PNTV: Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink (#417)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink. Discipline Equals Freedom. Subtitle field manual. You could also call it a manifesto on showing up with full intensity. I promised in our last PNTV on David Goggins can't hurt me that we were going to have a series of these episodes featuring some of my favorite Navy Seals and their wisdom Goggins. Today we've got Jocko Willink, who was the commander of Task Force Bruiser in Iraq, which was the highest, most decorated U.S. special Forces operational unit in Iraq during the war. A true war hero. Next we're going to feature Mark Devine and his wisdom from Staring down the Wolf. Then we're going to look at Adam Brown's story of via Eric Blem's Fearless. So discipline equals freedom. Jocko Willink is, if you know him, an intense human being. I'm going to suggest he's a modern Hercules. We're going to talk about the philosophical underpinnings of that assertion and how I literally think he is a combo of Socrates and Hercules. By the way, Socrates was a war hero as well. We'll hear about what he has to say today as well. So as always, six page PDF philosopher's note 20 minute MP3. Check out 600 plus of them, including dozens by Navy Seals. Sports performance, peak performance, experts on mental toughness, energy, work and love, et cetera, helping you optimize every facet of your life. Two week free trial is there at Optimize Me. You'll see that Commander Mark Devine actually starts his day with an optimized plus one. Hoo yah. Let's go. So discipline equals freedom. Again, this is a manifesto. The words on these pages just jump out at you with the intensity of clarity that only comes from a man or a woman who's living their purpose to the fullest degree. And it's amazing because I read this book close to the same time that I read a book on Gandhi called Gandhi the man by Eknath Eswaran. Now, Eknath Eswaran is an Indian spiritual teacher who taught the first meditation class at UC Berkeley way back in the day. Awesome human being who's translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada and a number of other things. And he walked with Gandhi and he talks about Gandhi's soul force, the power that he had that you just felt it was palpable. Now, Gandhi physically was nearly the opposite. A frail little guy vis a vis Jocko Willink, who's literally just a tank, unbeatable in jiu jitsu against all the Navy SEALs. Try to beat me, Good luck with that. But they had the exact same. And of course, Gandhi's mission was nonviolent resistance. Jocko's was, let's go. Justice in the most extreme sense in war. But they had the exact same soul force. And one of the points I make in the note, I actually quote Eknathaswaran, who again translated the Bhagavad Gita. And we're going to get to Hercules in a moment, but I'll actually just read this directly. So the Bhagavad Gita, as you may know, is set on a battlefield, right? So you've got a reluctant warrior, and I should say also the Bhagavad Gita was Gandhi's Bible, right? It was what he carried around with him everywhere. And the Bhagavad Gita was the story of a reluctant warrior being counseled by a God, Arjuna being counseled by Krishna. This is what Eknathesron tells us. He says, we are born to fight. Ka tells Arjuna, there is no choice in the matter. Our every desire must bring us into conflict. But we can choose how and whom we will fight. We can turn our anger against others, or we can turn it against what is selfish and angry in ourselves. We can use our hands to strike at others or to wipe tears away. It is a call to action. The Bhagavad Gita is. And that is why Sri Krishna describes the heroes and heroines of the Gitas way of love in the language not of sentiment, but of war. And the idea here is we all have a civil war raging within us between our Daimon and our demon. Who's going to win the war? Jocko tells us, discipline equals freedom. Pay attention to your daimon more and more consistently and you too can achieve freedom. Here's Socrates. So Socrates was a war hero.

In.

