difference between an error in judgment and what was your intent and i was trying to get this thing done and overall it was a bad call but you can kind of understand why someone did it yeah but there's also people that just do bad things and yeah we we're not hanging around with people that are just out there doing bad things but over time you can rebuild trust and this is something you go through with over and over again in the SEAL teams because you get a guy that shows up and he's promoted into a job that he's never done before and he doesn't really know how to do the job because he's never done it before which is what everyone in SEAL teams goes through and so then you give them a little bit of responsibility and you see how they handle it and that builds trust and if they do well you give them a little bit more and if they do well you give them a little bit more and pretty pretty soon they're taking your job hopefully they're taking your job that's what you want and occasionally do something oh well bad judgment made a mistake how do we correct them how do we train them so that they don't make that mistake anymore and it'll be the same thing with your kids and i had really high trust with my kids i always surprised people like i we didn't have a curfew it was come home whenever you get done with whatever you're doing and don't do anything stupid and that was really really effective for for me and my kids and you know I know it might not I don't I know there's not a uniform way to parent but I think that the way that my kids interacted with me growing up and I gave them a lot of trust growing up to to do things and step out into the world and build my trust with them and they trusted me as well like my kids would come and tell me when another kid did something that was wrong when when they made a mistake they would come and tell me and so I think and I and then when they would tell me something, I wouldn't, you know, say, you can never talk to that kid again.

20:22Jocko Willink:No, I'd say, oh, well, how do you think that's going to turn out for him? And we would have conversations and they would then trust to tell me what's happening in their world, which I think is a good thing.

20:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:How did you open those lines of communication? And do you think that that's something that's very intentional for not just the kids, but also as people listen to you and look to you for leadership, there's a bridge of communication because everybody communicates differently do you think a lot about as how to open that line so your kids come and tell you

20:50Jocko Willink:yeah this is the same thing with adults whatever parents um whoever you're interacting with in life you when people think about opening the lines of communication they think about what they're going to say and the reality is what you need to do is listen and listen to what people say and not just listen and hear their words but actually engage with what they're saying and allow what they're saying to become part of your, become part of who you are. And so, you know, your kids are going to, you know, my, you were talking about Rana. I don't know, make them, to me to make this whole podcast about Rana.

21:24Jocko Willink:We love you, Rana.

21:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Yeah.

21:26Jocko Willink:But Rana, you know, she's, she's somewhat in the public light, right? She's a competitive jujitsu player, but she wanted to do cheerleading and I didn't really, I, and I'm glad she did it. But at the time I didn't really understand cheerleading cheerleading is a great sport there's it's she was a competitive cheerleader and I don't know if you've ever seen that before but they it's gymnastics it's like synchronized team gymnastics that's what it is they don't call it that they call it cheerleading it is gymnastics is awesome and synchronized team gymnastics is awesome but they call it cheerleading and me being dumb I thought cheerleading was like pom-poms and you know cheering for the football team or whatever and so I didn't really like the idea of cheerleading and so what do you do right do you stop her from doing cheerleading no you don't and as a matter of fact you know one of my neighbors whose daughter was also doing cheerleading and he said so you're letting your daughter do the cheerleading he was kind of he was kind of talking smack to me and I said yeah man it's like either that or she pushes back in some crazy way because your your kids are not going to be who you want them to be they're going to be who they are which again ties back to the nurture thing that you mentioned earlier.

22:36And like, like you can definitely shape it somewhat,

22:40Jocko Willink:but they're going to be who they are and not, not who you want them to be. And so you got to let your kids kind of explore things. And, and when Rana wanted to do cheerleading, okay. You know, and she was, she got a lot out of it. I mean, the confidence that you get from cheerleading and physical, super physically active and, you know, being able to do flips and whatever backflips and all the stuff she could do, that's awesome. So yeah, you have to listen to what your kids say and then you have to actually, I guess the word is accept what they say to you, which is really, really difficult. And it's the same thing, you know, if you work for me and you come to me with a plan, I actually have to truly listen to what you say.

