Jocko Underground: Start Walking | Influencing Toxic People

This is the Jocko Underground podcast. We're on number 62. This is number 62. I'm sitting here with Echo Charles.

I was talking to.

A guy at camp, pretty much been to. Been to every camp that I think I've been to. Jiu Jitsu camp. This is, by the way, Origin Immersion Camp. And Good Guy. We've. We've always hung out, and I've kind of watched his growth and journey, for lack of a better word, over the past few years. Anyways, this time, shows up to camp, we're talking, and he's going through a really hard time. Like a surprisingly. You know when you just. You see someone on a trajectory and you're watching their trajectory, like, oh, this is a good trajectory. You're. And then all of a sudden, they're just off that trajectory. Like, it's like this space shuttle Columbia. Like, you think everything's going good, and it just. It just goes sideways. So that's what's going on. He's a former military guy. He's been out of the military for a pretty long time. But, you know, he started his own business, and he's doing pretty well. But, you know, it was a lot of hard work, Like a tough business. A lot of hard work, kids, the whole nine yards. Everything's. I mean, this is just the trajectory. Like, oh, yeah, you're doing well. You've kind of pivoted a little bit, made some adjustments. You got the wife, you got a bunch of kids.

And if you would have asked me, if he would have said, you know, where do you think my life is right now? I would have been like, okay, well, you probably expanded your business a little bit more. You probably did. You know, this is. But it was like, no wife wants divorce.

Like, just. Just total.

Change, right? Just a drastic change in direction in his life. So as we're talking through it, and we spent like an hour talking. As we're talking to it, through it. Like, at one point, he's like, you know, I might have to sell the business. You know, because they built up this business, and he might order to settle with her. He might have to sell it. Just, like, sell the business. And. Which to me was weird, because if you sell the business, you have no more income, you know, so it's not like you can sell. And he goes, no. Well, he goes, I'll probably have to sell the business, give her a big chunk of the payout, and then I'll have to work at Home Depot just to pay child support, and I don't know What I'm gonna do, I just can't figure out. You know, he's like, I'm a smart guy. I think about it, but I just can't figure out what to do. And so I'm sitting there listening, I'm thinking about it for a while, and.

Finally I said, you know, I'm not smart, but I know what I would do. And he was like, well, what? I said, if I was in your situation, I know what I would do. And he was like, what? And I said I would start walking. And he's like, you know, what do you mean? I said, here, let me explain. This is what's going on with you right now. You just woke up. Like, you just came to consciousness, and you're. You don't know where you are, and you're in the middle of the woods and you're looking around and you see trees, and it's like, thick. You can't even tell where the sun is, right? But you, you know, you're in the woods, you don't know where to go. And so what I would do is I would start walking. I would just pick, like, a direction and I would start walking. And as I'm walking, I would eventually find a little terrain that's going downhill, and I'd fall that terrain downhill. And eventually I'd hit a stream, and the stream would actually be a tributary into a river. And then from the river, I'd follow the river until I'd hit a road. And when I hit a road, eventually I'd follow the road to a town somewhere and I'd figure things out, right? I figured out where I was and I'd be back and I'd be able to get food, and I'd put everything together. But I said, what you're doing? And this is what I could tell from this conversation. I said, what you're doing is you're just standing there looking around and you're trying to figure out where the town is, where civilization is. And you're waiting, trying to guess and looking around and looking for clues, but there's no freaking clues. You're in the middle of the woods, there's no clues. There's no clues. Literally.

You have to go and find it. Civilization, the town, the thing is not going to come to you. You have to start walking. So that's what I would do. And look, there's a. Obviously, there's a hint of, like, iterative decision making, right? You don't know where you are. You don't know what to do. Start moving in some direction, and that'll give you some clues or some indication or some immediate feedback about where you are, and you can start assembling a better picture of what's happening. So I know I might not be the smartest person in the world, and you're smart, but you're not gonna be able to do anything without doing something, so you're gonna have to start walking. And then.

I went back to this Home Depot piece and I said, listen, you know, if I was in your shoes, okay, I could get a job at Home Depot. And I was like, and you know what? I got my job at Home Depot. My aisle would be the freaking squared away aisle. And after like a week and a half, it'd be the most squared away aisle in Home Depot. And I said, in a few weeks, the store manager would look at me and be like, hey, can you run these three aisles? They'd give me three aisles and then they'd give me seven aisles and then they gimme 12 aisles and then they give me the front of the store. And then eventually they'd be like, hey, can you just run this store? Because I'd be busting my ass and I'd be making things happen, I'd be building relationships with people and then eventually they'd be like, hey, we want you to run this district with all the Home Depots in this district. And then they go, we want you to take this region. And eventually they'd be like, hey, we want you to be the CEO of Home Depot. And we're laughing, right? Because I'm not that arrogant. But I was making a point. But I told this guy, I was like, look, you see working at Home Depot as a punishment, and I see it as an opportunity. As an opportunity. And by the way, Home Depot, there's like, you've heard of Home Depot millionaires, right? It's a real thing. Well, now, what is it Home Depot millionaires like? In the early days of Home Depot, you could take stock options when Home Depot wasn't that big. And a lot of people that were cashiers and, you know, cleaners in the aisles, they took stock and, you know, now they're millionaires.

But that reframing the way you're looking at things and seeing opportunities, instead of seeing punishments and instead of seeing downturns in your life, seeing opportunities.

