Jocko Underground: Self Confidence | Overcoming Fear of Confrontation

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 130 sitting here with Echo Charles. We're going to roll into some questions. Echo Charles, what do you got?

I have a six year old son. His mother and I are divorced and have been for some time now. We have both moved on, have very involved partners who also have children. But I've noticed some issues that have been consistent since he was very young. He lacks a lot of self confidence, especially when he's around his mother. He completely shuts down when interacting with new people or people he doesn't interact with regularly. Initially I thought this was due to speech issues he has, but when he's around my stepchildren, he's very outgoing and confident like he's a completely different child. To help his confidence, I signed him up for wrestling at his local school. He would act excited around me prior to wrestling starting, but his mother reported he was having severe anxiety and fear about starting wrestling and he told her he didn't want to participate the first wrestling practice he attended. He wouldn't even watch the practice. He continued to cry facing the wall. I changed. That changed some. When his mother left, he livened up and began to watch the practice. At least he was asking me questions and seemed genuinely interested. But he wouldn't take that next step and actually participate. His mother took him to the next practice and he did watch with her. But he. But she told me.

That she would not be taking him anymore due to her believing she is the obstruction. Unfortunately, I'm a police officer who works second shift, so I rely on her to take him to practice once or two days a week. I organize his stepmom and his grandmother to take him on the days that I work. And when I informed his mother of this, she refused, saying that she would take him because she didn't want him to feel abandoned. I recognize I've got some codependency issues that I'm working on just like his mother. But I feel like embracing and encouraging this codependency is only going to hold my son back. Any feedback would be great.

As I once told Echo Charles, bro.

Your son is 6. He's gonna be fine. He's fine. He's gonna be fine. Like this is literally none of this is any factor whatsoever. I know that sounds really hard to say because it's your kid, but he's going to be totally fine. I told you that when you came to your your son his first jiu jitsu day.

Yeah, just turned five by the way.

He just turned five and, and he didn't freaking immediately turn into Andre Galva.

Went on the mat. Yeah.

He didn't like it. He didn't want to train. Yeah. Then you came home bummed out, and I was like, bro, he's five. It's going to be fine. That's the same thing I'll say here, dude, he's six. This is like, no, literally no factor. You know, it can turn it into a big factor. You making it into a big factor. Don't make it into a big factor. I know it's hard because you think if he doesn't get this training, his confidence is gonna be bad forever. No, it'll mess up. His confidence is like, you have to do this thing and we're ram it down your throat and we're gonna be in there awkward. Now, you see, the other kids saw you cry, and now they're looking at you like you're wimpy. And now you feel wimp. Like all these things are gonna add up. Just chill. Just chill. I would say, actually, if you can find some Jiu Jitsu might be a little less intimidating than wrestling practice.

Work with him outside of the actual practice. Dude, at six years old, he doesn't need to go to any jujitsu classes. And he can get advanced. He can be on par with any other six year old by you wrestling around with him and doing Jiu Jitsu with him and teaching him arm locks and all that stuff. And you'll be bonding with him and having fun. And then guess what happens when he goes to class for the first time? I know what I'm doing.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden that's a little bit fun. Maybe get one of his buddies to come over the house, teach him some Jiu Jitsu too. Some of my friends, some of my son's friends didn't like Jiu Jitsu or wrestling or whatever when they were young. Didn't like when they were 5 years old. Didn't like when they were 6 years old. Didn't like when They're 7 years old. Ethan, you know Ethan, he didn't like it. Six years old, five years old, seven years old, eight years old, nine years old. Finally, I think he was nine years old. He was, like into it now, was he? Like, like his whole Jiu Jitsu opportunities were gone? No, dude, he's sick. Guy. Freaking could be as good as he wanted to be.

Now, my son and all his buddies, do they do Jiu Jitsu? My daughters do Jiu Jitsu. They all do Jiu Jitsu. That's what's happening? The fact that the kid doesn't want to do it or is intimidated by it or cries about. It's all. There's. All these little things are going on. None of them matter. None of them. Hey, and by the way, he can only go two days a week with you. That's enough. That's more than enough. He can go two days a week. No factor. All good. You wrestle with him on the other days. Wrestle a little extra. Have some fun with him on the weekends. Get some mats in the house, dude in the carpet, dude in the bed.

That's what we're doing, man. Make it fun. No pressure. He's gonna be fine. He's six. He's six years old.

I have a friend that wrestled in college, didn't start wrestling until his sophomore year of high school, and he was a champion wrestler.

The White Buffalo Jake. He didn't start playing guitar until he was 19. That's when he started playing guitar. And he's a rock and roll legend, y'.

All.

Josh hall didn't start surfing until he was 15. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Like, this doesn't matter. This doesn't matter. But Tiger woods started. Your son's not Tiger Woods.

Don't force him into it. He's gonna have fun. The best thing you can do is make his life fun.

