78: How Adversity Reveals Human Nature. Are You Worthy of Your Suffering? "A Man's Search For Meaning", by Viktor Frankl

This is Jocko podcast number 78 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

Nightmare.

Now, that's a word that I use oftentimes to describe the most horrible things and the most wretched things. And in my hierarchy of adjectives.

Nightmare is right alongside of hell.

And I'm not sure which one is worse in my mind. That's why I say they're right alongside each other, because hell is beyond the worst thing your mind can imagine. And that's basically what a nightmare is. When you're asleep and your mind delves into.

The most horrific things beyond what you can consciously and willfully imagine in your own head.

That's what a nightmare is. Now, what if there was a place.

That was worse than a nightmare.

And.

It was a real place?

Who could create.

Such a place?

And the answer to that is, we can.

I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare.

Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffer from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do.

At that moment, I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us and to which I was about to recall him.

And that's a quote from the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, which will be peering into today. And it's a book about the Nazi concentration camps.

Which.

Are really, as he pointed out there, worse than any nightmare we can imagine.

Here's a Holocaust survivor, Eddie Weinstein, on the death and the atrocities in Treblinka.

By now, the transports were coming every day. One was much like the next. The same incidents recurred again and again. Once, as I swept out the interior of a car, an SS man suddenly struck me with his whip and ordered me to help a woman who was unable to stand and climb out of the car. The idea was to show his victims how well the ill were being treated. Then he ordered one of the workers to take the women, take the woman to the field, the field hospital for care.

The newcomers really believed that the ailing woman would be taken to an infirmary. None of them realized that the field hospital was in fact, just a giant pit about 30 yards in diameter, which was always ablaze. They would place those who were sick or disabled on the ground at the Edge of the pit, facing in. The SS man in charge circulated among them and shot them in the back of the neck. Then the workers cast them into the pit. Some of the victims were still breathing when they were tossed in with the other bodies.

The pit was separated from the spacious field by a barrier of fresh pine branches, which were replaced from time to time to conceal the infirmary from the newcomers until the last moment.

20 minutes after I helped the woman climb out of the railroad car, I was told that some infants were sitting by the pit and no one else was there because the SS soldier had taken his lunch break. I gathered some trash and went over there. I saw the woman who I had removed from the car, still breathing, sitting at the edge of the pit and staring in fright into the burning inferno and its contents, the half cremated bodies of old people and children mixed with smoldering trash.

She tried to stand up, but her legs would not hold her.

She looked at the workers who stirred the embers, remnants of human beings, so they would burn better.

Nearby were about a dozen infants, too young to have learned how to walk. They were not crying. They certainly did not understand what was happening. They looked about, almost certainly in hopes of finding their mother or father.

Later I heard that right after he returned from his lunch break, the SS man shot them all and ordered the workers to throw the tiny bodies into the flames.

Of all my memories of that accursed place, the vision of these babies is undoubtedly the worst.

I see their faces whenever I remember Tremblinka.

As I write these lines, more than 50 years after that day, I still cannot overcome the horror.

In another report here, Martin Spett of Tarnow, Poland, describes the massacre of Tarnow Jews in an interview.

We heard the columns of Jews under the German escort at night. It was going constantly. They were passing our house because this was already on the outskirts of the city, the cemetery. And they were marching them to the woods behind the city.

As we found out later, they were all shot over there.

During the day. I looked out through the shingles. My father said I shouldn't look, but anyway, I was a kid, I was curious. And the roof was overlooking the cemetery. And wagons with bodies, dead bodies, were coming in groups. They were bringing in groups of Jewish people that had to dig trenches.

They had to dig ditches, and the bodies dumped in. And after those Jews that dug the ditches, they were shot also and pushed in by another group that came in after them into those ditches. And lime was poured over the bodies. And the next group covered up those ditches and Dug other ditches.

They brought in.

Pregnant women.

And they didn't use any bullets.

They used bayonets.

The screams of the mothers that their children.

They tore their children out of their arms.

And the screams of the children I still heard.

And Solomon Radaski, who is the only survivor.

From the 78 people in his family.

Described the concentration camp. They throw the people in the crematoriums, the children.

I will never forget alive.

They throw them in the crematoriums. They grabbed by an arm, by a leg, by the head, and throw them into the ovens.

There. It was so tragic, the cries and people when crying there, you know, it was so terrible.

I can feel it now, I can even see the people.

The other people were crying, the children were hollering, mama, Daddy, help me.

Mama, Daddy, help me.

It was terrible.

And one more report on Treblinka from Henry Gold.

And the worst thing that happens to a person in that instance, he loses self respect. And that's exactly what happened to the majority of the people. Some of them even lost their minds. They couldn't take it. They couldn't take the hunger, they couldn't take the beatings, they couldn't take the cold, no clothing. And the uncertainty.

And the uncertainty. I think that was the worst thing that can happen to a person. You didn't know from one moment to the next what was going to happen.

Life was very cheap. A person was alive one minute, the next minute he was shot, killed, beaten up, beaten to death, torn apart by dogs and so on.

Life was very, very cheap. And that's the way the Germans liked it.

That particular camp was governed by the Jewish, Jewish police and so on. The Germans did not stay in the camp, they were on the outside.

But the life inside of the camp was just as bad without the Germans being right there than if they would be.

The Jewish police was. I don't know. You take a person in that situation and you give them a little power and he becomes the same as the oppressor himself.

There were some policemen that were not bad, but there were a lot of them that were ruthless.

There were others that would beat people and do all kinds of things that would degrade them and so on, especially women. They cut their hair off and they look like men, they look like scarecrows. And they would get beaten up by the Jewish police just as bad as the man for no reason at all.

If they wanted a little more soup.

Where they were distributing soup and there was some left and they were going to give everybody a little bit and the Jewish police with their sticks and rubber hoses would beat them half senseless, senseless.

And that's what happens when the conditions are the way they were. Then when a person becomes an animal and loses self respect, that is willing to get a beating and get beaten half senseless just to get a little bit of soup.

Either you died.

Or if you didn't die, the Germans would come and take you away.

The filth was just terrible in the camp. In the barracks you had cots, I mean bunks, where everybody slept on straw. There were no covers, was no pillows, nothing. You slept in your clothes in the winters, in the winter, because you're afraid to get cold. The only heating was a pot bellied stove in the middle of the barrack. When somebody stole some wood in the factory or something, then we had a fire. Otherwise it was freezing.

And the only warmth they had. If you huddled together and they kept warm that way, but nobody would get undressed. The lice were eating you up alive. Once a month you were allowed to take a shower. And we had to walk to Camp A to go to the showers. And that means a 10 mile walk.

10 miles there and 10 miles back.

A lot of people were too weak to walk. And those people hardly ever took a shower.

There was no hot water in the washroom. It was only cold. And in the winter you were afraid to wash up because there was nothing to wipe yourself with. Therefore you would walk out in the cold winter and freeze to death.

And Henry Gold, brothers and both of his parents were all killed in the gas chambers.

And from the Buchenwald report, which was translated and edited with an introduction by David A. Hackett, I will now describe the crematoriums and the transports. At the station, 2,000 people got off the trains. They had to throw away all their luggage. Afterward, the men and women were divided into two groups at which the larger boys were assigned to the group with the men.

Then that great devourer of Jews, Mengele, drove by in a car, seeking out the strongest from each transport.

They numbered around 30 out of 2000.

The remainder were led away by SS Technical Sergeant Mole, the officer of the crematorium.

The elderly were loaded onto dump trucks and then dumped into burning trenches. While still alive.

The remainder were led to the gas chambers.

Meanwhile, new transports were arriving.

In front of the gas chamber was a dressing room.

On its walls was written in all languages. Put shoes into the cubbyholes and tie them together so you will not lose them. After the showers you will receive hot coffee.

Here, poor victims undressed themselves and went into the chamber.

There were three columns for the ventilators through which the gas poured in.

A special work detail with truncheons drove the people into the chamber.

When the room was full, small children were thrown in through a window.

Sergeant Mole grabbed infants by their legs and smashed their skulls against the wall.

Then the gas was let into the chamber. The lungs of the victim slowly burst and after three minutes a loud clamoring could be heard.

Then the chamber was open and those who still showed signs of life were beaten to death.

The prisoners of the special work details then pulled corpses out, took their rings off and cut their hair, which was gathered up, put in sacks and shipped to factories.

Then they arranged the corpses in piles of 10 each.

After Sergeant Mole had counted them, they were taken to the ovens or if the crematorians crematoriums were insufficient, thrown into fire trenches.

Once it happened that a victim crawled out of a burning trench, he was beaten to death with truncheons.

Once Sergeant Mole pulled put a naked woman in the trench and shot her in the genitals.

Another time, Mole found a ring on a member of the special work detail. He ordered na naphtha poured over him and had it lighted.

He hanged a man by his hands and shot him until his arms were torn through. Then he hanged him up by the feet and repeated the process.

Once Sergeant Mole took a family of six.

First he shot the youngest in the presence of the rest. Then he shot the older ones and finally.

Their father and mother.

And that's the testimony of Jesus Yonda Weiss.

Who is 15 years old.

At Birkenau.

So I think it's safe to say that.

This is a situation that is definitely worse than a nightmare.

And what possibly can we take away from that?

I think the best thing we can.

Do.

Is try and learn. And I think one of the best places to learn.

Take lessons away from the Holocaust, is from the book that I started off with today called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Let's go to the book.

Let us take the case of a transportation, which was officially announced to transfer a certain number of prisoners to another camp. But it was fairly safe to guess that its final destination would be the gas chambers. A selection of sick or feeble prisoners incapable of work would be sent to one of the big central camps, which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums.

The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or of group against group.

All that mattered was that one's own name and that of one's friends were crossed off the list of victims. Though everyone knew that for each man saved, another victim had to be found.

A definite number of prisoners had to go with each transport. It did not really matter which, since each of them was nothing but a number.

On their admission to the camp, all their documents had been taken from them, together with other possessions. Each prisoner therefore had an opportunity to claim a fictitious name or profession. And for various reasons, many did this. The authorities were interested only in the captives numbers. These numbers were often tattooed on their skin and also had to be sewn to a certain spot on their trousers, jacket or coat.

Any guard who wanted to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his number. And how we dreaded those glances. He never asked for his name.

To return to the convoy about to depart. There was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man was controlled by one thought only. To keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, to save his friends.

With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another number to take his place in the transport.

As I have already mentioned, the process of selecting capos was a negative one. Only the most brutal of the prisoners were chosen for this job.

So capos were prisoners, Jewish prisoners that got selected to help run the prison camp and capo.

I tried to find the etymology of where that came from and the best or the closest, or the thing that made the most sense to me from what I read, was they had two words combined together, Comrade police. And in German those got shortened to capo.

So some of these, and you already heard one of those earlier testimonies talking about the Jewish police inside the prisons and how they were just as bad in many cases as the Germans themselves.

Back to the book. But apart from the selection of capos which was undertaken by the ss, there was a sort of self selecting process going on the whole time among all the prisoners.

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence. They were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft and betrayal of friends, in order to save themselves.

We who have come back by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles, whatever one may choose to call them, we know.

The best of us did not return.

So there's a dynamic that you don't think of immediately when you think of the concentration camps. Number one, you don't think about the capos, the Jewish police that are forced into this situation. And then the Other thing you don't think about is this the fact that the people that were going to survive.

Were basically, I'm making a very broad say, but. But, you know, from what Viktor Frankl saying here, it was the people that were willing just to do anything to survive, including betraying their friends. And he's saying straight up, we know the best of us did not return. And that is something that you don't think about.

And we probably don't think about it because we don't want to think about it. Because when you start thinking about what would you do to survive? What would you do to survive? What would I do to survive? And that's a question I don't think a lot of people want to know the answer to. And it's very easy to go through life and never have to answer that question.

He's talking a little bit now.

About what life was like in the camp. Back to the book. Somewhere it is said that man cannot exist without sleep for more than a stated number of hours. Quite wrong. I had been convinced that there were certain things I just could not do. I. I could not sleep without this or I could not live without that or the other. The first night in Auschwitz, we slept in beds which were constructed in tiers. On each tier, measuring about 6 1/2 to 8ft, slept nine men directly on the boards. Two blankets would be shared by each nine men.

We could of course, lie only on our sides, crowded and huddled against each other, which had some advantages because the bitter cold, those forbidden to take shoes up to the bunks. Some people did use them secretly as pillows in spite of the fact they were caked with mud. Otherwise one's head had to rest on the crook of an almost dislocated arm.