23:23Jocko Willink:Not with the back of my mind thinking, yeah, but I actually know what we're gonna do or I know a better way to do this. I need to say, oh, this is how you want to do it. Hey, that sounds good. Let's take a shot at it. And if you get used to that, people are going to be much more apt to come and present things to you and they're going to trust you more because when you put trust into people, they put trust into you.

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25:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You've done a great job at hiring. How do you do that? So you've known these people, they come, you know, many of them are within the community. You know, pretty much what they stand for. At least, again, there's this operating system. But for someone like me who runs businesses, hiring is not easy. Figuring out who to invest time in is not easy.

25:37Jocko Willink:Yeah. One of the things that I recommend often is as often as you can is take people and try and put them in a position that will be similar to what they'll be working in and and the example that i use with people is you know for all these years they've tried to figure out who's going to make it through seal training right that's a a huge thing and they've they've done psychological screening and physical screening and all these things and the only thing that actually works to figure out who's going to make it through seal training is to put people through some kind of like seal training you know so so that's the only thing that actually works.

26:11Jocko Willink:And if you can, oh, we'll take you and we'll put you through four days of being wet and cold and miserable and physical strain. And if you can get through that, then the chances are you'll be able to do at least a better chance that you'll make it through the longer training. But if I sit there and say, oh, do you mind being cold? Of course. What does everyone say? Oh yeah, I don't mind being cold. It's no problem. Oh, do you need to sleep? No, I don't need to sleep. I'm a tough guy. Okay, cool. So you can answer all those questions, but it doesn't matter. It's the same thing in the business environment.

26:41Jocko Willink:Like, oh, how do you interact or how do you act during stress? Oh, I'm very, I handle stress really well. I played, you know, college basketball or whatever. Like they, everyone's got a good answer, but you need to put them in the environment that they are going as close as you can put them in the environment that they're going to be operating in.

26:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Capacity, meaning I'll just define this as this idea of working, let's say a growth capacity, working at really the highest level without pushing over into, you know, burnout. A lot of people that I see, you know, I still see patients and we talk, we talk about a lot of things. They are successful, but they're not, they're not like pushing themselves in the way that will continue to have them grow. They're just not challenging themselves and I would imagine even for you it's probably hard to put yourself in because you've already accomplished so much I mean truly so in order for you to feel like you're pushing yourself and I'm maybe not talking about physically but you know you have another movie coming out to really begin to stretch yourself I would ask how how do you identify if it enough is enough or if you need to put more on the table?

27:59Jocko Willink:Yeah, I don't, I don't really think I ever have, I don't think, this is something I don't even think about. Like, I don't even have thoughts like this. I don't have a thought about like, am I doing enough or can I do more of those? I'm getting up and I'm going to go do something. That's what I'm doing. And so, yeah, I don't really have a lot of thoughts about, hey, is enough enough? Because I, I think in inside some sort of intrinsic part of me is like, There's just no, there's just not enough. There's always more to do. And I think that's a pretty natural place for my mind.

28:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:What about the team around you? As someone who runs a business, I think, are these individuals really living up to their potential?

28:46Jocko Willink:Well, so I think I see where you're getting with this. And this is, I think, a thing that people need to recognize. The reason I stumbled upon this idea was I had a guy ask me, I was at an event and a guy said, you know, I'm doing this. I've, you know, I'm married. I got a nice house. My job is awesome. I'm making good money. My kids are, you know, he's in a really good spot. And he says, you know, but I just have trouble getting up in the morning to work out. And I, and, and I said, well, there's a decent chance that you're just lying to yourself. there's a decent chance that you're lying to yourself in other words you're either lying to yourself saying hey i want to do more when actually you're pretty stoked for where you're at and that's perfectly fine like there you you get a house you get kids you get a wife or a husband and you've got a good job that's awesome like good job that's great you're contributing member to society or whatever it is that you wanted to do is you made it.