We talk about that. We. You and I talked about that preparation thing, and you kind of debunked it a little bit because Cairo, you had trained him like, he kind of knew what to expect. And it still didn't like it the first time he went. But it definitely is going to be more comfortable. He also. You made it comfortable in a way where all of a sudden, this new thing that he was going to is a little bit shocking, Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's not just my dad doing this now. There's this random people.

Yeah.

They're looking at me.

Yeah. And they weren't really doing jujitsu. They're doing drill. They're doing stuff that he didn't connect the dots. He was like, what's going. It was just. Yeah.

So you should have done some of that stuff with me.

Yeah, should have. Yeah. I should have just brought them with me when I go train. That's what I should have done, probably. I don't care what you do. Watch me go jump in class. Don't care. Have fun. Play with the freaking. All those foam balls around. Yeah. Go. Do whatever. Have fun. Be happy to be here, you know?

Be here. Yeah, yeah.

The. The thing that we said on the last underground podcast I got asked about. Like, kids, it's the leadership principles that we talk about all the time. Cover, move, simple, prioritize, next to decentralized command. And then the relationship part. Trust, listen, respect, influence, and care. That's what you should be focused on with your kid. Trust, listen, respect, influence, and care. Six years old? Yep. Give them some trust. I don't want to go to jiu Jitsu. Okay, well, what do you feel like doing?

Let them influence you. That's how you build a relationship.

That's how you build a relationship. Trust, listen, respect, influence, and care. When you do that, you give them, when you allow them to influence you, you'll get influence with them. When you put trust in them, they'll trust you. That's what we're doing. It's gonna be awesome. Your kid's gonna be awesome. That's what's gonna happen.

He mentioned the confidence thing, right? Like he's like shy and confident. Whatever. Here's two kind of. I'm not saying they're easy fixes, but they're really simple things you, you can do if you can remember to do it. Because a lot of this takes self control. But that I would wager you'd see immediate results, like pretty, pretty quick with kids in confidence. So I know one thing that can cause kids to not be confident is if they get in trouble for every little thing they do, like real trouble, you know, not like they're just used to mom and dad yelling, so who cares? And they don't care. But I mean, like, are they getting scolded for doing every little thing wrong? That'll make someone very not confident. And then on the flip side, are they getting praised for doing things right or empowering, like. Or are you empowering them to do things right? Right. That's essentially it. So if you can flip, because it's super, it's very natural to be like, oh, they did it wrong. So that, that, that mistake or that error stands out more so than stuff they're quote unquote supposed to be doing anyway. Right. Because that doesn't stand out. So it's easy to run it like that where you, you, you react and respond to errors and stuff. Right? So it's easy. That's easy. So you got to kind of put some mental effort into it. So instead of scolding somebody, and I'm not saying that's what he's doing, but I am saying a lot of times if a kid is not confident, it's because he Gets scolded for every little.

Freaking thing he's doing, including like, don't cry. Don't stare at the wall. Hey, get over here. Don't act like that. Like those are all the things you're talking about. Yeah, you're right.

Everything. Yeah. So the kid, six bro, he. He came like that. Brad, leave me alone. I don't know what to do. You got to tell me what to do. And I'm going to go wherever the payo is, and I'm gonna be scared of everything else, especially if I'm getting some kind of pain from it, you know? So if I do this, I make mistake pain. I ain't even gonna try that no more.

So, by the way, there's three other things that I could have tried, but I'm not gonna try them either because I don't even know.

I don't want to get scolded. I don't know that kind of stuff, you know? But if. If they get a feedback like, oh, dang, that was good job, they'd be like, oh, shit, I can't wait to do that again, or something like that again, you know? So as a parent, if you flip that around and be like, hey, I'm not gonna make these big deals out of errors. Like, I'll correct errors. But like, oh, hey, that was a good try. That was a good try. Do it this way. Try it again. You know, instead of, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. Right? And then when you see behavior that you like, you praise it, don't correct it. Don't say how they could have done it better. Nothing like that. Just praise it. Like, hey, that was good. That's very powerful. That was good. You should keep that up. You know, if you do that consistently, you'd be surprised how quick that can change a kid's behavior. Again, I don't know the whole story, and I'm not a therapist, so I'm not. You know, there could be a lot more to it, but I think that those just. That if you just start implementing that. Consistent. Gotta be consistent. Cause if it's inconsistent, it won't work. I feel like I believe the thing.

You gotta watch out for is like, they can read. You know how a dog can tell when you're like, mad or whatever?

Yes.

Or a dog can tell when you're like, gonna get. Take it for a walk. Your kid. When you're disappointed in your kid, they can see it. So when the kid is like, bummed out, they know that the way that they behaved made you disappointed. Now they same thing. It's basically the same as a scolding. It's just a non verbal. So, yeah, those are, those are really good points, man. I like those points a lot.

Yeah, so.

And by the way, those are also just leadership things. Fully the exact same thing. If you're my employee and you make a little mistake and I jump down your throat, your confidence goes down. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to Jocko underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's Jocko underground.com it costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistancecle underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized. Underground.