And yet sleep came and brought oblivion and relief from the pain. For a few hours.

The thought of suicide was entertained by nearly everyone, if only for a brief time. It was born of hopelessness of the situation, the constant danger of death looming over us daily and hourly, and the closeness of deaths suffered by many of the others.

From personal convictions which we mentioned later. I made a firm promise on my first evening in the camp that. That I would not run to the wire. This was a phrase used in camp to describe the most popular method of suicide, touching the electrical electrically charged barbed wire fence. It was not entirely difficult for me to make this decision. There was little point in committing suicide since for the average inmate, life expectation, calculating objectively and counting all likely chances was very poor.

He could not, without any assurance. He could not with any assurance expect to be among the small percentage of men who survived all the selections. The prisoner of Auschwitz in the first phase of shock did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days. After all, they spared him the act of committing suicide.

And Victor Frankel was a psychiatrist going into this situation. So that's the. That's the view, that's the perspective that he takes throughout this. And.

He'S now been in for a couple days in Auschwitz and another guy comes in to talk to him who's another colleague of his. And we're going back to the book. A colleague of mine who had arrived in Auschwitz several weeks previously smuggled himself into our hut. He wanted to calm and comfort us and tell us a few things. He had become so thin that at first we did not recognize him. With a show of good humor and a devil may care attitude, he gave us a few hurried tips. Don't be afraid. Don't fear the selections. Dr. M. The SS medical chief has a soft spot for doctors.

But one thing, I beg of you, he continued. Shave daily, if at all possible. Even if you have to use a piece of glass to do it. Even if you have to give your last piece of bread for it. You will look younger and the scraping will make your cheeks look rootier. If you want to stay alive, there is only one way. Look fit for work. If you even limp, because let us say, you have a small blister on your heel and an SS man spots this, he will wave you aside and the next day you are sure to be gassed.

Now his mind and his thoughts.

He describes what he would think about. Back to the book. My mind still clung to the image of my wife.

A thought crossed my mind. I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing, which I have learned well by now. Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, in his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

I did not know whether my wife was alive and had no means of finding out.

During all my prison life, there was no outgoing or incoming mail.

But at that moment it ceased to matter.

There was no need for me to know. Nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts and the image of my beloved.

Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying.

Set me like a seal upon thy heart. Love is as strong as death.

And continuing on.

Dr. Frankl talks about images from inside the camp. Standing outside, we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red.

The desolate gray mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky.

Then, after a few minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another how beautiful the world could be.

And beyond looking for beauty around them.

They were able to find humor. And I have people ask me about this from time to time. Humor in combat situations. And isn't it important? And yes, it absolutely is. And you'd think in a concentration camp, even humor would go away.

But not true. Back to the book. To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider. But he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor.

Could find a sense of humor there as well. Of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self preservation.

It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, if only for a few seconds.

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick I learned while mastering the art of living.

Yet it is impossible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy, a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus, suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.

Therefore, the size of human suffering is absolutely relative.

And I think the point that I took away from that was that chamber that can be filled up with suffering, fill it up with some humor as well. Otherwise that suffering will just fill the whole chamber. It will fill your whole brain.

Back to the book. We were grateful for the smallest of mercies. We were glad when there was time to delouse before going to bed.

Although in itself this was no pleasure, as it meant standing naked in an unheated hut where icicles hung from the ceiling.

But we were thankful if there was no air raid alarm during this operation and the lights were not switched off, if we could not do the job properly, we were kept awake half the night.

So you're at a point in life where you're grateful for being able to stand naked and pick the lice off of your friends before you go to bed so that the lice won't keep you awake at night by chewing at your body.

And, you know, I talked about.

How, or he talks about how, you know, it was the person that was going to survive had to be ruthless, basically.

And here he says, but it's not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when sooner or later, it is a question of life or death?

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

And here he says, I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one closest friend's lives lost its value.

Everything was sacrificed to this end.

A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in mental turmoil, which threatened all values he held and threw them into doubt under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed the man of his will and made him an object to be exterminated, having planned, however, to make full use of him first to the last ounce of his physical resources. Under this influence, the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values.

If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom.

And personal value. He thought of himself then as only part of an enormous mass of people. His existence descended to the level of animal life.

The men were herded, sometimes to one place, then to another, sometimes driven together, then apart like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own.

A small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides. Well versed in methods of torture and sadism.

They drove the herd incessantly backwards and forwards with shouts, kicks and blows. And we, the sheep, thought of two things only, how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little food.

He's going to delve into this deeper, this idea of this inner freedom.

And how hard you had to fight to maintain that, and how easy it was just to roll in and become one of the pack, one of the herd.

Back to the book. It is very difficult for an outsider to grasp how very little value was placed on human life in camp.

The camp inmate was hardened, but possibly became more conscious of this complete disregard of human existence. When a convoy of sick men was arranged, the emaciated bodies of the sick were thrown on two wheeled carts which were drawn by prisoners for many miles, often through snowstorms, to the next camp.

If one of the sick men had died before the cart left, he was thrown on anyways. The list had to be correct. The list was the only thing that mattered.

A man counted only because he had a prison number. One literally became a number, dead or alive, that was unimportant. The life of a number was completely irrelevant. What stood behind that number, and that life mattered even less.

The fate, the history.

The name of the man.

The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever.

This was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one's master and that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course.

In addition, there was a great apathy which contributed in no small part to the feelings of the prisoner.

At times.

Lightning decisions had to be made. Decisions would spell life or death. The prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him.

And so some of the examples that he brings up in the book on that are they'd get told, we need people to go to a different camp for rest.

And they had no idea. Sometimes it actually was some kind of rest. Sometimes it was some kind of actual medical facility. Sometimes it was just, you're going to the gas chambers at another camp. And they had no idea which one it was. And so they got into this mode of they were just going to externally just whatever was going to happen that was going to happen, and they wouldn't. They go beyond where they're trying in the beginning to like, get me off that list or I want to be on that list. And they realized that they just were messing with fate. And so they got into a mode of I'm just going to let things happen and whatever happens, happens.

And they got this, this feeling of apathy.

You, you can just imagine how that, that having no control externally of what's happening, how that leads, number one, leads to this apathy of just, I don't care what happens, but number two, how that thing can then sneak in and start to get control of your inner thoughts and your inner feelings, where you just feel like you don't have control over anything in life, and that's it.

And here he talks about apathy some more. The prisoner's apathy was also the result of other factors. Hunger and lack of sleep contributed to it, as they do in normal life also.

And to the general irritability, which was another characteristic of the prisoner's mental state. The lack of sleep was partly due to the pestering of vermin which infested the terribly overcrowded huts because of the general lack of hygiene and sanitation.

The fact that we had neither nicotine nor caffeine also contributed to the state of apathy and irritability.

Besides these physical causes, there were mental ones in the form of certain complexes. The majority of prisoners suffered from a kind of inferiority complex. We all had once been or had fancied ourselves to be somebody.

Now we were treated like complete non entities.

The consciousness of one's inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things. It cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?

Without consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded.

This became obvious when one observed the contrasts offered by the singular sociological structure of the camp. The more prominent prisoners, the capos, the cooks, the storekeepers and the camp policemen, did not, as a rule, feel degraded at all like the majority of prisoners. But on the contrary, they felt promoted.

Some even developed miniature delusions of grandeur.

Clearly, we can all take a lesson out of that one, and that is, you know, you get put into a promotion position or you've got authority over people. Don't let that go to your head.

Yeah, I guess that's a natural thing. Where they did this experiment test in that university, whatever. And they're all just random students. One played the prisoner, one group played the guards. And that happened.

Yep.

You know, like, act. It's just an experiment. It's not real life, you know, it still happened.

Yeah. And it happened in real life, which I think is even more insane. It's even more insane.

Yeah.

But then again, how can we sit here and judge when. If you're in that situation and you need to survive and you need to do the best to get your. You to survive and your family survive and you have an opportunity. Oh, are we gonna say nope? Nope, I'm gonna. Instead of doing this where I maybe can do something good in the long run. Nope. I'm not gonna go across my values. I'm gonna die in three days and that's it.

Yeah.

That's a hard decision to make.

Yeah. I mean, it seems easy when you're sitting in the comfort of your home, be like, I wouldn't do that, or, you know, you say, this is what I would have done or I wouldn't have done. But, yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, I. I talk to people about, again, it's. I'm not going to compare anything to what we're talking about here. But in the military, for instance, a lot of times I had to make decisions to. To, you know, I got to do something that maybe I didn't fully agree with, but I knew in the long run it was going to get me something that was going to be beneficial to my team or to my platoon or whatever. So you make those little adjustments and you got to suck it up and you do something that you might not want to do, but in the long run, it's going to be beneficial. Yeah. Now, I mean, this. I don't even know if this is even a remotely close comparison, but what I am saying is this. You take a human being and you say, look, you can either step up and act a different way and be abusive to these people, or you're going to be dead in three days. That's it. Those are your choices.

Yeah.

And it's not that hard to figure out that a lot of people are going to step up and say, cool, I'll abuse those people because I need to live. You need to live.

Yeah.

My choice is either death.

Yeah.

And by the way, maybe the. Maybe this. The best person in that group is gonna say, you know what? I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna step up. And when I abuse these people, I'm gonna do a little bit less than someone else might. And therefore, I'm doing the best I can.

Yeah.

I mean, these are decisions. How do you even think about these decisions?

And you have to think about them. You have to understand. You have to understand what human nature is, that there is a survival point for humans. You have an instinct to survive that very few people can overcome.

Yeah.

And I don't even, you know, again, how do you judge whether it's right to overcome it or not? When is it right? I mean, obviously. When is it right? We're sitting here, it's easy to say, hey, don't you know these guys? Why would you kill yourself? Well, if you don't do these things, you're basically killing yourself. If you don't step up, if you don't say, okay, I'll work as a capo. If you don't do that, you're killing yourself.

Right.

Does that make it okay, man.

Yes.

Brutal.

It's like you got to figure out whether or not you're better off dead in the. Even in the grand scheme of things like these. These people that they're gonna kind of succumb to these positions or do all these low things to. To survive so they can survive and, you know, live on and all this stuff. So it's either that or am I better off dead overall? You know, like, that's the decision you gotta make. Dang. Who knows what you think, especially with all these conditions.

Yeah. You know, the opposite of that is Dick Winters was talking about how he had. And I don't know if I talked about it on the podcast, but in. In the book Conversations with Dick Winters, he goes through a big section where he talks about some of the guys in his company and he called them the killers. And he actually went on and said, hey, you know, I don't want to call them killers, because that's going to give the wrong impression. But these guys were my most aggressive guys. They were my best guys. And he's. And he said they didn't make it past, you know, he said most of them didn't make it. I forget which. Which battle, but he said most of them didn't make it past this certain time because they were so aggressive, they were such good guys. They were so brave that they didn't make it. And. And this is sort of the opposite, where you have the people that are brave, I guess. No, it's the same in that people that are brave and gonna hold to their values, they're gonna die.

Right.

And. And if you think about somebody that's cowardly in combat, that says, oh, you know what, you know, Echo, you go first. I'm gonna sit over here behind this, you know, covered position.

Yeah.

I'm gonna live longer. And it's a micro example of what we're talking about here.

Yeah, yeah, it's. And this. This, given the book and what we're talking about, this might come off as borderline insulting, if not full fledged insulting, but. You ever watched this show Survivor?

I watched the first one when it was kind of a thing.

Yeah.

And there was a. Interesting psychology happening. Yeah.

And that's like Rudy Bosch was on.

It, you know, this SEAL retired SEAL master chief who, you know, everyone kind of knew in the SEAL teams.

Okay. Yeah.

So especially what you're gonna say is that the. The people that are not good human beings are the ones that win.

Well, they get far, put it that way, because they have this weird mechanism at the end where the last, you know, few people who get voted off, they become this sort of a jury. So it's like if you went through the whole game screwing people over, the jury's gonna get you kind of thing.

So.

So it's a. Yeah, and this is just how the show just sorted itself out over time.

But the first ones didn't have any jury. Right? I don't.

I don't know. I don't watch it that much.