Ancient Athens, and he says this. I desire only to know the truth and to live as well as I can, and to the utmost of my power. I exhort all other men to do the same. I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life and greater than every other earthly conflict. This is what Jocko's just fiercely intensely telling us to pull it together and go, be our best selves today, ceaselessly, etc. Which brings us back to Hercules. So Socrates tells the story of the choice of Hercules. And we talked about this a couple times recently. Hercules is a young man. He's out there trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. Two goddesses cruise up. One who says her name is happiness Eudaimonia, but it's really vice. And she tells Hercules, follow me, life will be easy. The other was subtly, powerfully, sternly, elegantly beautiful, named Arete, who tells Hercules, life isn't going to be easy. If you follow me, I'm going to challenge you. You're going to go through hardship after trial after hardship. You're going to be at war against some of the most ferocious villains you can imagine. But by living this life, you'll win the honor of the gods. That was the choice of Hercules. Hercules, of course, chose wisely. And who would Hercules have been? Epictetus says if he didn't do that, what use would his muscles have been if he curled up in bed and just pulled the covers over? He needed those challenges, those demons, et cetera. In my mind, Jocko Willink is as close as we're going to get to a modern Hercules. Thank you, Jocko, for modeling it, showing us what's possible and then giving us the wisdom to live that same type of heroic lives in our own idiosyncratic style as well. Second idea, nature or nurture? He says, which is it, nature or nurture? Now, Jocko coming up through the seals and serving in the SEALS for as long as he did, worked with everybody. He says Ivy school, you know, silver spoon people to, he said street, you know, gang, former gang bangers. Right. And people just all spectrums of life. Rich, poor, abused, great families, etc. And what he found was that wasn't the determining factor. It wasn't nature or nurture. He says the answer to that question is neither. It was personal choice, it was agency. Yes, we all have constraints of our reality. You have yours, I have mine. And then what are we going to do about it? What choice are we going to make? Stepping forward into virtue or stepping back in device? It's a moment to moment choice. We need to make ours. And it's funny because I just watched a documentary. You can actually watch two documentaries. One on the Last Dance by Michael Jordan. Got a Netflix account just to watch that. Fantastic. Again, Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, didn't make varsity his sophomore year. Came back with ferocity. His brother was actually the better athlete growing up, but he showed up with ferocity. Yeah, he had natural talent. But as Angela Duckworth says, effort counts twice. Goes something like this. Talent times effort equals skill. Skill times effort equals achievement. Effort counts twice. Talent's how fast you gain a skill, right? But you need to actually put in the effort to build the skill and then you need to take the skill, put even more effort into it to become world class. So again, we need to do our best, make that choice, etc. But the second documentary I watched kept my Netflix account alive. I've kind of got a habit now of watching documentaries on greatness. After I end my day, spend 15, 30 minutes, my dessert, right? Usain Bolt, you know his story. Fastest man on the planet. Won three times, three gold medals, three consecutive Olympics. 100 meter, 200 meter, 4 by 100 gold medals. World record holder in the 100 and 200. And I believe the 4 by 100. Did you know that the fastest man in history to date has scoliosis? His back's not even started. Scoliosis. He's not supposed to be able to run like that. Yeah, he had natural talent, but scoliosis, really? He didn't win the nature game there. I'm sorry. Yeah. And he actually had great discipline from his family, etc. But he chose to be great. He chose to do the hard work and to make the most out of his talent and alchemized his weakness into his strength. That's the reality of discipline equals freedom. And then we have Jocko's infamous response to anything that happens, whatever life throws at you. Giocco replies with good. Which is genius on so many levels. Good. And he's not a positive thinking kind of guy. Pollyannish. He's not flying away in reality.

Good.

It is what it is. Now what? He's got a great line, actually. It's worth sharing. You lose your job. Fantastic. You got more time to get better. What did else he said? There we go.

I'm snorting.