29:50Jocko Willink:You got there. And so I don't think it's a prerequisite for life to say, oh no, well, you better get a bigger house and a better job and get your kids into more sports or whatever the thing is. It's perfectly fine to say, oh yeah, this is my life. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to enjoy time with my kids. I'm going to go to every single game you know i missed man my my daughter rana made it to state in california she was the first kid from her school to make it state and wrestling in 35 years and she made it to state and i i i missed one i i could only go to like one of her matches because i was working and that was absolutely terrible were you you mean when you're active duty or were you no i was i had an event for echelon front i was going to speak with a company and you know there's that's just the way it is no one thought rana was going to be able to make it to state we didn't have it on the calendar you know because it was an impossibility and sure enough it wasn't impossible for her so i think that people there's a lie that they tell themselves which is i i want to do more they don't really want to do more so that could be the lie which again i i there's nothing wrong with it like that is perfectly awesome to get to a point in life where you can actually enjoy your family and your kids and your time and whatever.

31:14Jocko Willink:And so that's fine. So don't lie to yourself and put this undue pressure on yourself to go and do other stuff when you don't really want to. Just admit to yourself, hey, this is a good spot. I'm going to enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with that. So I think that's part of it or you may be lying to yourself that what that you really want these things when you don't really want them so i think i think that's fine and i think as a person that's in charge of people that you you need to accept that there's like oh yeah like someone says i got someone at my company that that you know when the bell rings at five o 'clock they leave immediately and i'm like well do they show up at eight o 'clock when things kick off?

31:59Jocko Willink:Like, yeah. Every day? Yeah. And they do their job? Yeah. I'm super stoked to have that person. That's awesome. And does that person want to get promoted? Maybe not. But do I abandon them? No. I'll, hey, you know, how's it going? Are you thinking about moving up? You know, I'm pretty happy right now. Okay, cool. And I'll check back with you once every six months to see if you changed or there's something else going on in your life and maybe you want to maybe now do want to get married and you recognize you're going to need a house and so you want to move up in the in the world of your financial capabilities which is cool but a lot of people they're like totally stoked just to be there and and that's fine i mean you have all kinds of guys in the seal teams like this everyone thinks every seal is like you know just this ultra apex achiever no those guys are like oh i'm out of here you know like I'm going home and that's the way it is and there's nothing wrong with that like that's will be the vast majority of a seal platoon is guys that are there they're going to do a good job they're going to do a solid job and then they're going to go do you know normal stuff and then you're going to have some guys at the high end that are very proactive and making all kinds of happen and they're going to have some slugs and the slugs get kind of dragged along and you know just like anywhere else I mean if they have a if they start to have an actual negative impact they'll be gone but if they're doing their bare minimum they're still going to be there and they're going to kind of mosey through the ranks for their 20-year career and that'll be that

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34:48Jocko Willink:Lion.

34:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:What about the people that want to get better and maybe just don't know how? And I know that that might seem weird, but I do think that people plan to excel when the big moments happen. But there's just lots of these little moments, just day-to-day life. And I don't know. There has to be ways to practice to be able to become better. Just don't wait for the storms. Oh, yeah.

35:16Jocko Willink:For sure. For sure. No, you can't. You know, again, I hate to keep bringing up SEAL training, but people say it's 90 % mental or something like that. And I don't really believe that because, for instance, rope climb, they will make you do rope climbs. and at a certain point, it doesn't matter how much you want to climb up that rope, you will not be able to anymore. And it's literally 100 % physical that you cannot achieve this. But where you can kind of agree with the 90 % mental thing is if you wake up every day and you work on your pull-ups and you work on your rope climbs, you're going to be able to do a lot more when that moment arrives.