I'm gonna go ahead and say I, I'm almost positive they didn't because Rudy had his hand on some log and they had to keep it there for like, X for the longest time. And one person, you know, he actually, like, thought of something else and took his hand off and then he was out. That was it. Done. Okay. But, yeah, there's absolute comparison there. There's an absolute comparison to, you know, if you're willing to be a snake, right, you can and you can, you can win the game. And I've talked about that too in promotion, people getting promoted. And if you're willing to be a snake, you can get promoted. But the thing that I will say in a work environment is that that snake might get one promotion, they might get two promotions. They're not going to go the distance. And if you hold the line on doing what's correct, then you might miss that first promotion, you might even miss that second promotion. But eventually, if you're on the right path, you will get the recognition and you will win in the long run. You got to be patient, though.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously in your job, it's not life or death. You know, death isn't so close that, you know, one slip up your death, you're dead. You know, so that's, you know, obviously the dynamics are different in work in that way, but otherwise, I think so. And Survivor, there's also that other thing that kind of what they talk about where or what you were just talking about is if you. It's kind of in a matter of speaking, playing it safe, where you're just hiding under the wings, you might attach yourself to someone or you'll avoid any kind of, you know, risky for sure situation. And so in Survivor, you can make it far like that as well. I mean, nowadays everyone knows about those things, like, oh, you backstabbed everyone, or you just hid behind this guy because he's strong. But at the same time, just like how you're saying if you're brave or you're going to stick to your morals and be honest with everyone. Like, you'll get voted off real quick, even if you're really good at, you know, the challenges.

Don't even. Like, really good leaders get voted. Like, if someone just is a dynamic leader, they get voted off. Oh, yeah. See you later.

Too much of a threat.

Too much of a threat to everybody else. And actually, what you're talking about going through SEAL training, I would hear. I didn't hear it when I went through, but I heard it later. This idea of the Gray man, and I think we might have actually answered a question on the podcast about that, was going through training and just being a gray man, meaning just don't stand out one way or the other and you'll be good to go. And that's, that's. That's a. That's a strategy.

Why in the SEAL teams is that?

No, it's a strategy going through buds, through SEAL training, the initial SEAL training course, because the minute you stand out, people start knowing who you are. And now you got instructors looking at you, and the more they watch you, the more they can see that maybe you're making some mistakes or maybe you're not doing everything right, or maybe you're not. And so it's better just to be that guy in the middle. I was the guy in the middle. Not because I wanted to be, but because I was not, you know, the fastest runner. I wasn't the. The best swimmer. What you don't want to be is the guy on the tail end, right?

Yeah.

And it's weird because I put so many guys not through the basic SEAL training, but through the advanced SEAL training. And the guys that I remember, there's two types of guys that I remember. The guys that were awesome and the guys that were horrible. And the guys in the middle, all the gray guys, I know them when I see them, but a lot of times I don't 100%. I might not know their name. Whereas some of the pipe hitters, the young pipe hitter, some E5 pipe hitter that was just getting after it, I'd always remember those guys names because they would take control of everything and they'd stand out. And then the other guys you remember are guys that are totally jacked up. So that idea of being a gray man, it seems like a good policy to have in the concentration camp. Look, I just don't want to stand out. I don't want to have a limp. I don't want to, you know, come across as. I just want to fit in and be the gray man. Unless you're going to Go the distance. Right. Which is. And that's a horrible way of saying, I'm going to stand out by saying, hey, I can whip these prisoners into shape. Right. That's going. And raising your hand and saying, I'll be a capo. I'm going to step up. And what you're risking there is we don't know where this war is going to end and where are you going to be at the end of this thing?

Yeah.

And, you know, I read some stories about that. The war did end, and they did liberate these camps, and it didn't work out good for the capos.

Yeah. So there's. There's the same thing you might have done, all right, Getting your promotion the first couple times, but eventually it comes around.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah.

You know, Harley Flanagan was talking about karma, and I don't know how much reality there is to that, but there's. There's the reality of you reap what you sow.

Yeah.

And if you treat people. If you. If you take advantage of your position, if you maneuver and screw people over to get ahead of them, they'll remember that. Yeah, they'll remember that.

Yeah. And that makes sense. I mean, karma with you, and it's.

Never worth it, by the way. It's almost never worth it. I mean, could you possibly come up with some scenario where. Where, you know, I did this to get a promotion so that I could take care of you and everyone else. You could come up with a sleeve, but it's very, very rare. And. And my gut feeling was always like, it's not worth it. It's not worth it to do those little maneuvers.

And. And try and better your position on other people's backs.

Yeah. Or screwing someone over. And. Because you got to live with that, too. I mean, unless you're, like, a sociopath or something like that, you have to live with that. And.

Man. Yeah. And even at the time, it seems like, oh, I could live with that because. Ooh, look at promotion.

You're actually. You're actually taking a higher road than me because you're saying you personally have to live with it. And that's definitely. I'm saying beyond that, even if you're a person that can live with it, you're still gonna pay in the long run, Even if you can look yourself in the mirror, be like, I don't care. I got promoted. It's good. That's. That's okay. So you can live with that. That's cool. But guess what? There's something else you're gonna. That's gonna come back around, and that is one of those other people that you stepped on their back, is gonna invent something new at work, and he's gonna take over the division, and you're gonna pay.

Not to mention the 10 people who watched it happen. And, you know. Yeah.

You're just making enemies. Yeah, enemies.

And that's really what karma is for. I mean, karma could be this mystical thing that personally watches you and has this judgment system.

It could just be real.

Just real life. Just like if I walk up to, you know, even me and you're even. We don't know each other. I don't have any bad or good feelings towards you, and I come and I slap you. I created a deficit. Now. Now your intention.

Big deficit. Yeah.

So your intention, whether you do it or not, you're what, you. You're compelled to slap me back, if not more. Usually more.

Yeah.

Because, you know, so that's kind of really what it is. I mean, really, in a small, teeny, tiny nutshell.

Yeah.

I go out and start acting mad to everyone. What? They're not gonna be like, oh, I love you. I mean, they might, because they might be, you know, intellectual or, you know, they might be able to think about it, but their natural compulsion will be to be mad at you back.

And this, you know, the podcast Human Nature, talking about human nature. And I always say that war reveals human nature more clearly than anything else because it's so much pressure on the people. Obviously, a concentration camp, it's revealing human nature, and that's exactly what we're talking about. And it reveals itself in crystal clarity on a massive scale in terms of being able to see it in a concentration camp. And you see it reveal itself on a TV show called Survivor, and you see it reveal itself in. In the work environment. And what I'm saying is, from all that, what you want to do is you want to make sure that when you get put into a position of authority, you don't abuse it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. You don't want to abuse it. You want to treat people with respect no matter what. And you don't want to step on people's backs to get ahead, because ultimately, it's not gonna pay off. It really isn't. Yeah. You're only gonna fool, like, that leader that you. That you fooled into thinking that you are a great guy that's only gonna last for so long.

Yeah.

And eventually you're gonna get found out.

Now. All right, let's get. Let's get back into the book here. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action.

And this is. We've talked about the capitalism. He's going to talk about some of the more heroic people and some of those actions very briefly. And he says, because the reason there's very briefly is because there wasn't a lot of them.

The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome. Irritability, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man. But one thing, the last of the human freedoms. To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there it is. I mean, that is it. That is it, this idea. And you know, Captain Plum talked about it as well. And Captain Plum had a quote from Stockdale. And we got to explore this. And I've got a bunch of Stockdale books, and we will get to some Stockdale books. Who was the senior guy in the Hanoi Hilton? And he's a fighter pilot, philosopher guy, brilliant guy, and a hero, was awarded the Medal of Honor. And one of the things that Captain Plum was talking to us about is Captain Plum said that they got word from Stockdale and I'm gonna misquote it, but I'm gonna do my best. It was. Just because we're in a prison camp doesn't mean we have to be on defense. We're gonna be on offense in a prison camp. That's just a completely different attitude. It's choosing the attitude, we're not gonna sit here and be abused and be put down. We're going to step up, we're going to go on offense. And they did. They did hunger strikes. They passed word around. They wouldn't stand up when people entered. They did these things. They went on offense. And that's what he's talking about right here. This last human freedom to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. We always have that choice. No matter what the circumstances are that surround you, you always have that choice.

Back to the book. And there are always choices to make. Every day, every hour offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined Whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom.

Which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

Again, there it is. You. You're in a concentration camp. Doomed. Doomed. And yet you can hang on to that last. That last bastion of freedom in your soul. To not let them win and not let them own that.

Back to the book. Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions.

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways. In the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of inner decision and not the result of camp influences alone.

Think about that.

The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, not the result of the circumstances you're in. That doesn't matter what kind of person you become. What matters is the decisions that you make.

Unbelievable.

Back to the book. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him mentally and spiritually. Okay, physically you can have that. One can't control that all the time. But mentally and spiritually, I get to decide what I'm going to be.

He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

Dostoevsky said once, there is only one thing that I.

Not to be worthy of my sufferings.

These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings. The way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.

It is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross gives him ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances, to add a deeper meaning to his life.

It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.

Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forego the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him.

And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not. So think about that when you get faced with this ultimate challenge, brutal challenge, when life is just about to crush you.

That'S when you have the biggest opportunity to prove who you are.

You know, speaking of.

Of. Of unworthy topics. But this is something I. When I was. When I first got to Seal, when I was at Seal Team 1, I ran a communications class. And when I ran the class, we. I was like, super hard. And I know it comes as a big shocker, but we would. Great test, test, test on all these different subjects. You know, what radio, what frequency bandwidth, what, how. You know, all these different subjects. And I would say the guys, hey, you know, tomorrow we got another test, another opportunity for you to prove yourself. And that's the way I looked at it. They didn't always look at it the same way, but that's exactly, exactly what he's saying here. When you have these brutal circumstances that you face.

That'S your opportunity. And if you think about all heroic tales. Right. There's no heroic tales where the hero doesn't face any challenges. And as a matter of fact, the worst challenges he faces, the more of a hero he becomes.

Yeah.

If he rises to the occasion. If he doesn't rise to the occasion, guess what we don't hear about him.

Right. Not a hero.

Not a hero.

Yeah. In fact.

Let'S say you're considered a hero, and then this big chance to prove yourself comes about and you fail or you don't step up, you're kind of like this big failure in a way, even though you've been a hero the whole time.

Yeah, I would say that's true. Although if you do something heroic enough, people are, like, good with it.

Right. I think if they're significant enough. So it's kind of the same thing.

Yeah. I mean, the bottom line is you face these challenges, you get challenged to have this attitude of, you know, basically, good opportunity. Opportunity to solve the problems. Yeah, right. Oh, big challenge. Cool. Opportunity. Good.

Yeah. It's like those guys who, you know, they start a business, the business is, like, grows, and then it just massively fails because of some mistake or, I don't know, something. And some. Or the econ. I don't know, whatever. And then they. They reach rock bottom and they build themselves back up. And then, you know, it's this massive success. You know, it was like, oh, that's such an impressive story. Yeah.

You know, that's much better than, hey, I went to this school, I graduated, I worked this job, I made a bunch of money.

Yeah.

Everyone goes, oh, cool, Right, Cool.

Yeah.

Cool. They want to hear the struggle. They want to see that you were challenged.

Back to the book. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering. God, think about that.

The suffering that you're going through is a chance to achieve something through your suffering. That's an incredible thought. That's an incredible thought.

Now, this next part is something that I get asked about on a fairly regular basis. Back to the book. Take the fate of the sick, especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way.

The boy had a thought it. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death. So well, now he wrote, fate was offering him a similar chance.

Yeah, I mean, there's. There's, you know, diseases, terminal diseases, and that's it. And then what do you do?

Well, I think you have to choose the best possible attitude you can.

And again, I've never been in that situation, obviously, but.

That statement seems to be the best possible attitude to take.

Again, that's when we see people doing something heroic. That's what we see. And, you know, it's funny, some of those. When we were doing a lot of the Native Americans on the podcast, they all had that attitude, when you go to face death, hold your head high, be afraid of it.

And that's really, like you said, easier sitting here in the. You know, in the recording studio. Of course. Yeah, easy for me to sit here and say that.

Yeah.

But that's a hard one. And, you know, the other day on the Joe Rogan podcast, Everlast was on there.

Yeah.

And Joe Rogan, he, you know, Everlast was saying, hey, you know, I'm not in good shape right now. I wish I get in better shape, but I have. You know, I think he's got a back injury, and he's got this. And he's got a daughter that's got some kind of illness, bad illness. And Joe put on the good video that you made. And, you know, Everlast, when he got done, Everlast was like, hey, that's cool. That's inspirational. But how does that help me with my sick daughter? Yeah, what's good about that? You know? And I wished I could have jumped through and. And talked to him, because this much I will say, when you got a bad situation like that, I'm telling you right now, it could be worse. Absolutely. A hundred percent. And the fact that he's talking about his daughter and how she's sick and how he has to spend so much time with her to take care of her.

