Essentials: How to Become Resilient, Forge Your Identity & Lead Others | Jocko Willink

Summary

Huberman Lab Essentials: How to Become Resilient, Forge Your Identity & Lead Others | Jocko Willink

Episode Date: July 30, 2026
Host: Dr. Andrew Huberman
Guest: Jocko Willink (Retired Navy SEAL, Leadership Consultant)

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Episode Overview

This Huberman Lab Essentials episode features Dr. Andrew Huberman in conversation with Jocko Willink. The discussion explores the science and practice of resilience, the process of forging a strong identity, and the skills required to lead and motivate others effectively. Together, they unpack actionable strategies for discipline, energy management, and overcoming adversity, drawing on both neuroscience and Jocko’s extensive leadership experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Discipline, Energy & Routine

• The Generator vs. Projector Mindsets

  • Andrew defines “generators” as people who create change in the world and “projectors” as those who reflect and observe. Jocko is considered the archetype of a generator, taking action to impact the world, which then feeds back into his own growth.
    [00:23]

• Discipline as Autonomy

  • Jocko shares how the military provided a “blank slate” where people gain more control over their lives by performing well:
    • “The reason people try and make money is so they can have more autonomy in their life… In the military… if I performed well, I actually got a lot more freedom.” (Jocko, 01:14)

Energy Management & Exercise

• Physical Activity as an Energy Source

  • Jocko doesn’t always wake with motivation; instead, he acts consistently regardless of mood:
    • “When my alarm clock goes off, I don’t debate with myself. I’m not negotiating. I just… do what I’m supposed to do.” (Jocko, 03:02)
    • He underscores the energizing effect of exercising:
      • “You will get energy from working out… exercising just makes you feel better. Definitely gives you energy.” (Jocko, 03:02–04:12)

• Nourishment Timing

  • Jocko prefers to delay eating large meals until after physical and cognitive tasks, noticing that eating early makes him sluggish:
    • “I find that eating slows me down. So, no, I don’t eat a big meal until I’m kind of done with the physical stuff for the day.” (Jocko, 04:36)

• Exercise Intensities

  • High-intensity, anaerobic exercise (sprints, kettlebells, etc.) gives Jocko the sharpest mental and physical “peak” for the day. (06:13)

Resilience, Winning & Losing

• The Importance of Failing & Recovering

  • Jocko explains that resilience is embedded in the SEAL selection process, as it weeds out candidates unable to recover from losses:
    • “Sometimes it’s because they don’t know how to lose. They don’t know how to recover from a loss.” (Jocko, 06:55)

• Leadership & The Mob Mentality

  • The role of a leader is to be the “counterweight” to the group’s emotional swings—curbing arrogance after victories and preventing spirals after defeats.
    • “As a leader… you have to detach yourself from the mob mentally so that you don’t get caught up in their emotions and their morale.” (Jocko, 06:55–09:00)

• Action as Antidote to Adversity

  • Jocko consistently recommends taking action—no matter how small—in response to difficulty:
    • “So often the best way to contend with problems, with issues, with adversity is action, is by taking action… Action for me is a cure for a lot of problems in life.” (Jocko, 11:30)

Leadership, Family, and Modulation of Emotions

• Balancing Highs and Lows

  • The same emotional management applies whether leading troops or raising kids—tempering both excessive celebration and disappointment:
    • “When you’re doing a good job as a leader, as a friend, as a spouse… you want to be able to modulate that, help modulate that. Don’t shut it down.” (Jocko, 13:53)

• Good Leadership as Counterbalance

  • “You want to provide some balance for people to make sure that they don’t get out of control… find balance in life and ourselves.” (Jocko, 13:53–16:00)

Identity Formation & Authenticity

• Origins of Jocko’s Identity
  • Jocko attributes his strong sense of self to the hardcore music scene of his youth, especially its DIY attitude and willingness to stand apart:
    • “That hardcore attitude and sticking by your friends and getting in fights… that music is the soundtrack to my life. It set a datum in my head of being okay with being outside, being okay with being a rebel…” (Jocko, 16:35)

Discipline vs. Motivation

• Discipline Outlasts Motivation
  • “Motivation isn’t something that I am going to count on because it’s just an emotion that’s going to come and go… So the daily actions that I take aren’t from motivation, they’re just from discipline.” (Jocko, 18:58–19:44)

The Indirect Approach in Conflict

• Resolving Human Friction
  • Jocko prefers an indirect approach to interpersonal problems, building relationships and context instead of direct confrontation:
    • “It might be better for me to take an indirect approach and not confront you, but instead engage in a conversation… Eventually that builds our relationship to a point where you start to recognize, oh, Jocko feels something about this thing… instead of combat.” (Jocko, 19:58)