35:53Jocko Willink:So yeah, every day you need to prepare as much as you can for whatever's going to come your way. and I think that I mean this is stuff that you talk about all the time right you want to get ready for whatever's going to come your way well cool wake up early work out eat good clean food get rest when you need it like that's just the way you need to operate for sure and there's this

36:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:delta between those that can do it and those that don't and what I'm hearing you say is you kind of allow people to just be where they're at and I also think that some people have lost their way and it requires an absolute devastation for them to change their life. I'd love to not have people get there. I mean, again, as a physician, my job is to care for them. And the way that the landscape is going, people are very distracted. I don't know when you were getting ready to train for the teams, to go to the teams or were in the teams, were you ever distracted before? you know i mean there's all kinds of things happening mcp's i don't know i was always

37:01Jocko Willink:really into you know being in the seal teams there was no distracting yeah and and you know part of being in the seal teams was mcp's you know back in the day but i i just when you talk about people that like they're not reaching their potential and you're in a leadership position and You want them to reach their potential. And because again, like there is a bucket of people, like I mentioned, that they're kind of where they want to be, which is fine. But now you're talking to start talking about people that have more potential that should do more. And for me, again, it goes back to one thing that is telling people the truth about where they are, what they're going to do and where they're going to end up.

37:43Jocko Willink:And it's really difficult with kids. This is why kids do dumb things. Kids do dumb things most of the time because they don't connect what they're doing right now with how it's going to impact their future.

37:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Is that why you've written so much for children?

37:59Jocko Willink:Yes. Yeah, it's one of the reasons. And it's the same thing with adults, but it's more profound with kids. You know, I had a buddy whose kid was not doing well in school. And this guy was a SEAL. And he's a really good SEAL with really good one-liners. and he was talking to his son and he says you know you're doing you know terrible in school you got to get your grades up and the kid's kind of like why and he says well i don't need to get my grades up because i don't really know what i want to do and he said exactly you don't know what you want to do and you're gonna you're closing so many doors by not performing in school not doing not doing well in school so you if you if you're not focused on those kind of things then they're not going to turn out for you.

38:46Jocko Willink:But it's the idea of strategic thinking versus tactical thinking, meaning long-term versus short-term. That's what all this boils down to. And if you work for me and I say, hey, where do you want to be? And you say, oh, I want to go out on Friday night. That's where your long-term thinking is, is that you want to make enough money this week that you're going to be able to go and have a good time over the weekend. That's your long-term thinking i as a leader need to show you okay well where do you want to be in three years and you say well i'd love to have my own condo downtown okay let's talk about you're never

39:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:gonna be able to afford that yep and it's on coronado exactly but now we can talk through

39:27Jocko Willink:we can talk through how do you make that happen and so strategic thinking long-term thinking it's the same thing like the donut a donut's gonna taste great right now the tactical the tactical value of a donut is huge. It tastes delicious, make me feel good, dopamine hit. But we know that's a long-term strategic loser. And kids are the same way. They have a harder time connecting. I mean, it's hard for a 23-year-old to make those connections, right? That's why SEALs would come home off of a deployment with a$48 ,000 re-enlistment bonus, and they would come and they'd go buy a brand new F-350 Super Duty because that's what they wanted in that moment.

40:07Jocko Willink:Whereas they could have hung on a little bit longer, saved a little bit of money and bought a house instead. And they just wouldn't make those moves. So we want our employees, we want our kids to be thinking strategic long-term where you want to be. And going back to like anybody that I'm interacting with, my goal is to get them to think long-term. Same thing for you. You're a physician. you're telling people hey don't think about what you're going to be today where do you want to be in three years in five years in 10 years where do you want to be do you want to be incapable of going surfing or doing jiu-jitsu or hiking whatever the thing that they're into or do you want to have that capability for longer so it's just getting people onto the path of strategic

40:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:thinking that's so important which makes me think about failure right there's successes and failures are there things that failure teach you that success won't oh yeah you're gonna get you got

41:01Jocko Willink:to get back up again i mean you're gonna get knocked down you got to get back up again and that's that's okay it's like in seal training one of the one of the stereotypical guys that goes through seal training and doesn't make it is a guy that was like the best football player on the quarterback and he he basically been winning his whole life and then all of a sudden you get to buds and you're going to lose like there's going to be some stuff you're not going to be able to

41:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:do were you prepared to lose when you yeah got into buds yeah yeah yeah i mean i was not like a

41:34Jocko Willink:star in anything i wasn't the smartest kid i wasn't the strongest kid i wasn't the fast kid so for me it was just you know i i'm prepared to kind of lose at whatever but i i'll keep going

41:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:did you think it was fun were you just like this is awesome yes it was awesome shane said the same thing he he didn't think he was you know he was totally prepared to lose but he was like

41:55Jocko Willink:wet and sandy this sucks but it's so awesome yeah yeah you know I never people say everyone thinks about quitting I never thought about quitting for a millisecond yeah I just was having a good time and it was fun but I failed I failed I failed a little bit of everything you know and when I failed it was okay gotta try harder so you didn't think oh my gosh I'm an idiot and now what no I said go harder yeah yeah guide and need to push harder because that's all it was you know I failed a run I paced myself on a run which was the first run I paced myself on meaning like oh I'll hold back a little bit because I think I'll make the time no and I realized no every run from here on out you could need to go as hard as you possibly can and that was what I learned same thing I failed to swim same thing like okay there's no pacing yourself You got to go as hard as you possibly can.

42:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Do you think there are dangers in avoiding failure? Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure.

42:53Jocko Willink:You know, it's a real common jujitsu thing. You know, as you train jujitsu and you get better and you become a blue belt or a purple belt or a brown belt or a black belt, it's all of a sudden you got to protect your ego. And so I don't want to roll with that person because I think they might be really good. They might tap me out. Whereas when you're a lower belt, you're just like, oh, I don't care. get tapped out by whoever it's no big deal so you and then you're you're you progress quicker so when you start looking out for your ego that's when you start you don't progress as quickly

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45:09Jocko Willink:Training should be effective and it doesn't have to be complicated.

45:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So I experience you as very selfless, which might be a weird statement to make, but I feel like a lot of what you do is it's for people. and was there a decision to do all of that to write these books to speak um yeah it's it's just unusual that someone in your position it's not about them and char and our mutual friends would say he's it's not an ego-based perspective

45:46Jocko Willink:Yeah, I think at some juncture in my Navy career, I certainly recognized that it was way more gratifying to help other people than it was to like, you know, and there's examples in the SEAL teams. You know, guys that are looking out for themselves is not a good take in the SEAL teams. And it's real obvious. Everyone can see it.

46:12Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And it doesn't go over well.

46:14Jocko Willink:And I'm not saying that some of those people climb through the ranks and they go really far in the SEAL teams, but it's like they're going really far in the SEAL teams. They're not really the guys that people want to work with. And so for me, you know, when I was helping people out, it always seemed the best thing for the teams. And that's kind of what I've always just kind of done.

46:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And then did a transition from the teams to humanity?

46:44Jocko Willink:Well, I don't know about all humanity, but...

46:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Well, listen, well, at least, I mean, we need it. Yeah, yeah. If there's leadership in the teams in these elite groups, there has to be some translation over to the...

46:55Jocko Willink:And I didn't really know that that was going to take place as much as I think about, you know, have talked about strategic thinking and strategic planning. I didn't, when I retired from the SEAL teams, my plan was, I was, you know, have a gym in San Diego and I love jujitsu and I love to surf and love hanging out with my kids. And so I was going to train jujitsu, surf and hang out with my kids. And that was my plan. And I ended up going and talking to a friend of mine who wanted me to go to talk to his company about leadership. And I went and did that. As soon as I was, it was when I started getting asked questions about leadership, I realized that the leadership principles that I had learned were directly translated to everything.

47:37Jocko Willink:Everything. and yeah so then it was okay well if I can help them learn these principles it will help them do better in life and so that's kind of where it started and do you read a lot now oh yeah yeah because I have a podcast where a lot of what I do on the podcast is I either cover old books military books and history books or people come and I read like when you came on my podcast I read your book and so I'm almost always reading books yes have you always been that scholarly no so I didn't you know when I was a kid I didn't like academics I was more of a physical type guy and I didn't do great in high school and it wasn't until I joined the Navy and they said okay you need to know these things and that's when I learned how to study and then then they the Navy sent me to college and when the Navy sent me to college, for me it was a competition because I was 28 years old and I was a 28-year-old SEAL officer at the time and I'm in college and I just got competitive to, and I was competing with the teachers.