Well.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

Be thankful that you're in a position in life where you can spend time with her. Be thankful that she's in a condition where she can spend time with you.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's. She's still here, if nothing else. That's good. If nothing else. And so what are you gonna do? I mean, your. Your. Your other option is to say, my daughter's sick. This is horrible. I got cursed. It's. It's not fair. And what does that do for you? Where does that get you? It doesn't get you anywhere. It. Matter of fact, it takes you backwards.

Yeah.

So you really, truly do have to look at these horrible situations. I remember I got a call back from. From overseas that a guy was a seal, was really badly wounded, and. And a couple of my friends were kind of distraught, and I talked to one of the guys overseas, and I, you know, and. And, man, I, at this point, you know, lost Mark, lost Mikey. I don't think Ryan had died yet, but, like, I was familiar with guys dying.

Yeah.

And I talked to one of the guys that was overseas, and they said, hey, you know, this guy's really, really messed up. And I'm like, is he gonna live? And they're like, yeah, he's stable. And I go, then don't worry about a thing. Be happy he's alive. And it doesn't matter if he's missing a leg or two legs or whatever.

He'S gonna be coming home, and he's gonna carry on with his life, and it's gonna be hard, and it's gonna be hell, and it's gonna be a challenge.

But.

But guess what? He's gonna be here. Yeah. And that, you know, again, it's like, man, what's the alternative? The alternative is he's dead. The alternative is we never talk to him again. That's the alternative.

Versus he's gonna come back. Right. And this guy, the guy that got wounded, he wasn't, like, a great friend of mine, but I knew I was talking to people that were very close to him. And so, you know, I had to make sure I wasn't coming across like, hey, it's no big deal. Look, he's going to be fine. No, it wasn't like that. But look. Look what the alternative is, you know, let's be thankful that he's alive and he's going to come home and, you know, he's going to carry on with his life, and that's what. That's what's important. So it's really. When you do look at these situations, when things are going bad, and then you say, okay, well, what good can come of that? And then the one step further is, then what happens when someone does die? Then what good comes of that? And my thought is always the same thing. I'm thankful that I got to know that person. I'm thankful that I got to understand their personality. I'm thankful that I got to spend a day with them laughing and having that memory. That's what's good. What's good is I got to experience them in my life and they got to experience other people's in their lives, and that's what's good about it. But just to say, hey.

You know, my friend, my family member is dead. This is horrible. And I can't escape from this wrong attitude. And of course you're gonna go through that. It's the. There's the. Whatever those things are that you go through. It's shock and then denial and then anger and then acceptance and all that. That's. I get it. And it's not gonna be easy. But I'll tell you what will make it easier, is to look at the situation and say, what here is good? You know, and you. One of the worst things is parents would have young children that are terminally ill. It's awful. It's awful. And the best you can think of is say, hold them while you can. Yeah, right. And get what you can and grow the memories that you can right now. Because just to focus on the fact that life isn't fair isn't going to help you. And guess what? You're right. Life isn't fair. Yeah, life isn't fair. It's. It's. It's a random, horrible thing. And if you want to focus on the randomness and the horribleness of it, that's where you're going to end up.

Yeah.

But if you can focus on the good that comes out of those situations, try to. And again, I haven't been through that. I haven't been through that. Thank God.

Yeah, not that level for sure.

But the best I can do, the best I can assess is say, man, at least try and look at what positive is coming out of this and focus on that instead of focusing on what is negative. Shoot. It's going back to what Frankel said. You choose what your attitude is going to be.

Yeah.

Don't become a victim of the randomness.

Yeah. And that's. So that goes on, like all levels. You know, how even if, like something isn't horrible, it's just kind of junk, you know, all the way down to just something that's, that's pretty horrible, there's still a lot of good going on in the situation. But. And just like, are you saying, like your attitude or another way to put it is what you're looking for to internalize? You know, a lot of times, and it's natural and I've been there where it's like everything just seems bad, even the smell. Like if something real bad happens that you think is real bad, and then the same day or the next day or whatever, something small bad happens, it'll just add big time to the badness, like nothing's going right kind of attitude. Meanwhile, all the good things are going on all around you, but you're not looking for that. Yeah. So. And a lot of times with like real bad situations, especially, especially with kids, because that's like the, the most weak you can ever feel, really, when, like your kid, like when my daughter had, she had a big staph infection in her lymph node, so her neck was big. She was in the hospital for a week and we're there.

That's like the most weak in that, that you'll feel in. Of course, there's way worse situations, you know, than that. That's nothing compared to situations. I know that. But there are good things that, A, are still going on in your situation, your life, let's say, B, there's good situations that can come of it. And a lot of them, a lot of them is just are strength related, you know, like if you let something beat you down and you don't get the strength, like that's a loss. You'll lose. Like you'll.

So you're saying you're getting some kind of conditioning from it?

In a way? In a matter of speaking, yes. So, like, if you have a quote unquote, good attitude, when you emerge from the situation, you will have strength. Now if you don't, you won't. You'll have weakness. You'll be, you know, gun shy. Everything happens bad. My life sucks. And, you know, you'll continue down kind of that road. So the good part, like if you said, like you said, if you keep that good attitude. And when you make it out, you will have this among the other good things that can come from it. You will have the strength.

Yeah, you're right. And, I mean, just look at Captain Plum and look at Colonel Reader. And for those guys to go through what they went through and. And maintain a positive attitude, and then they come out and you talk to those guys, and it's like, I don't. You can't think of more positive people in the world. You know, I mean, not in the whole world, but you. They just have so much positivity because they've been through something, and they had to maintain that attitude. So you're right. When they come out, it's like, how are you gonna make. And I think that's what happens a lot of times with guys that have been to war is they come back and they're like, happy to see the sunrise. I know I am.

Right.

I'm happy to see the sunrise. I'm. I'm happier than a lot of people to see the sunrise. I appreciate that thing.

Yeah.

And I think when people go through some kind of devastating disease in their family or themselves, same thing. Once they get through it.

Right.

They at least come out the other side and they can appreciate it. And yet if they let it beat them down, it's gonna. It's gonna. Everything is gonna look down. If you're looking down, you're gonna look down. If you're looking up, you're gonna look up.

Yeah.

That's got to be a. It's hard. I mean, it's so hard for people. It's so hard.

Yeah. And again, I'm over here talking, you know.

Yeah. For sure. Both of us are. You know, when I was on Joe Rogan, we started off talking about Chris Cornell and just killed himself. We kind of cursory. Kind of talked about depression. And neither one. I mean, I definitely am not claiming. Claiming to be any kind of expert at all about it. And I even said on there, I was like, look, I've never felt this way. And I had a couple people hit me up on social media, like, you know, you should. You should read this or you should do this, or. And you know, or you're not right. And I'm like, no, I wasn't even trying to say anything that I'm right. I'm just telling. I was saying I don't actually even know.

Yeah.

And. And so, yeah, I'm not, you know, certainly an expert on how to overcome, you know, horrible situations, but I've been in some Pretty horrible situations. And this is what my thoughts tried to be.

Yeah.

And it's not always easy at all. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson has some good, good, you know, good content on that where he's basically, in a nutshell, he says, get yourself together. Where in his example, one of the many was, you know, a family member dies or whatever, get yourself together. So, you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to wallow with the rest of the people so no one can get a hold of anything in the funerals, a mess or whatever? Or are you going to get yourself together, grieve for sure, but get yourself together so you can kind of lead and get the funeral together and take care of the business or whatever.

And it's such a cold, cold blooded thing to say. Right. It's the complete. And that's what I think is hard about it, is, you know, think about this. Oh, if someone in your family died and I was like, echo, get yourself together.

Right.

You know what I mean? Like, I. Who says that? Right. But that's probably the best thing I could possibly say to you now. I might need to say it in a more tactful way. I might just say, hey, Echo, man, I feel for you. Hey, man, what we need to do is grieve, but we also need to focus on moving forward. You know what I mean? It's that kind of thing. But the reality is, what am I really saying? Really saying, hey, get yourself together. You got to move on. We got to move on. We got to move forward. You got to move forward in your life. And that's like such a hard thing to say to somebody.

Yeah.

But that's probably the right attitude to take is, okay, like, this is horrible and I need to keep it together.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Especially when there's no.

Majorly prevalent things that are at risk at that moment as well. Like, you know, like your situation, like in a combat situation. I think BTF Tony was talking about this one. If, like, you're in a firefight or something like that and someone gets hit, you don't just quit.

No.

Exit the firefight and be like, oh, my gosh, my guys hit. It's like, okay, he's hit. Boom. Let's continue the firefight. But let's say there's no firefight, then the guy gets hit. It's. It seems like, yeah, a harder thing to. To just move on.

And so what you kind of need is you need to, like, you need to have a firefight going on so that you. So that you can say okay, I'm gonna deal with this, but I need to also think about the rest of life.

Yeah.

So hard. And, you know, again, it's. It's. I. You know what I'm feeling like right now? I got. I get some social media sometimes where someone will say, hey, I'm not a vet, but, like, a friend of mine is going through problems, and I don't know how to talk to him because I'm not a vet. And that's kind of like what I feel like right now. Like, I haven't been through those kind of suffering. So I'm throwing darts, but I'm throwing them based on what I know, so it's the best I can, you know?

Yeah.

Best I could do. Right. Yeah.

You.

Like, you're at risk of someone saying, hey, you. You simply don't understand. The fact is they are.

Right. Yeah. And my. My statement to that would be, yes, I don't understand. You know, it's like in the. In, when I was talking to the veterans saying, look, you feel like people don't understand. They don't. And that's okay. And so definitely not sitting here saying, oh, you know, I know this is what you do in a situation like that. No, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what you do when your family member suffers something egregious like that, like a terminal disease or death. I don't know. Haven't been through it. What I have been through is losing guys in combat that I have been through. This is. This is darkness. It's a different kind of darkness. But this is what I did in those situations, and that's what I would think would help you in these other situations.

Yeah.

Hard.

It's just the question, right? What do you.

What do you do hard? And we are. We are sitting here reading a book by a guy that was in a concentration camp, and he's saying this thing to do, you know, so that's.

That's another sort of reinforcement of this thought pattern.

Yeah.

All right. He talks a little bit about the passage of time here in camp. A small unit of time, a day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue, appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very quickly. My comrades agreed when I said that in the camp, a day lasted longer than a week.

How paradoxical was our time experience? And that's something. This actually reminded me. I was talking to Sarah Armstrong, and she. Well, now it's actually around the conversation when Leif was talking about. He'd come out here and seen all my kids. My kids are all grown up now, basically, except for my littlest one. But, you know, my oldest daughter's graduating high school in a couple of weeks, and she's gonna go to college. And, you know, when Leif met her, she was. What was that, 12 years ago? So she was.

You know, no, five, six. Six, something like that. So, you know, younger than your. And when he came out here, you know, he had just come. Left his apartment in New York City where he's got his wife and kids, and they're. And, you know, it's chaos. And the little kids, and they're crying and screaming and spilling stuff and throwing up milk and pissing everywhere, and it's just, you know, it's. That's what life is when you're a parent. And, you know, he came out here and saw how my kids were now grown up. And that time is gone, by the way. Gone. Can't get it back. And he talked about it on the podcast. Just, hey, man, make sure you appreciate those. And Sarah Armstrong said something along the lines of, the days are long, but the years are short. That's a very true statement. And you can see that here. It's the same thing. All of a sudden, this time is just going by so quickly.

This is starting to talk again back to the attitude. We could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the. The real opportunities of life had passed. Yet in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph. Or one could ignore the challenges and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners. Same. Same thing, same topic. I know it's interesting, and I told you this before we started this book, you know, is a great book, but I. I kind of wanted to talk about how bad concentration camps were, and I went and found some other sources for that, because Viktor Frankl doesn't highlight it that much. I mean, his ad. I mean, he was in Auschwitz, for crying out loud. It doesn't get any worse. And, you know, to really give the impact of how bad it was, I went and found some other sources that were a little bit. A little bit more directly written and a little bit more horrifying, to be lack of a better word, because in his accounts, he doesn't go into those. Some of those graphic details, which I feel like you should know and you should understand what. Before you talk about, hey, he's keeping a good attitude, but no, no, it's not. He's keeping a good Attitude because he was in a concentration camp. But it wasn't that bad. No, it was freaking hell. And that's what he's dealing with. And in his mind, you could make a triumph or a victory out of those experiences.

Which is incredible attitude to have.

Yeah.