It'S just going to have such a much better impact on the way you, where you get to. Because, you know, going to like the, you know, you hear Jordan Peterson talking about like aiming and you got to take aim. Right. Well, this is a version of that. Right When I get in there and I think, hey, I'm gonna make this aisle look awesome. Yeah, look at what I'm aiming at. I'm aiming to improve and get better and do a good job. If I go in there, this sucks. What am I aiming at? I'm aiming at this sucking. That's actually where I'm gonna. You know, the same thing we. When we used to do offensive driving. And when you're driving car, if you start looking at, like, if you got to go between obstacles and you start looking at one of those obstacles, you're gonna hit that obstacle. That's, you know, there's, like, a tendency that you're gonna hit the obstacle. You go where you're. What you're looking at.

Yeah.

Same thing with this. If you think this job is gonna suck, well, guess what, the job is actually gonna suck now, and you're not gonna do it well, and you're not going to get promoted, and you're not going to be given more responsibility. You're not going to be given any opportunities. So just be careful of that. I think that's a good lesson for everybody. This happens throughout. This is what happened when I got to SEAL Team One.

Back in the day. Got SEAL Team One. They're like, clean toilets. I'm like, cool, let me rock and roll. I'm going to do this really well. Do you think I wanted to clean toilets? Of course not. But I was like, okay, that's what we're doing.

Mm.

Let's do this. At one of my friends at a different team, made, like, his web gear into, like, custodial attack mode. You know, he put, like, a holster with cleaner in it. Another one's like a toilet brush. You know, he's, like, running around ready to respond. You know, he's having fun with it. And if he was just poking fun at it, it would have been like, well, that might be a risky move, but he was doing it like, no, I'm ready to go. Like, he actually was fired up about it, so embrace it. So that's what I'm. If you're in a spot and you don't know what to do and you're not sure where to go, and you don't know where the right direction is, start walking and start looking for opportunities, and they'll show up. That's my word of the day. Echo Charles.

Yeah, agree.

Some people talk about that where it's like, he's far more ahead than it's because it's not. Some people, they look at it as, oh my gosh, I gotta start all over, whatever. And a common. That thing that I've heard is you're technically not starting all over because of all of your past experience and knowledge or whatever. So even waking up in the woods, like, that's perfect. Such a perfect. You ever watched the movie Memento?

Yes, I did, but my memory of it's kind of vague, oddly enough. Right.

Yeah, exactly right. So. And the way they present that movie is like in backwards clips, which is kind of part. They try to mimic his thought process and the way his brain works because he doesn't have short term memory. So he'll just sort of come to just like in the woods or whatever. And something's either going on or he's at a certain place and he doesn't know how he got there. So he kind of refers to his tattoos for as like notes. So that's kind of like in your analogy where the tattoos is your past experience and knowledge. You know, you can look at them and whatever. You don't have any assets. You don't have, like everything that you lost is gone. It's gone.

But you have knowledge which is more powerful.

Exactly right. Only the knowledge in your head, though. You don't have like the business, you don't have, you know, the access to all that. So that's gone. That's like the guy's memories, you know, so those are gone. He knows only what he can do moving forward and he can use all the knowledge that he has tattooed. So it's kind of the same deal in a way. That's. That's how it struck me anyway. So, yeah, he's kind of starting ahead.

Yeah, definitely starting ahead.

Yeah.

And starting with no baggage.

Yes.

You know, which is another way to look at it.

Yeah. Age and kids and stuff like that. Those are factors or whatever. But man, that's a good, such a good way to look at it. Where don't. When you say avoiding, like the driving thing, where you're like, what'd you call it? Offensive.

Offensive driving. Don't look at the obstacle.

Yeah. So it's like you can't actively avoid an obstacle. Just don't look for the obstacle. Look for something else. Like look for how you say opportunity.

Or, you know, drivable terrain. Have you heard me talk about that?

Drivable train.

Drivable terrain, driving. You're like an accident ahead of you.

Yeah.

And you're just looking for drivable terrain. Where can I take this Vehicle where I'm not going to die. And that's a real positive thing. So that's another thing. You start walking in the woods, you're looking for drivable terrain. You're looking for a way out of there. Don't know where it is. How can you tell in the middle of the woods?

Yeah. It feels like the challenge there, you'd have to have some mental discipline, is to, like, avoid thinking about all things you lost.

We don't want to focus on that.

In fact, that's like, kind of everything, right? When something like happens like that, it's like you. Because literally, you just had it last week and now it's gone. It's like you're so used to having something and then it's gone. It's like, bro, how can you avoid thinking about all this stuff you lost? You know? So I guess that would be one of the big challenges as well. But if you can maintain, it's kind of the same thing. Don't focus on those obstacles or the bad part or whatever. Focus on the opportunity. How you say that's good. Dang, Choco.

Definitely. When we had Jim Serlsley on the podcast, who was the Vietnam guy that was wounded really bad, lost both of his legs and lost one arm and his. I will never forget. It wasn't on the podcast, unfortunately. We were just talking afterwards, you know, about how he had lived this incredible life. He'd done a bunch of real estate stuff, owned a roofing company. Like, how do you. You know, you come home from Vietnam and you go to nine months of rehab, learning how to use a wheelchair, learning how to, like, survive without legs and. And only having one arm, and he gets done with that, and he just, like, carried on with his life, like, literally carried on with his life as if.

And when I talked to him about it, and we. We talked. We talked about Lewis Puller Jr. And they were in rehab at the same time, And Louis Puller Jr. Ended up killing himself, and Jim Sersley ended up living. And he unfortunately died recently. But he lived a really incredible life, you know, had kids and businesses. And when I asked him what the difference was, and he was like, he said that Lewis. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

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