48:47Jocko Willink:I didn't want the teachers to be able to ask me a question on a test that I didn't know the answer to. And that was too much, a little extreme. I studied way too much.

48:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Is there any way too much studying?

49:00Jocko Willink:I definitely did too much studying. I should have chilled a little bit. But it is what it is.

49:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But look, here you are now. Do you get inspiration for, have you started thinking about what your next book is after the way the Warrior Kid movie comes out? Have you begun to think about what the next iteration is?

49:19Jocko Willink:Next iteration of kids books or next iteration of adult books? Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're being written right now. Do you want to share any of them? So obviously I'm working on another leadership book and I think it's going to help people.

49:38Jocko Willink:It's almost like the negative space in leadership that people don't see that I think my next book is going to help people. and if you think about the negative space, the things that you don't really see, right? When you have an interaction with someone and you go, that wasn't right. Or you go, oh, that person seemed cool. But you can't really identify what it was. And you go, hmm, what was that? I kind of know what that is. And it's the little negative space that takes place. And so I think that's, well, no, that's the book that I'm writing right now on the leadership front. And then on the Warrior Kid front, my daughter Rana's working on a book right now.

50:22Jocko Willink:What? Yeah, because girls and boys all read the Warrior Kid book, but there's a lot of girls that would like a Warrior Kid with a girl as a Warrior Kid. And so Rana's got a beautiful story that she's put together. And so we're working on that as well.

50:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I can't wait till she'll come on the podcast when that's ready to come out. Can't wait. I know that we're closing in on time, and I want to touch on the physicality. Unfortunately, death is coming for all of us, and I think it's harder for those that have really been in their body and training as we all get older. You know, I don't know if you know this, I did my fellowship in geriatrics, where it was end-of-life care. And that was, it's, I mean, it's tough. So as you think about, like, that's kind of a battle that nobody wins. How do you think about training that? Do you think about it? You know, I know I wake up and my shoulder hurts and my knee hurts.

51:29Jocko Willink:Yeah, it's the straight up classic rage, you know, rage against the dying of the light for sure. And I've been saying that, of course, you do as much as you can all the time. I will also say that this is like there is an arc to the story. And there's a beginning and there's a middle and there's an end. And there's a reason for that. And if you are so horrified of the end, then you're probably going to waste a lot of time being focused on that instead of being focused on like the middle. so yeah i think i'm gonna keep going as doing as much as i can i think the strategic vision of knowing that you can lose movements you know like there's movements that you can lose like i had a i was in a situation a living situation where i couldn't do muscle ups for like it was over a year I mean I could do them occasionally at another place but like if they weren't like a consistent part of the program and when I went when I got back I was okay I can start muscle-ups can I had to re-earn the muscle-ups I had an elbow injury and I couldn't overhead squat and when I when I finally my elbow healed up to where I could overhead squat it was like cool pvc pipe you know like no weight because i just didn't have that movement anymore so that those those couple things made me realize if you're not doing it it'll go away but it also made me realize what you can re-engage and you can get it back it's just going to take work so i and i think so you've got to keep doing the things you got to keep moving you got to keep your mobility and range of motion as much as you can and and like i was a terrible stretcher and and but if you don't stretch you're going to lose that component of your life so you got to just pay attention and and just think strategic and keep getting after it every day it'll go away you know when i was a when i was a kid i would show up you know eat a eat three pizzas over the weekend, drink, you know, eat total trash food and just physical disaster.

53:55Jocko Willink:And you just be able to come in and take a PT test and crush it. And then by the time you're like 35 or 40, you're like, I better, I better tamper what I'm doing a little bit. And so, yeah, you just got to pay more attention to it.

54:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Do you think that physical strength and being very physically active is a prerequisite to good leadership? Yes, I do. I do.

54:19Jocko Willink:I think that it's not a black and white prerequisite because there's people that are in positions where maybe they don't have the physical capability for whatever reason. I mean, Roosevelt was in a wheelchair.

54:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Yeah, I was actually thinking about those. I was thinking about Stephen Hawkins and people that are really mentally tough in many ways, but not physically.

54:47Jocko Willink:Yeah. So that's why I say it's not like a cut and fast rule, but it certainly, I mean, I need to tell you, let me just tell you this from my perspective. If when I was in the SEAL teams, if you had a guy, if we had a SEAL that was not in good shape, he did not have respect. And if he was in good shape, it doesn't matter if he, he might've been, you know, big, small but he was in good shape it was like okay cool and that was sort of the bare minimum so you didn't really think too much about that but occasionally you'd have a guy that was out of shape and when you see a guy that's out of shape it just be like hmm now he could reprove himself but he's got to dig himself out of a hole right and so don't put yourself in that deficit

55:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:just just be in good shape yeah i mean i agree that do you think that those that were in the command or in the higher positions those that were in shape were more respected.

55:41Jocko Willink:Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, no doubt about it.

55:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And you know I just think even in this landscape if you're a physician, if you're in a leadership position, it's your responsibility. I feel unlike when I say this but it's kind of 70, more than 70 % of Americans are either overweight or obese. I mean...

56:00Jocko Willink:Yeah, it's definitely very strange if you go to see a doctor and they're not in physical in at least some respectable physical shape it would seem to me that that would be a bit of a priority but I mean I think

56:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:with anything because there is a level of discipline there's a level of commitment there's a level of execution that if someone can't manage that physically then um you know the mental aspect is really important being able to train that.

56:31Jocko Willink:And look, I think it's just what we both are saying is it's don't put yourself in that deficit.

56:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Yeah. I like that.

56:37Jocko Willink:Where when I meet you, I've got to prove to you that I have discipline. I've got to prove to you that I will get the job done. And you have to kind of overlook the fact that I don't really care about getting the job done for myself, but I'll still take care of you. It's just, I wouldn't create that deficit. it?

56:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You know, you mentioned that when someone goes to the SEAL teams, no one knows who's going to make it, right? Because I was thinking very, you know, over 10 years ago, I've been taking care of operators and their families for 10 years. I had a large practice in New York City. It was expensive and part of the cost that we would take from the patients that were coming in, we'd used to treat the team guys coming out in their families. And I helped a few of the guys through BUDS. And I would take their blood work and I thought, okay, well, I'm going to be able to identify just based on just, you know, years of looking at this, who is going to be able to make it.

57:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Right. Whose cortisol is too high? Whose testosterone is too low? Who? And I, you know, when you're a young physician, you think you have it figured out. And I couldn't. I just had no idea. This guy's blood work who looked terrible, had the testosterone levels of a girl, was he just crushed it. and it just makes me think about those leaders that if you meet leaders because obviously you've been teaching people now how long have you been how long has Echelon Front been I think we're coming up on 15 years right now 15 years that's a lot of leaders that you interface with can you tell is there almost like a pattern can you tell if someone is going to be able to make it as a leader or not.

58:14Jocko Willink:Again, it really pays to put them in that position where, and that's generally speaking, what happens in organizations is we put you in a frontline position. But personality wise.

58:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So like I meet you, you ask me a couple of questions, I can give you some answers. Is it like humility? Is it openness? Are there attributes?

58:33Jocko Willink:Yeah. I mean, humility is definitely the most important attribute as a leader. This is something that we have been teaching for 15 years. And the The reason that I identified that so clearly is, number one, the best leaders that I worked for were the humblest people. And number two, when we would fire people from the SEAL teams, we would fire people because they lacked humility. In the leadership position, look, a shooter, an operator, he might get fired because he's unsafe with his weapon or he just can't make decisions quick enough. But generally, the leaders, they would get fired because they lacked humility.