Going back to the book, the prisoner who had lost faith in the future, his future was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold. He let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate. We all feared this moment. Not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick bay or do anything to help himself. He simply gave up.

There he remained, lying in his own extra excreta and nothing bothered him anymore.

And that's similar to what Colonel Reeder said, how if you didn't actively stay alive, you would die. You couldn't just passively exist. You weren't going to make it. If you wanted to die, all you had to do is stop trying and you were going to die.

Back to the book. As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had to first succeed in showing him some future goal. In Nietzsche's words, he who has a why.

To live for can bear with almost any how.

That could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psycho hygienic efforts regarding prisoners.

Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why, an aim for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life. No aim, no purpose, and therefore no point to carrying on. He was soon lost.

Got to know why you're doing what you're doing, and that's all there is to it. He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. And obviously that translates right into leadership perspective, making sure people understand why they're doing what they're doing. You just don't bark orders at them. But from an individual perspective, why are you doing this? Find that.

And I actually. I actually made a.

Post on social media the other day, and it was something along the lines of Finding your inner why or something like that.

Sure.

And I was. I was, you know, mocking that attitude. And I was saying, you know, sometimes my inner voice is trying to find out why I'm doing what I'm doing. And I'm like, my. When I'm doing something hard, my inner voice doesn't allow to talk. Be quiet. I'm over here working, you know.

But there is obviously just like a leadership perspective and from a personal perspective, why are you doing what you're doing? And that should be the driving force.

Yeah.

And if you don't have that, it's hard to overcome these challenges. You can't just overcome challenges just because, you know they're there. You need some greater reason.

Yeah.

And when that gets lost.

You get lost.

I don't know why. I thought that was fun. I think the one why you were mocking that. This is my why and my inner voice.

It wasn't. It wasn't. Now that I think about, it wasn't really the why thing.

Right.

It was more about the inner. The inner voice.

Inner voice.

But yeah, no, I definitely said why.

Because people. I think people use like, it's like a lot of good expressions or sayings or whatever where people just, oh, I like that. And they'll just start throwing it out.

Yeah.

And abusing it and it dumbs it down. And then now everyone's saying it now it just sort of sounds cheesy because no one's actually doing it. No one's actually understanding, like, the real what. What it really means, you know, like the person who's like, hey, I'm gonna lose weight. And, you know, they've basically spent their life neglecting their health or whatever. Then they're like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get in shape. Then they go on this, you know, program. They quit, you know, but when they're doing good on the program, let's say the first or second day, they'll be like, this is my why. And they'll show their. I don't know, their. Their dog or something like that. My why or my kids or whatever, you know. But then the next day they quit the program. Like, it's such a weak thing. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't just do that, you know, like that, that whole thing, my why or whatever, that's way too powerful for people to just be like, hey, my why, and then just not do it.

It shouldn't be just like a little thing. You can't just throw together a 38 second Instagram post that's about your why.

Yeah.

Then you need to dig.

Yeah. You got to do that stuff. So that's why. It's funny because, like, just. People just throw that out now. Now means, like, nothing. And it's. It's almost like they See, it seems like. It seems like. It's totally my interpretation of it, but it seems like they're saying it and thinking that they sound so profound and deep and new and inspirational, you know, but everyone's saying it.

And to. To counter your point, I've had plenty of people that have talked to me about, you know, I was in bad shape. I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't healthy, and I had my first kid, and I said to myself, I need to. I need to be there for my kid. Or. Or I was doing bad at work and I didn't really care. And I wasn't focused on my career, and I wasn't focused on being screwed squared away, and I was wasting all my money on dumb stuff, and I had my first kid.

Yeah.

And then I said, I gotta. You know, this. This is me taking care of my kid, and I need to do a damn good job.

And that's exactly the point right there, is that it's a real thing. And if that's for real, you're. You're. Why, conceptually, now, I'm just saying the expression, you know, for sure.

But there's a big difference between. Well, there's a big difference between the contemplation that goes into. I'm doing this for my kids. Cool.

Yeah.

I'm gonna go on Weight Watchers, right? It's like. No, like, think about this. Think about your relationship with your children and where you're going to end up and how you want to see them live and what guidance you can give them as human beings and the example that you're setting for them. And you line all those things up, then maybe you can put down the donuts. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

In other words, you got to do it, actually, you know, so. Yeah, that's why it just sounds cheesy because everyone does it or says it. It.

This is a great section going back to the book we had to learn ourselves. And furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life daily and hourly. One answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. Again, you're turning. You're flipping this idea around. It's not about what I want from life. It's what does life want from me. And it's putting these challenges and these hurdles in front of me, and I got to go and jump over them, and then I got to smash them, and then I got to set fire to them, and then I got to use that fire to fuel the domination of everything that's in my path.

Is that kind of like, hey, these weights aren't going to lift themselves?

It's the exact same thing.

Thing.

It's the exact same thing.

Yeah.

And again, going back to this idea that.

War reveals human nature, and this is Dr. Frankel's way of putting this exact same thing that I say back to the book. Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. It is, is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature, were a mixture of good and evil?

The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss, which is laid open by the concentration camp.

So we've got this idea, once again, that there's a dichotomy in people.

In people, this dichotomy that you're capable of doing extreme good and you're capable of doing extreme evil. And we've seen it a bunch. We've seen it a bunch on this podcast.

You look at the My Lai massacre, those guys were normal guys that committed extreme evil, straight up evil.

Normal guys that were, you know, four days earlier probably would have done something heroic to save someone. And here they are, the other end of the spectrum.

And I think that you have to. We have to face that. Not only individually do you have that, but then obviously as the group, you have that as a group of human beings. We have that capability. We've seen it over and over again. And if you want to know what that good part is, you got to know what that darkness is, too.

Yeah, the group thing is interesting, you know. You know how you always hear. Not always, but you hear sometimes about these riots on college campuses, whether it be after a game or something like that, bro, at a glance you'd think, dang, is this college full of just hooligans? Like, if this bit like huge riots, you Know, but it's that it's like as an individual or, you know, under quote, unquote, normal circumstances, they just, they're just normal people. You know, guys, girls, whatever. They're just normal people. But then you put them in this particular situation in some way extreme or whatever, you know, it's a spectrum. But. And they just act different. And the whole group dynamic, to those.

Act different, the group dynamic is a, is. It can be a very, very scary thing. There's no doubt. It can be a very, very scary thing. And that's, that's why, you know, even when he's talking about. And I mentioned this on, when I was on Joe Rogan's last podcast, I'm like, this idea of individual freedom and acting as an individual is so important.

As to structure your life around to say, look, I'm not part of this group. This group is not me.

Yeah.

This group is not me. They don't represent me. I represent me.

Exactly.

And I'm. I have my own individual choices. And that's what he's saying in here. The minute you give away to the herd.

Yeah.

That's when you start going. You don't know. You no longer control it.

Yeah.

And when you give up that control, that's a scary, scary thing. And that's when these evil things take place.

Yeah. And that.

Once again, that it's, it's like, it's easy to say now because grouping yourself is actually a survival mechanism.

True.

So you, you know, it's not gonna be just that you're not gonna naturally just be an individual and act like an individual and conduct yourself in all these extreme situations as an individual. You're not just gonna naturally do so I guess it just helps to know these things.

Well, that's, you're, you're a hundred percent right on both facets. Number one, yes. Grouping and fitting in is a survival instinct that people have. And that's why trends happen, and that's why nations happen. And that's why, that's why groups occur. And people. And politics. Yeah. And politics. And in everything. Right. To get these groups. And I mean, it's weird now because with the, the Internet, you can have groups, you can be part of these groups.

And you can connect with all these different people. But it's also important to make sure that you, you do remember that you are an individual, that you can. That you don't want to give up that last shred of human will to decide.

What your attitude is going to be.

Yeah. Dang. And today, you know, in our luxurious society, if you can consciously navigate your way clear that of falling into the group trap is what it is. It's a trap because you don't have. If you can do that successfully, you won't fall for the tricks, man. Like that's the thing you get. We all get tricked all the way down to just something as seemingly benign as marketing. Just man, you'll just fall for way less tricks.

You don't like those tricks out there in the world, do you?

No, I don't. Probably fell for too many of them. I think.

This is a. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wrap this book. This book is not long. It's a very fast read and, and actually he goes into.

Sort of goes into the more of the psychological, the psychiatrist, the actual academic of it than I covered. But this is a fast read. I mean it's only 150 pages or so and you definitely get a raw look at human nature. But this closing I think is very, very powerful. Going back to the book. A human being is not one thing among others. Things determine each other. But man is ultimately self determining what he becomes within the limits of endowment and environment he has made out of himself.

In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine.

While others behaved like saints.

Man has both potentialities within himself. Which one is actualized depends on decisions, but not on conditions.

Our generation is realistic for. We have come to know man as he really is.

After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

However, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Israel on his lips.

And I think that thought that man has both.

Potentialities within himself. And we've seen them over and over again, these grand.

Expanded potentialities in extreme display. And we've talked about these situations in the podcast over and over again in the the Burma railway that was built by the prisoners of war and the prisoners of war were tortured and killed by the Japanese and the genocide in Rwanda and the rape of Nanking. And we've also seen.

The other.

Potentiality.

And we've seen that over and over again that. That potentiality of goodness.

And of sacrifice.

Those men that we've seen over and over again that laid down their lives for their brothers and in doing so protect our freedom.

But it's important to note that again that whether the good or the evil is actualized.

In the minds of men, that is not Based on conditions, but on decisions.

And this doesn't only apply to good and evil, of course, that's the most expansive thought that we can apply this to. But it also applies to everything we choose to do or choose not to do. And everything we choose to become or not to become.

It's us.

It's our choice. And we are responsible.

We are responsible to be good instead of evil, to be strong instead of weak. To become what we want to become, not what we let ourselves become.

We own the course.

And with every decision that we make, we actualize ourselves. We become what we choose.

Swine.

Or saints.

So when you make decisions, every decision think.

Think about where that decision leads and.

What that decision will make you become.

And then self determine.

Self determined. Choose.

What will make you a better person.

And even in situations where you feel you have no choice at all, you still have one last freedom, and that is to choose your own attitude in any given set of. Of circumstances.

Keep.

That choice. Keep that freedom, that hard choice.

The disciplined choice.

And with the discipline to make the right choice, choice.

Maintain.

Your freedom.

Man. I think that's.

All I've got for tonight.

Powerful book.

Yeah. Isn't it crazy how I can't help but think of this, like, where. How they talk about the SS officers, what are the Nazis, the guys there who are just savages, obviously. But are they really savages as people, though? Or is it a circumstantial thing? I mean, I know they're trained to kind of regard this, you know, the Jews or these groups of people as, you know, beneath them and all this stuff, but.

Like, are they savages just as individual? Because it takes a savage to do some of this stuff, you know, especially like grabbing a baby and smashing his, as the book said, skull against the wall. That's like subhuman behavior, you know. But when he goes home, you know, he has kids, you know, is he like, I don't care if these kids ultimately, if their heads get, you know, I'm sure he's not like that. I'm sure he's just a normal person who'd just be just as weak as all of us if your kid stubs its toe and starts crying, you know.

Yeah. Well, we're going to explore. I got some books in the queue to explore the other side of this, and they're very revealing about some of that. But again, it's. It's. You're right that some of these guys, you know, were.

Were normal, right? Some of these Nazis were normal and they were doing their job. And that's one of the worst. You know, there's a whole, there's a whole.

Argument on whether that even is allowable. Like if, that if you're doing your job, and, and I'll tell you what, in the US Military, you. That doesn't, that doesn't work. That's an excuse that we don't have. You can't say, hey, I got ordered to do this thing that was against the law or against ethical values. Doesn't matter. I still can't do it. That's not an excuse. And that came directly from this attitude. That Nazi said, hey, I was just following orders. You know, hey, it wasn't my fault. Just following orders. No, actually you can't, you can't say that. You're not allowed to say that.

Yeah.

So as far as the normalcy, sure, they might have been normal, normal when they went home, but that doesn't remove their guilt at all.

Yeah, fully.

You can't take a baby and smash its head against the wall. You don't get a pass on that one. Whether you wanted to do it or not, there's certain moral standards that exist and you can't violate them. And if you do, you're guilty. It doesn't matter what else you did back then.

Who, who was kind of the.

You know, the authority on that, like where the moral. Was it like a global thing, you know, or is it because obviously Hitler was. Would be like. And whatever.

Well, there's different societies that had different viewpoints. Obviously.

The Nazis.