Detachment as a Superpower

• Tactical and Emotional Detachment

  • While he doesn’t formally meditate, Jocko describes detachment as a practical tool for leadership, relationships, and personal decision making:
    • “I do that all day, every day… To me, that is the true superpower of life.” (Jocko, 23:14)

• Practical Methods for Detachment

  • Jocko shares an anecdote from SEAL training:
    • “I take a step off the skirmish line, I look to my left, I look to my right… I can see the whole scene and I can see exactly what we need to do. I realized it was because I took a step back. I broadened my field of view…” (Jocko, 26:43)
  • Methods include:
    • Literally stepping back physically in tense meetings.
    • Taking deep, steady breaths before responding under pressure.
    • Keeping body language open (chin up, hands down).
    • Listening more than speaking to gain perspective.

• Detachment Is Learnable

  • “This ability is… something that can absolutely be trained. It’s not a natural gift. Some people will be better at it, but… you can train it.” (Jocko, 33:30)

The Value of Discomfort and Difficult Reps

• Deliberate Discomfort Builds Resilience
  • “Even in order to improve yourself, you got to impose some discipline on yourself… you would develop your resiliency by doing repetitions of things that require you to be tougher.” (Jocko, 35:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On autonomy as a reward:

  • “You can have all the money in the world, but if you don’t control what you’re doing every day… it’s not worth it.” (Jocko, 01:14)

• On routine and debate:

  • “When my alarm clock goes off, I don’t debate with myself… I just do what I’m supposed to do.” (Jocko, 03:02)

• On action as therapy:

  • “The more you sit and the more you wait and the more time you spend with that adversity with the upper hand inside your head, the worse it’s going to get.” (Jocko, 11:00)

• On detachment in crisis:

  • “If I’m looking at you and you’re in a bad state… all you see is darkness. I’m outside and I’m looking, I’m like, ‘Hey, man, this guy’s got all these things going for him.’… But you in that state, you literally cannot see anything but the darkness.” (Jocko, 23:14)

• On leadership as counterweight:

  • “You want to provide some balance for people to make sure that they don’t get out of control.” (Jocko, 13:53)

• On discipline versus motivation:

  • “Motivation isn’t something that I am going to count on because it’s just an emotion that’s going to come and go.” (Jocko, 18:58)

• On resilience and deliberate discomfort:

  • “You would develop your resiliency by doing repetitions of things that require you to be tougher.” (Jocko, 35:47)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Discipline, Autonomy, and Generators – 00:23–01:14
• Energy Management & Exercise Habits – 02:39–06:13
• SEAL Selection, Winning/Losing, and Resilience – 06:30–12:17
• Family, Leadership, Emotional Balance – 13:53–16:07
• Identity Formation through Music – 16:07–18:55
• Discipline Versus Motivation – 18:55–19:44
• Interpersonal Conflict: Indirect Approach – 19:58–21:14
• Detachment as Superpower, Practical Examples – 23:14–33:30
• Deliberate Discomfort Builds Resilience – 35:47

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Episode Tone & Style

• Candid, practical, occasionally blunt.
• Emphasis on action over rumination; lessons are often illustrated through personal stories and direct bullet-point-style advice.
• Both speakers maintain a conversational and jargon-free style, accessible for all listeners.

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Conclusion

This essentials episode distills Jocko Willink’s hard-earned wisdom and Dr. Huberman’s scientific perspective into an actionable discussion on how to build resilience, master discipline, shape identity, and lead yourself and others. Key practical takeaways include the importance of taking action—especially in adversity—detaching to gain perspective, and embracing discomfort as a training ground for character.

Whether you’re aiming to improve personally or lead others, the central lesson is clear: resilience and effective leadership are skills you can consciously develop—through action, through discipline, and above all, through a willingness to step back, detach, and see the bigger picture.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Jocko Willink. Jocko Willink, welcome.

[B]

Thanks for having me, man.

[A]

In my view, and I think in the view of a lot of people, you embody discipline. So today I definitely want to talk about routines, but also mindsets, but also things that you do and ways that you approach things that might not contradict, but not be so obvious to people, might be a little bit counterintuitive. There are generators and projectors, and generators are people that are just from a very young age, they realize they can impact other people. They want to create things in the world. And then there are these projectors that like to just kind of reflect on what they see. And it's not that generators are good and projectors are bad. The world needs both that they really work in a kind of symbiotic way. But your story captures the essence of what it is to be a generator, which is that by doing certain things, you can have an impact and it feeds back to you, and it's likely that they receive something from it as well.