This is so good. Didn't get promoted. Good. More time to get better. Didn't get the job you wanted. Good. Go out, gain more experience and build a better resume. Got injured. Good. Needed a break from training. Got beat. Good. We learned unexpected problems. Good. We have the opportunity to figure out a solution. Whatever's going on in your life, especially these days. As I'm filming this, we've got Covid doing its thing. All the social justice issues. Good. Gives you an opportunity to practice your philosophy. I've got a little tweak on it. I like Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Perfect means complete. Complete means to fill up. It is what it is the stoic art of acquiescence we love. What is a la Byron Katie. To combine all these different teachers. They all say the same thing. Accept your reality completely, then do some target practice. So what do you want? Two step process. Whatever happens, what do you want? What's your target? And now what needs to get done? That's it. Perfect. Quit arguing with reality immediately. Good. It is what it is. Let's go. That again is neutral thinking like we talked about. And it takes what it takes. Good. Let's go. How can you respond with good, perfect. What's the antifragile opportunity in your challenges right now? Get on hitting that hard. Then we go from the mind and we talk about the body. Jocko's got some workout routines in here that make you sore just looking at them. But he goes off on sugar. Sugar, he says unequivocally, echoing the philosophy. We've been talking about our optimized food rules. Sugar is a toxin. He brilliantly articulates the fact and how it disrupts our metabolism that we talk about in optimal metabolism 101. You want to lose weight, your insulin needs to get regulated. It's not an energy balance issue. Calories in, calories out. Which is what all the sugar manufacturers are trying to convince you of. You need to get rid of the junk food, get rid of the ultra processed food, get rid of the sugar. Starting with your sugary drinks, by the way. Get your metabolism right and you'll more easily, naturally find your ideal weight. Longer chat. We'll leave it at that. But he also tells us that sugar is addictive. It activates your nucleus accumbens, the same part of your brain that goes crazy on cocaine and heroin, literally. That's the same type of thing that sugar does. It's addictive. Get rid of it. And then he says, good news, you have more willpower than a donut. Just because it's sitting there in the office and it's free doesn't mean you need to eat it. Discipline equals freedom. Exert some today. Which leads us to the final idea here. Do. He goes off reading, this stuff isn't enough. You need to do something about it. Do something about it again and again and again and again, getting better and better and better. We talk about this all the time, in many different ways. But when I think of do, although he doesn't reference Yoda, I think of Yoda. Do or do not. There is no try. I was teaching this to Emerson the other night. He's almost 8 years old. He still doesn't pull up the toilet seat every time before he goes, pee, buddy, let's go. Right. I'll try. No, it's not try. I taught him Yoda. Do or do not. There is no try. We'll do a plus one with him where he tells us in his best Yoda voice, do or do not. There is no try. My Yoda comes to mind as well. I call my coach, Phil Stutz, my honorary spiritual father Yoda, right? He says that we need to show up with an intensity. So Jocko's got the same soul force as a Gandhi or someone else who's showing up powerfully in their life. From my vantage point, my coach, Phil Stutz, who works with a lot of Hollywood's elite, Oscar winners, et cetera, right? He talks about the importance of showing up with full intensity, going beyond what you think you're capable of doing, which, again, you watch a Jocko Willink or a David Goggins or anyone who's lit up. They are all in with an intensity, a life force that is dialed up. Phil says 105%. Of course, you can't actually give 105%, but you got to go for it. Full effort, right? Is full victory, as Gandhi would agree. But he says, when you do that, and I like to say 101%, I like 101, right? When you do that, you move up and God comes down to meet you. But you've got to meet God more than halfway. You've got to plug into something bigger than yourself. And the only way to do that is via discipline to create the freedom to be your best self by doing what needs to get done. Remembering that this conversation, as inspiring as I hope it is, is rudimentary work. This theory is rudimentary work. The advanced stuff, as Michael Beckwith says, is the practice moving from theory to practice to mastery. Cut out your sugar. Seriously there. What are we doing, folks? Good. Whatever life throws at you, Good. Obstacles make me stronger. Ohms is our mantra. Nature or nurture? Neither. Your ability to make a choice and decide what you're going to do within the constraints of your reality. Let's make the choice of Hercules. Let's follow the lead of our modern Hercules. Jocko, thanks for the amazing book and more importantly, the lifetime of awesome. I should also mention that I got this book after a conversation with Cal Newport. So Cal is one of the few humans on the planet who made it through my hermitage firewall. And we were having one of our chats, and he told me how much he loves and I told him about the Optimized Coach graduation. Right? So in Optimized Coach, it's a 300 day program. You come out to our graduation and we celebrate Friday and then Saturday we all do a spartan race together to demonstrate mastery of our energy to be in the best physical shape of life. It's awesome. Second largest team in history. We'll have the largest team. The next race we do Deo Valente. That's Saturday. Then Sunday we graduate, we get a certificate, you know, pictures, high fives, hugs, et cetera. And I say congratulations, day 300. Guess what? Today's day one. Start again. Always start again. So I was sharing this with Cal. He says that totally reminds me of Jocko Willink. I love his kids books. So check out Jocko's books for kids as well. And so as I was looking for the kids books to get them to read to Emerson, I found this book. Boom. It's awesome again. Discipline equals freedom. Field Manual Manifesto. Jocko, let's go. What's the number one idea you got out of here? What are you going to do about it? Get on that. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Hoo ya.

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