Yeah. Hence the war. The Nazis and the Japanese both felt, okay, we can do what we need to do to dominate. And whether that's the Rape of Nanking or whether that's the concentration camps and the Final Solution, both those things were in their societies. Now, there was, of course, there was people inside those societies. And I don't know. I don't know of any Japanese. I'm sure there were some Japanese that were against them. And even when we read the Rape and Nanking, there was a Nazi in Nanking, remember, that sheltered people. So there's an example. Here's a guy now, he didn't know what was going on with the Final Solution back in Germany, at least it doesn't appear that way. But, yeah, this is what makes morality and ethical decision making so challenging. But there is, in my opinion, a certain standard moral code that human beings live by.

Yeah.

And that is a universal, relatively unit others. Now, why should. I shouldn't say it's universal. There's the way that I believe that there's morals and standards that human beings should live by.

Yeah.

And when you start stepping outside those bounds.

Yeah.

You're going on the wrong side.

Yeah. And like anything, man, it's like obviously a spectrum. And then what you're talking about, that universal line that you cross, it's like actually when you really look at the line, it's like a, it's a universal gray area. And then when you really look closer, but I think that this, the circumstances don't really fall within the confines of that gray area very often. So it's easy to be like, that's obviously right, that's obviously wrong. But then every once in a while these gray areas emerge and then it's like this big debate and it depends on who you are.

Yeah. I don't spend a lot of time in the, the gray areas, to be honest with you. Like in my thought pattern, I don't spend a lot of time in the gray areas.

Right.

I spend time because to me it is pretty obvious.

Yeah.

Like when you're ISIS and you're systematically raping 12 year old girls and boys, you don't get to live. That, that doesn't work. Yeah, that's not, that's not part of my deal over here. You, you, you die. And when you take people and you put them in cages and you burn them to death, you don't get to do that. Just like these Nazis that are putting people in, you don't get to do that. No.

Yeah.

We go to war, we fight and we win. That's the way it works. Now these gray areas that you're talking about, I don't mess around in those gray areas.

Yeah.

I think there's too much, there's too, there's turbulence in there. Right. And a lot of times you look at it from the outside and you don't. It's hard to tell what it is, what actually is happening in there. Right. I'll. And maybe that's not the best policy, but I won't escalate something personally until I see it go outside the lines of what I deem to be. Okay. Once you get outside those lines, you're done.

Well, thankfully you're a little bit smart in a way where whether you name these things or not, there's always a particular standard that you go by. So just the difference between killing someone and. When someone says murder, murder is clearly defined. You know, so if you murder someone, like killing someone is this broad thing, you kill them accidentally killed them. You killed them after planning.

Yeah.

There's A million revenge and all that, you know, that's killing someone. But murder is defined, you know, so.

Well, somebody asked me when I. I did Tim Ferriss's second time, and someone asked me something along the lines of, well, who defines these rules? Which is basically what you. You just asked me. And I think it. Actually, there is an answer to who defines these rules in warfare. It's the law of armed conflict. It's the Geneva Convention. We follow those laws. They're very clearly defined, what you can and can't do. Boom. That's it. Next question.

Yeah. And, I mean, unless you straight up disagree with the Geneva Convention because of your personal moral code, but as long as you have, again, a standard that you're going by that'll reduce the gray areas by a lot, still gonna be there. But it's easier to operate in black and white when you have standards, and it won't always be easy, but, you.

Know, it's like, well, let me. When we start getting in the gray area, and you're sitting here saying that I'm all black and white, and that's. And I'm actually saying that, like, hey, once you cross this line. But guess what? Those lines can get blurry, too. Yeah, that's because I heard about a guy that was on a documentary who was. He was. He was a Western journalist of some kind. And I got to watch this documentary. I'm sure someone will tell us what it is, but somebody else told me about it. The Western journalist. He's embedded with insurgents in Iraq, and he's filming, and they're going out and attacking coalition forces. Right. And I guess he was. While he's doing it, you know, he's trying to get his story and do his job, but then all of a sudden, they're attacking coalition forces. Right? Now there's a gray area. Now, let's say, if you want to take that example to the extreme, if we're in a firefight and I see a guy with a camera who's wearing.

A press badge following an insurgent.

Right. I mean, it ain't gonna work out good for him, because it's not like I'm gonna say, okay, well, you know, he's clearly with insurgents. But what I'm saying is that's. That's one example of many that. That you could get into where. Also another thing that happened in Iraq a lot was people change sides, and they went from supporting the terrorists to supporting the coalition, and then back again, and then back again. So.

How do you balance those? And I'll tell you how I balance them was how can we achieve our mission? And that sounds like one of those, hey, mission focus. But it's true. I look at. Okay, this guy a year ago was being targeted by coalition forces for being a bad guy. Now he has changed course. So what am I supposed to do? Still prosecute him, or is he gonna help us achieve our mission of overall victory? Guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna cut him some moral slack.

Yeah.

Because we're gonna win. So those are hard things to.

But that's exactly what I mean, though. See, the standard. The standard in your case became the overall mission.

Yes.

So, you know, you have that. It's not like just some guy floating down the road through, like, life being like, hey, I don't feel good about that right there. So I feel this way. So I'm going to do it. It's not that it's like there's a standard, very concrete attached to it still. Gray area is going to emerge. But like I said, it just reduces that gray area.

The bottom line is this is why leadership is hard. Yes. The whole idea of leadership, whether it's in combat or whether it's in the business world or whether it's part of a team or whether it's part of a family or whether it's in a concentration camp camp or whether it's in a prisoner of war camp, leadership is hard. There's gray areas. Like when Captain Plum was saying, hey, he got told an order, you know, make communications with this guy at all costs. At all costs. That means I'm gonna get beaten and tortured and died by the guards to get this guy this piece of communication. Is he gonna follow that? Guess what? No. He had to make a judgment and say, you know what, though? That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. So this gray area that went outside the bounds of the gray area, and he said, no, I'll do my best. I understand that it's critical, but I'm gonna stay within me, staying alive.

Right.

So that is what makes leadership hard, is you have to constantly make these decisions where there's their gray area. And you're doing your best, you're assessing. And that's. That's, again, to me, it was always, I love that. I love that about leadership. I loved weighing those decisions out, and I love discussing them with my guys up and down the chain of command and saying, hey, here's where we're at. Let me tell you exactly where we're at. Yeah, you know, I'LL use Leif. You know, Leif, here's what's going on. This is the situation. What do you think? Yeah, well, I think this. Okay, that's a good point. But did you think about that? Oh, that's a good one. You know what I mean? We're going to have those conversations. And I had never had any problem opening my mind up to these various opinions that people had. And I think as a leader, that's a huge piece of. Of building trust up and down the chain of command is when you have an open mind to discuss things with people. And that also. Double gravitational pull. Echo. Charles. Helps you build the relationship. Yeah, Helps you build the relationship and helps you say, oh, you know what? Like, the minute I'm in there, I'm talking like, hey, Echo, we got a gray area here. You know, we got a customer that is threatening to put us on Yelp, but we didn't do anything wrong. How do you think we should handle it?

Okay, well, you think we should just tell them, go ahead, put it on Yelp. We don't care. And we'll go to Yelp, and we'll talk to them? That might be the good answer, but also, it might be good to say, bro, wait, why are you so mad? Customer, let's talk. Hey, we want to refund you. We want to take care of you because our customers are important to us. Maybe you'll give us a positive thing on you. You know what I'm saying? There's all this gray area, and if you have an open mind to discuss things with your team. Team up and down the chain of command, you know what you'll do is you'll. You'll get in that gray area. You'll start to get clarity. You'll start to get clarity. You'll start to see better, and you can move through the gray area without being. Without being so decisive that in a gray area, you don't know if it's black or white. Right. So if you decide as the leader, I'm going black. Yeah, Going black. Then when the gray area clears up, it was white that you should have gone with. Yeah, you don't need to do that. In many cases, you can say, okay, I'm a lean a little bit towards the black, because that's what I'm feeling. And then all of a sudden, you start moving there, and you start seeing that, no, this is gonna be a white decision.

Yeah.

Okay. I can recover from that. I can move backwards and repair what decision was made. And the best way to do that Is say, hey guys, here's the situation. I thought that black was gonna be the right decision. I started leaning in that direction. I was wrong.

Yeah.

Now I see that white is the right answer and we're going with white. Does anyone have any questions about that? Does everyone understand why I did that? Oh, you don't understand why? Let me explain it to you. Here's what I thought, here's what I saw. Did you, next time do you want me to contact you so you could. That's what I'm talking about. And by the way, when I'm doing that, I'm building relationships with my team, which is what I want to do. I just was talking to a leader the other day and I told him and reiterated something I've said over and over again. The people that did things for me and the teams that were in the army, the Marine Corps, in the seal teams, in my platoon, up and down the chain of Command doesn't matter. 99.9% of it wasn't because I had some kind of rank or privilege over them. It was always because I had a good relationship with people. And when you build that good relationship with people, that's what it's all about. Then they do things for you. And you know what? You do things for them too. It's not a one way street that I'm talking about because you won't build any relationships if you're building a one way street, right? No one, someone's gonna be your friend after you just take advantage of them over and over again. Like those people that call you only when they need something from you. Right? Now, I actually don't have a problem with that because I don't communicate with a lot of people, right? I communicate on social media with a, with a bunch of different people.

They'll get you there.

But as far as if, like when one of my buddies calls me up and says, hey, I need this favor, I'm like, cool on it. I haven't talked to him for nine months. He's only calling me because he needs something from me. Doesn't matter. People do that with me all the time. And it's cool. Now. This isn't a big group of people. There's like six people in the world. And those same six people, they don't call to wish me happy birthday, don't call to tell me, you know.

Merry Christmas. They call me up and say, hey, I need this from you. Can you do it? And I'm like, got it. No factor. Do you even have a birthday Negative. I have a manufacturing date.

So funny. Like, I'm just trying to imagine someone calling you to wish you happy birthday. I mean, maybe like your wife or something.

It was awkward when I got in the civilian sector, and people be like, when's your birthday? And I'd be like, why?

Yeah. What do you care?

What are you talking about? Why are you trying to get my personal information? I'm going to attack you.

Yeah.

Hey, what sign are you?

No.

Yeah. You know, that's the thing.

The. What was the other funny thing about the birthday deal? Oh, that's like getting presents. I'm not good with presents.

Yeah, man.

Like, don't get me any presents.

Right.

Because I don't want what you got me.

Yeah.

If I want something, I already have it. Yeah. So what you got me isn't gonna be appreciated. There's one gift that my wife got me one time, and I haven't. I've been thinking about why I haven't talked about this particular whole situation, and that's. There's a band called the White Stripes.

Sure.

White Stripes and the White Stripes. Jack White, Meg White. The White Stripes are awesome. They're an awesome band. And there's so many layers with the White Stripes. First of all, there's. I'll tell you, two layers that I love about the White Stripes. Number one, all their clothing, guitars, drums, keyboards, everything that they have on stage, and everything that they have on their record album. Everything that they have is either red, black or white on all the records since day one. That's number one. Number two, they only have three sounds in any of their songs at any one time. So those three sounds could be drums, vocals, guitar. They could be drums, keyboards, vocals. They could be keyboards, guitar, vocals. But they only have three sounds at any one time.

So vocals is one of the sounds.

Vocals is one of the.

Oh, Dank's.

Only two instruments, and there's only two people in the band. Anyways, the White Stripes is an awesome band. And my wife bought me tickets to go see the White Stripes. Now, I didn't even think about it. I never pay attention to when bands are playing or whatever. So my wife. I was. I don't use this term very often, but I was overjoyed that she got me tickets to the White Stripes. I was so stoked. And then Meg White had some issues and they canceled the whole tour and they never played again. They were, like, a couple weeks away from being in San Diego, where I was gonna go see the White Stripes.

So the question is ultimately, ultimately grand scheme. Of things. Was that a good gift to give, Jocko?

That was an awesome gift to give me.

So, look, was it the thought that counts in this case?

It was a beautiful gift, and I was. And I couldn't believe she thought of it.

Yeah.

Because normally it's like, oh, you got me a sweater from some store that I hate.

Yeah.

No, I'm really hard to shop for.

Right.

I'm really. If I want something, I have it, and I don't want that much. So it's like, oh, I want something. I have it once every 18 months, I want something, and then I get it.

Yeah. I'll get you, like, a new T shirt or something. You wear that.

No, this T shirt's fine. Don't give me a new one. This one works Good.

Mm. So, yeah, that's. Yeah.

It seems like we just went off on a tangent.

I feel like you went off on a tangent. You know?