59:05Jocko Willink:They wouldn't listen to anybody else. It was their way to the highway. and so that that is always the biggest problem now again this doesn't mean that you don't have to have enough of an ego to have confidence as a leader you know if i'm if i'm scared to make a decision because i don't know if i'm going to be right or not like that's if i can be too humble right too humble where i'm like i'm not really sure what we should do and and and that's not going to be a good situation either but generally speaking people over index and they become arrogant and they don't listen to anybody else and that's the biggest problem with leaders so all this is a balance you know humble but confident right um not totally risk averse but not hyper aggressive where you're making mistakes like every you know can communicate effectively but doesn't over communicate and now i'm talking and trying to give everyone detailed instructions on every little thing you you could go down the entire list everything is we're looking for a balanced person when we're talking about leaders.

1:00:06Jocko Willink:And the most important quality still definitely is humility. If you don't have that, you're not going to improve. You're not going to be better. You're not going to listen to anybody else. You're not going to respect your competition and you're going to have problems.

1:00:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You think that something can be trained?

1:00:22Jocko Willink:Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

1:00:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:How does one train humility?

1:00:26Jocko Willink:Well, if you are going through my training and I saw that you were a little arrogant I would say cool and I would put you in charge of an operation that would be slightly outside your level of capability and it would be a disaster and you would come back to me and say I really need some some work don't I and I'd say yes you

1:00:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:do assuming that that individual would say and recognize that they that they screwed up yep and

1:00:47Jocko Willink:occasionally they come back and say well that wasn't realistic training and your guys got the jump on me and they didn't know they they make a bunch of excuses and so then okay cool let's eliminate those excuses and let's do it again and we would do that iteration three or four times and by the fourth or fifth time it's like oh guess what the problem is not all of us the problem is not all the new guys in your platoon the problem is not your platoon chief the problem is not the leading petty officer the problem is not the trade at cadre who's this leaf oh yeah that's right it's you so yes you can you can humble people most people some people they don't they will never they will never show an ounce of humility it's not in their blood and it and it hurts them

1:01:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:i have one final question yes if someone listening to this wants to be better tomorrow whether it's leadership whether it's parenthood whether it's physical what is one piece yeah wake up early and

1:01:37Jocko Willink:work out and how early are we talking i think you wake up early enough that you get to do some kind of physical activity before your day starts hey whether you get up and you do 10 minutes of burpees and that's what you're going to do, cool. If that's all you can get, get it. But waking up early and getting some kind of physical activity before your day gets started, I think that is probably the single best habit you can have to improve the rest of your life. When you exercise, everything in your life is going to be better. You're going to be better in meetings. You're going to be better interacting with other people.

1:02:13Jocko Willink:You're going to be sharper. You're going to make better decisions. Everything is going to be better. So wake up early, half an hour early, 20 minutes early, an hour early, and get physical activity before the day starts.

1:02:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And to be clear, even if you go to bed late that night, if something happens, stay consistent. Even if it's a 1 a.m., 2 a.m.

1:02:32Jocko Willink:You know, I try and get at least five hours of sleep. And so if I start getting, like I'll travel, and let's say the plane was delayed or whatever, and I get home and now it's one o 'clock in the morning, because I normally get up around 4.30 in the morning, and so now I'm gonna be looking at three and a half hours of sleep, I'll probably just won't wake up until I'm probably going to put my alarm to whatever 6 or 7 so I get 6 or 7 hours of sleep but consistency and waking up how often do you get dragged to where you're going to stay up until 1 o 'clock in the morning it shouldn't be that often

1:03:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:my 4 year old, 6 year old still

1:03:09Jocko Willink:we'll get some

1:03:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:every night Jocko, thank you so much for taking the time we're looking forward to the Warrior Kid movie. When is that out?

1:03:20Jocko Willink:November 20th. Yes. The premiere is in? Well, it's Apple TV. It's going to be a worldwide global premiere on November 20th. I'm there. Yes, we all are.

1:03:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Thank you so much.

1:03:32Jocko Willink:Thanks for having me. Good to see you.

1:03:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Tired of wellness advice that doesn't stick? I'm Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and every Tuesday, I sit down with world-class experts to give you one thing, a body and mind that actually gets stronger with age, not weaker. No fluff, just what works. Spotify Premium listeners get the full video completely ad-free. Hit follow, new episodes drop Tuesdays at 9 a.m. Central.