You know why? Because I was listening to the White Stripes the other day, and I was thinking, I never give the White Stripes the props that they deserve.

Yeah, man.

And Jack White, the props that he deserves.

Right.

As a singer, songwriter, aren't they brother and sister? They're not allegedly alleged. They were actually husband, wife. They got divorced, but they always claimed to be brother, sister. My little sister, Meg. Wife.

More lady.

This is my big sister. That's right.

Yeah.

That's what he always said.

Thanks. That's good, man. Cool. Well, the original point was these crazy, savage type people may be normal people other than their crazy job.

Yeah. And what's.

And I'm. But I'm not saying. So it's cool.

I'm not saying that.

You'Re accountable for your actions.

Yeah.

Regardless of how cool you are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's something from any leadership position you need to be aware of. And when I say any leadership position, I mean you as a frontline trooper. Because if you as a frontline trooper is getting told to do something that you know is morally, ethically, or legally wrong and you still do it, it's on you. Sure. You can point the finger and blame the higher ups. And the higher ups would be burned, too, if they told you to do something that was wrong. But you need to be accountable for what you did. And that's all there is to it. Yeah, it's a rough tour. No one wants to play that game. The Nazis wanted to play that game. Oh, it's not mine. Hey, I was ordered to do this. Can't do that. Can't say that. Don't get that excuse.

Yeah.

You don't get the. I was a good person and I took care of my kids even though I was shoving people into. Into a gas chamber. You don't get to play that game.

No. Yeah, man. Too Much Brother was a small little documentary online. I don't know, I didn't watch the whole thing, but it was about the executioner in the Middle east somewhere. You know, one of these countries where, you know, he has his sword.

Yep.

And it's his job, you know.

Yeah. And he's a straight up executioner.

Yeah, that's it. That's just his job.

Modern day job.

And he's like. Yeah, yeah, it was. It wasn't old school.

No, it's like on YouTube.

Yeah.

Like last week.

Yeah. And there. But it's like, it's funny because the whole feel of the documentary was just real. Like, oh, yeah, this guy has a cool job and he's like slicing people's heads off with great precision. And he's so good at his job, you know, here's his family and they're loving, you know, and they're, you know, he's playing with his kids. It's like all this stuff, it's just weird, man.

Anyway, yeah, there's. There's another culture.

Yeah, it's weird. A lot of gray areas in that one too, my man.

Indeed.

Kind of. Anyway.

Or not.

I feel like we should go into the support.

Yeah, we should go into the support.

Support is one of those good things. Very dynamic. Supporting others. Supporting yourself. Supporting others and yourself, which is a separate category of support, in my opinion. So there's yourself, others and yourself and others. That's another category.

When I talk about. On it, we're talking about all three categories. Support yourself by way of supplementation. And we talk about supplementation all the time.

But no, you talk about supplementation.

Well, you're the one who turned me onto it, so. Actually some of it. I took Shroom Tech before.

You talked about it before.

Pre podcast, Pre podcast. I was on Shroom Tech. I was on Alpha Brain. Shroom Tech.

I got my shipment of Alpha Brain pills. But back in. I had run out then I only had the instant. And so now, like I said, what's nice about the PILs is you got something coming to do the podcast. Guess what? Alpha Brain pills. And I might double up on the Alpha Brain if I think I gotta really get my get engaged. But it's good to have the. The capsules.

Yeah.

As well.

I dig it.

But what's cool about the drink is it tastes good and I. If you get the sweet tooth itch going and you want something sweet and you get the peach, the natural peach, not the spicy. The spicy has a different situation going on. The peach is just straight up like tasty, like peach. Yeah.

Peach juice.

Peach juice kind of situation.

Yeah, kind of like that. Agree. I dig it. The pills, I dig it. And that's actually what we had was the pills.

I said we because me and my brother, we. Oh yeah. Alpha brain. But when they came out with the instant, that was better. And it starts to become like this little kind of ritual, you know, you mix up your alpha brain, you know, kind of thing and it's instant. I don't know. Just seems like either way, it doesn't matter if I haven't mentioned it already. I think I did. These are supplements from onit. Onnit.com. we talk about the supplements, but there's like work outside. Just bought a jump rope.

Did you?

Yeah. See, so when I was young, I.

Was good at jump rope. Jump rope too.

Yeah. And then as I, you know, as I think kind of when. When I don't know, maybe early 20s, kind of stopped. So. That's a long time ago.

Jump rope is awesome.

Yeah. So I. And you know, you know how like, like riding a bike, you kind of stay good at something a little bit. You're rusty.

You're rusty. Yeah, definitely be rusty.

You can't shred and you can't go as long. You know, like that can stuff. It's weird because it, you know how jump rope. Yeah.

You know what's weird is back in the day of boxing. Yeah, boxing. Jumping rope for three minutes was like no factor.

Yeah, go ten minute warm up.

Yeah, go get your jump rope right now and just get out, get out, get out. Three minutes on the rounds. You feel it?

Yeah. So yeah, I bought one of those and it's. So the interesting thing about that is jump rope technology has changed a little bit.

So what is it made of steel?

No. Well, there's. I'm sure there's steel in there, so. But it's like each handle has a swivel. The little. I mean, it's simple, but there's like way more, more to it than before. Last time it was like two wooden handles and a rope.

Yeah, for sure.

Actual rope. This one is like a cord that survives all this stuff. I don't know. Anyway, got a jump rope. The jump rope's on there if you want.

We'll have a jump off.

Yeah, I was pretty good too.

Hey, Remember when. Like when you jump rope and then when the. You know how like in this was like elementary school and if you'd get tired or you couldn't keep a rhythm, they'd say, hey, just. Just wave it from back and forth. You know what I mean?

There's a name for that move.

Yeah.

What's it called when you tutor Tutero? Totero. When you. Boom. Like a. Like a.

Matador. Isn't it called matador when you just. Yeah. Go side to side because you can't.

Get it or whatever. Yeah.

You just get that rhythm going.

Oh, yeah. I don't know the name. I never had to do that because I was expert level even in elementary school. But that's. That's going to be you if, in fact, you want to step up.

So you can get that on it. Not just if you want.

If you want kettlebells on there too. The good kind. Well, kettlebells are good. Straight up. They're all good. And. But on it has those artistic ones. Yeah, even those add another layer. But they have the regular one. I think they're called the competition ones. Don't quote me on that one. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, you get the legend bells, which is like, what, the cyclops, the werewolf. Look at them. They're. They're dope primal bells, which is like all that, you know, primates and stuff. I think I got the chimp. Two chimps and two werewolves.

Yeah, see, I have. I have zombie bells. Mine are just evil zombies.

How big is this on the one.

You know, I forget. I gotta look.

Yeah, that's the. It's like designer. You probably keep it inside too.

Yeah, you really do know. The one that I keep inside is not. The ones in my garage are for the long, heavy work. This one is for. Oh, I'm tired of writing right now. I'm gonna bang out some snatches.

Right, right.

Boom, boom, boom. Good. Feel a lot better now I'm gonna write more. I'm gonna write harder.

Yup, there you go. But, yeah, anyway, the point there is there's very cool things on the website onnit.com and the supplements, not to mention this. The fact is the supplements are straight up. The best ones. Straight up. Because from the beginning. And how's this. And I don't know if we already mentioned this, but I hear it all. Joe Rogan talks about all the time.

How Name drop.

Yep. I listen to Joe Rogan all the time and he says these things and I believe them. If you get like. I don't know Shroom tech, and you're like, hey, I didn't feel it. I got tapped out. So, you know, I expect more out of Shroom tech. I expect this to make me tap out. Everybody. I don't like it.

Send it back.

No, you don't even send it back. You send them an email saying, hey, I don't like this stuff. They'll just send your money back. You don't have to send it back.

That's pretty awesome then.

Yep. But don't be trying to be like, here, I'm gonna give me my money back in the next month after you're done with it, order some more, and then do it again. Yeah, you're gonna get ostracized nonetheless. Krill oil. That's the one. You don't want to not have krill oil, even if you're like a young guy. In my opinion, we should. I should have always been on krill oil. You should have. Yeah. And if you're not in krill oil, I think you are like a step behind. Joint wise.

It's, you know, which puts you behind in a lot of different ways.

A lot of different ways. Yeah.

You're not working out as hard as working on this.

Hard. Struggling through various activities in everyday life. I told this story, whatever, but I do it all the time. You know when you fill up water in the big five gallon jugs.

Yeah.

You know, and Brett do that at night when it's kind of cold. It's like, bro, you can carry those things from the thing to your car. You don't want to be worried about my knees or whatever. Your back.

The trials, and you got to put it in there.

You should write your own book, dude. What about like the. The kind of crazy trials you've been through Carrying water on a cool night in Southern California.

I know.

Very fresh, pure water, by the way.

Doesn't make any lighter, though, that you still have to struggle.

Right. Here's the thing, though. There are micro. They're called. They're called micro struggles is really what they are. You know, standing in line. Actually, the standing in line thing, that's not a struggle. That's manufactured struggle. So it's like an exercise in discipline and embracing struggle. That's what it is. It's not an actual struggle bestowed upon your. Heaped on your shoulders, you know, that you have to bear in everyday life. That's not what's the standing in line.

That's why you need your own book about Echo's struggles. You can. You can document these various Me looking.

For a specific wine. That one was a big wine.

Was there a tomato one too? Like some kind of tomato sauce? No.

I went, yes.

Struggle the wine struggle the holding the groceries. Now we got the fill in the water bottles.

There's four chapters micro struggle. And filling up the water is not a struggle because I'm on the krill oil. Oh, omega threes right into my joints. Straight into my joints. Uptake. High percentage uptake. Anyway, get on the krill oil. I'm on the strong bone now too, by the way.

For.

That's for tendons. The tendon attaching to the bone.

Strontium.

Does it feel good about it?

Doesn't I feel some really good about it? Actually more preventative because I lift.

Yeah.

Nonetheless, strontium, that's in strong bone. That get. Doesn't it? That doesn't hit the. Like the limelight isn't on that all the time. It's all on calcium most of the time. Like calcium makes your bones strong. Strontium just as much.

So get on the strong bone.

Bone strength also.

Alpha brain, obviously. Shroom tech for high performance. Go on the website. Whatever you need, they got it. They even got like tri blend, peanut butter, nut butter. It's not peanut butter. It's like almond, cashew and walnut.

Don't know.

Anyways, delish. Get on that one. Anyway, on it dot com. Jocko. If you want 10% off, pay full price. That's. That's up to you, really. You know, I'm saying I wouldn't recommend it. I don't even know of anyone who would recommend. And that.

Also good way to support.

If you're interested in the book.

Man's Search for meaning. Viktor Frankl.

What I have done is I put on the website a page with all the books, all of them, that Jocko has covered.

Every once in a while, Jack will cover an article. The links. Maybe I'll do that. But nonetheless, the books are all on there. All in order too, by the way. So the most recent is going to be at the top. This one will be on there. It is on there. If you want to support, click on there. If you're going to get the book, click through there.

Directs you straight to Amazon.

What if you're doing other shopping?

Hey man, go ahead, do the same thing. Click on it. We have a banner on the front page too.

Then you can click on there.

Yeah.

And then you can do your shopping.

Yeah. If you want.

That sounds like a good plan.

Even if you're buying duct tape.

Also, do you have A link to your favorite duct tape on there.

Sometimes I say things that are just so inherently brilliant, it makes me wonder. So we will have a duct tape link. Link for sure.

Yeah. Just in case.

Everyone needs duct tape, and they especially need it when they get done. Listen, the podcaster, they're thinking about the things that they're gonna be duct taping together.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, that's true. You know why I mentioned duct tape in the beginning? And I didn't really realize this because I didn't think about it until a handful of people asked me. You know why?

Why?

Because I used to watch MacGyver all the time. Actually, I still watch MacGyver.

No, no, it's on a channel called Clue. C L O O. Random date. Random channel. Yeah, it's like a retro channel, kind of.

Apparently.

MacGyver, man. Well, there's a new MacGyver, by the way. A new one.

Was it lame?

I don't think it's as good as the old one, but it could be just my. But you know how you get attached to your old shows. It could be that. But MacGyver was dope back in the day, so, you know, whichever. And that was this thing. Duct tape people. People like to say, oh, paperclip, right? MacGyver with the paper. He never really had a paperclip.

Really.

He had duct tape. That was his thing.

Swiss Army Knocking tv.

All right, that's on you. And I dig it.

But I was busy getting after he.

Had the Swiss army knife and the duct tape. That was his thing. Everything else. He just found it in his environment. His environment, which. Which changed from episode to episode. Nonetheless. Subscribe to the podcast on itunes, Stitcher, Google Play, all these platforms that provide podcasts. We're on all of them. Boom. Subscribe whichever one you use. Even if you use two, I guess. Right? I mean, does. Do people use two platforms?

Why did I do that the other day? There's some reason I had to go to a different platform, so I have a backup platform.

Boom. Subscribe to both.

Yeah, right.

Is that kind of like YouTube and Vimeo? You know, some guys will have a Vimeo account as well.

I don't know why that got escalated.

YouTube ad, bro. I'll tell you what, I don't know why, but this could be the reason. Why? Because YouTube. Okay, so Vimeo is kind of for, like, professional people who fancy themselves as, like, film makers. Like, here's my piece that I've made in artists. It tends to be that, right? YouTube is just like, guys. YouTube kind of that, too. But overall. Yeah, exactly Right. Just throw my video. It's YouTube. Like, you know, the tube TV. It's you, whatever you are. Vimeo is. I don't know the name. I guess I could think about it, but nonetheless, that's what it shook itself out to be, you know, so it's funny when people are like, I'm not on YouTube. I'm on Vimeo. I'm on Artist. Yeah.

Do you. Do you have to do anything to be on Vimeo, or you just still.

No exact thing. It's exactly like YouTube, except for the fact which, now that I'm thinking about it, makes sense, where if you upload a video and you're like, oh, man. In one of these titles, midway through the video, I spelled it wrong, which happens to me sometimes you can go back into your account and replace the video, even if it's been up for a week.

You can just.

Vimeo YouTube. You cannot.

Yes. A new video.

Yeah. It's like, you got to upload again. And here's the thing. You can't upload the same file.

Got a rename.

Because YouTube will know. You got to read. It'll. It has all these little. This little information in the fire. They'll be like, hey, that's a duplicate file. You can't do that. You know, probably had something to do with advertising. I don't know. Nonetheless, subscribe to Jocko Podcast on YouTube if you like that channel. We're trying to provide. What do you call providing value? You know, that's.

Don't say that doesn't even sound cool.

That's another. It sounded cool when I first heard it, but it's. That's another.

That's another one of those things where it sounded cool and then everyone thought, like me, or I think, like everyone else, whatever. And so everyone started using it. Now it's like people are abusing it. I'm over here just trying to provide value, and it just, you know, it starts to sound like a good voice.

You just do. I think you really don't do voices. Other than escalation.

Thanks, Jocko. Anyway, subscribe to YouTube. We're trying to provide some value there with the excerpts and various other clips aside from the video version of this podcast. Your Memorial Day one was really good, man. I liked it.

It was a powerful, powerful letter. Yeah.

A bunch of other stuff. Like.

Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store, if you didn't already know. Jocko store.com. what do we have on Jocko store? We have t shirts.

If you were to. Jocko also has a podcast.

Sure.

Called Jocko. Jocko has white tea. It's called Jocko White Tea.

Yeah.

I think I see a trend here.

Yeah. Yeah. The trend is real, for sure.

Nonetheless, the lack of originality and name. Well, knowing things.

Yeah. So in a way. Because here there are layers in that, too. And there is sophistication to that, even though it seems simple, because there I was being sophisticated. You are being so.

Without even knowing it.

There's more to Jocko than just. Yeah, that just happens to be my name. There's two. There's more to. That goes beyond this podcast, beyond the TV on, whatever. Right. Okay. So just. Let's just start with that fact, which is complex in and of itself. Then you're like, okay, look, this is what, roughly considered a company, technically.

Maybe I guess if you had to. If you had to ask me today, what do I do, like, for a living? And I was like. I was like, oh, well, just like, stuff.

Yeah.

And he goes, well, what would you. How would you. What'd he say? He said, well, how would you describe.

What you do? And I said, stay busy. That's what I do.

Yeah.

Okay, fair enough.

Yeah, There you go. But technically, as far as.

Dang, I haven't heard that one in a while. Cooper Jocko Podcast dot com. That's an entity. We'll call it an entity. I don't know, Company business.

It's a place where we have.

Nonetheless. Oh, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead out on a limb and call it a brand. It's brandish.

Whatever.

Nonetheless, if you call. Okay, well, Jocko Store. That's the name of the store.

Yeah. Well, that's true. And to be honest with you, the reason that I called the podcast Jocko Podcast. Podcast. When I was on Tim Ferriss's podcast, I said, jocko Hungry. I. And I don't even know. I don't know if I just said, I don't know if it's on the podcast or not. But he. I think he says, I'm like, oh, you know, we gotta go get some food. And I was like, jocko hungry. And then I was like, well, we're gonna do a podcast. Jocko Podcast.

Right.

That was the initial thought. There's the layer.

Makes sense. Yeah, that. And that's it. But even with naming, the other is.

I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted to do and not care.

Yeah. And that makes.

I knew we're gonna talk about jiu jitsu and fighting and Music and hardcore and war and death. And I just wanted to not have any limitations. And the only way I could do that, because if you give the podcast a name, like, you know, the ultimate business Podcast, you know, it's like, okay, well, then next thing you know, we're talking about war, and. Or if you call it the war podcast, but you're talking about business, or if you talk about the leadership podcast, but you're talking about Jiu jitsu. So how do you get all those things into one thing called the Jocko Podcast? And I can do whatever I want.

Yeah, there you go. And if people are looking for you, they see you talk about xyz, they're like, oh, you know, I sure, I can look up xyz. Easy connection. Yeah. And it's simple, which is like, you.

Know, simplicity goes a long way.

Yeah. You know, and that's kind of like a thing.

So why are we talking about this?

I'm just saying that's why it's called Jocko Store.

Yeah, that's right.

So.

Because it is, you know, people want to do other things in their life besides listening to our advertisements.

Well, you're the one chiming in. I'm over here trying to talk about Joshua.

Actually, I noticed that the other day when we had Roger Hayden on and I gave you the silent treatment. And when you looked at me for affirmation while you were giving the advertisements, I didn't even nod. I just looked at you, and you got. You actually got uncomfortable. Yeah, you actually got uncomfortable. You were like.

Maybe you.

The look on your face like you'd look at me like I was going to give you a smile. I know. And I just look at you like, hurry up. And then you got uncomfortable, and I said, oh, he's. He's starting to feel it.

Yeah.

Gave you no mercy.

Yeah, that's like subtle pressure. Nah, man, it's all good, you know, so do that again right now, you know, so I can talk about the store. Jocko store, Jocko store dot com. If you like T shirts. Now, I'm not saying if you like T shirts in general. I'm just saying if you want to represent discipline equals freedom. What? Get after it.

Know the darkness.

Know the darkness. That's a good one.

You know? Anyway, go on the store, Jaco store, dot com youm can see shirts if you like them. Go get one support that way. That's a good one. Got some rash guards on there. One new rash guard out. Already says get after it. On it. Discipline on one sleeve. Freedom on the other sleeve. Jocko approved. Really good. I think it's good. I feel that the people who have witnessed it. Is that pompous to say witnessed it.

Like there's some kind.

Yeah, maybe even a lot.

Anyone that's witnessed my rash guard that.

I made, that I bestowed upon them by way of visual.

How about people. How about people that saw it thought it was a little. Pretty cool? They thought it was cool. They thought it was realistic.

They thought it was cool. So there it is. You go in the spirit story. Look at it if you think it's cool.

If you want to witness the glory of Echo Charles's rash guards, you may go to jocko store.com and revel in the glory.

Exactly right. And whatever else you want. There's some good stuff on there. We added this little thing, too. If we're out, and I'm trying to, like. I'm trying to restock, you know, Restock. Boom. But I added this little thing where if, like, let's say the size medium or whatever is out, it just says, oh, little button, Notify me. Boop. Put your email. Boom. Notifies you when it's back in stock. And again, I'm trying to put them back in stock asap. Boom, boom, boom. Right now. But, you know, give me a day or two or whatever. We'll notify you. Boom. Also.

Psychological warfare, if you didn't know what that is. It's an album with tracks. Not music tracks.

Word tracks sent, like spoken word, you know. So basically what it's for is, you know, it's not like poetry. Well, arguably not poetry, but it's Jocko in there talking, talking us to me. Jocko's talking to me.

I actually quite literally was talking to you when that was made.

Exactly right. So, you know, you can have him talk to you. So basically what it's for is he's not just talking, like, everyday stuff. So when you have hard time waking up in the morning or you have a hard time because you're tired and you want to skip the workout, or you have a hard time because, you know, it's lunchtime and I'm all hungry and all they have is donuts here or whatever, what else?

What if you're procrastinating?

Also if you're procrastinating or what do you call it?

What if you're creative ending the podcast.

Maybe you could listen to that one right now. We could carry on.

I'm trying to explain this thoroughly so we can all have a really good understanding of what it is. And Its value. That's. That's.

It's downloaded me talking about moments of weakness so you can get through them.

Yeah.

Next. Next comment.

Yeah, I guess. Let me add this one more thing.

Actually. You can even take it at moments of triumph and strength. Strength. And it'll still work. You'll just want to do it more, you know? Yeah. It's like drinking coffee when you're not tired. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Double down.

Let that sink in. Anyway, psychological warfare. On itunes, Amazon music, all these music.

Google Play.

Google Play. I think. I think it's on everything cool. But yeah, man, do it.

Right on. All right. Also, you can get Jocko White Tea on Amazon. And when you order Jocko White Tea, make sure you also order more weights for your barbells because your deadlift is gonna go up to approximately £8,000. So you need to get that much weights when you order it. Weigh the Warrior Kid book. It's been out for a couple weeks now and thank you for getting it. Also, little warning that someone put on Amazon in their review. I thought it was worth hearing and thinking about. Parents, be ready. I bought this book after listening to Jocko on the Joe Rogan podcast where Jocko was the guest. Great podcast. Bought the book after learning Jocko has a book for kids. My son, who isn't very motivated yet, was excited about the book. When he started reading the book, a fire lit underneath him. He said to me, dad, I'm gonna get up tomorrow at 5am Will you get up with me? In that moment, I realized that I was what I was going what was going on? And I couldn't let him down. I enjoy my sleep like everyone else, but I was amazed that my son got excited. So I replied, yes, let's do it. Got up at 5am and his alarm clock must not have gone off, but I turned on his light in his bedroom and he got right up, he got his clothes and shoes on and we went for a jog. We've never done this before. I had him do some sit ups and push ups after and he gladly did. Couldn't quite do push ups. If that's okay. We'll get there. Long story short, this book only being a few chapters and only a few chapters in, I was kind of surprised when I saw that only a few chapters in made the book worth getting. In this day and age of electronics and iPads and tablets, kids don't seem to be as motivated to do activities as when I was a kid. I'm 39, so I edified him after for making the decision to get up at 5am on a non school day. I told him that he can apply that mentality to anything in life.

Boom.

Weigh the warrior kid. Get it for your kid. Be prepared to get yourself back in the game. Also, Discipline equals freedom. Field Manual, the instructional manual for getting after it. Feel free to pre order that one. Also Extreme Ownership, Combat Leadership.

Combat Leadership and also Combat Leadership. That's what the book is about. How to apply the fundamental principles of combat leadership to your business and to your life. Also, for a more hands on experience you can call Echelon Front, our leadership and management consulting company. Myself, Leif Babin, JP Dinelle, Dave Burke. You can contact us@infochelonfront.com Also the muster.

Austin, Texas July 13th and 14th at the Omni Barton Creek Resort. No fluff.

There's no fluff. Just pragmatic information you can act on immediately. You can literally, in a break, email your team and give instructions that's going to move them in the right direction. In the Austin muster, there's only 300 seats, smaller venue.

It's gonna sell out.

So get online, get registered. If you can't make it to that one, come to San Diego in September, September 14th and 15th for muster 004. We'll be there live. And while you're waiting for the muster, if you need to communicate with us, you can find us on the Interwebs, on Twitter or on Instagram. On that Facey Boha.

Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And to the military personnel out there holding the line in places no one wants to be, doing things that no one else wants to do. Thanks for keeping us free to police, law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs and other first responders. Thanks for keeping us safe.

And for everyone else out there.

Remember, remember what human beings are capable of suffering through. And remember that even in those situations.

Where everything seems to be taken away, when you seem to have no choice at all in the world.

Remember.

Remember that you can still choose how you react to the things around you. You can still choose your attitude.

And you can still choose to actualize the best person.

That you can be.

In every aspect of your life. You can choose.

To get after it.

So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.