[B]

Yeah. And where this all came to fruition, as I now piece together as you're talking through this stuff, look, when I joined the military, you join the military and you get a blank slate. No one cares what you got on the sats or the. No one cares about anything. You're a blank slate. And then with that blank slate, it is, hey, if you do this thing, if you perform this task and you perform it well, you will get recognition. You will hopefully get more control over your own destiny, which is the ultimate in compensation for human beings to have more control over your own destiny. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't control what you're doing every day, or at least you don't control most of what you're doing, then it's not worth it. The reason people try and make money is so they can have more autonomy in their life. And so in the military, it became very clear to me very quickly that if I performed well, I actually got a lot more freedom with what I did. That's when I started to realize, oh, what I'm doing right now is going to impact not only what's going to happen to me in the next hour, but in the next two years, three years, five years. The more I focused on doing things that are going to positively impact my future, the better my life became. And I think that's a very huge lesson to learn that I know I didn't figure out for quite some time.

[A]

I get the impression, and I think everyone gets the impression that you're somebody with a lot of energy. And I wonder whether or not you wake up with a lot of energy and you feel like you have to burn it off with this physical activity and work and other demands in your life. Or do you find that you wake up and your energy is kind of neutral and exercise and physical activity gives you energy?

[B]

I would say it's both, right? There's no way I could sit here and say, oh yeah, every day that alarm clock goes off and I'm like, oh, yeah, let's rock and roll. Certainly that's not the case. It's also certainly not the. That every day I'm like, oh, God, not again. No, I'd say most of the time the alarm clock goes off. And I. I don't think a bunch. Like when my alarm clock goes off, I don't debate with myself. I'm not negotiating. I just. The thing goes off and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Sort of robotic. Now this, this much I can say when you go and work out, you're going to feel better. You will get energy from working out. If you go break a sweat, you're going to feel better. This, you're going to get more energy from it. And look, you gotta go really, really hard to where now you feel more tired when you're done. And even that, I mean, you gotta go psycho. I'll do that occasionally, but I don't do that on a daily basis. You know, at the end of a day, if I wake up, lift, run, surf, and then I do jiu jitsu in the afternoon, like at the end of that day, I'm tired and I feel tired. But normal day working out just makes you feel better. Definitely gives you. Definitely gives me energy.

[A]

The idea that movement and exercise gives us energy, I think is an important idea. And it's something that I was, frankly, I was hoping your answer would be that as opposed to that you wake up every day and you just want to just attack the world because you have so much energy getting out of bed. Because frankly, I never feel that way, but I always feel better after I train. Do you nourish after you train or do you find that eating slows you

[B]

Down, I find that eating slows me down. So, no, I don't eat a big meal until I'm kind of done with the physical stuff for the day, which is usually at night, six, seven o' clock at night, which I guess there's some bad things about that. I eat too late.

[A]

Well, the data say if you're having a regular meal schedule that allows you to sleep well at night, whatever that means for you, and that allows you to be active and focused when you need to be active and focused. That's the ideal schedule.

[B]

When I'm working with clients, like, so I have a leadership consulting company, Echelon Front. When I'm going to work with a client, I'm not eating because they're going to be asking me questions. We're going to be diving into what's happening inside their business. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on. It's a lot of cognitive work. Podcast. I'm not eating before a podcast before I'm recording a podcast. I'm not eating because I don't want to have a bunch of food in my stomach. I want to. You get a certain level of mental clarity when you haven't eaten a bunch of food. So going out on missions, I never would eat before I go out on a mission. I would eat when I come home. You get home 4 o' clock in the morning, 3 o' clock in the morning from, do an operation. Cool. Then I'll eat because then I'm going to do a debrief for 15 minutes, clean weapons, and then eat a big meal, go to sleep. Cool. Yeah, I don't want to have food in my stomach when I've got to perform or execute anything.

[A]

So much of what you embody and what you do, I think centers around this idea of discipline, of course, but also energy. It's the intuitive sense I get about why people are so drawn to your messaging and what you do and how you do it. Are there certain forms of exercise, like weightlifting versus cardio that you find give you an especially big boost in what we're calling energy? And here this could be cognitive energy, it could be physical energy, but a readiness for the next thing, I would

[B]

have to say, like the high intensity sort of anaerobic blast, whether it's on the bike or on the rower or know, swinging a kettlebell hard, something like that, that last 10, 15 minutes. That's a really good way to, you know, peak my mentality for the day.

[A]

When you were in the teams, what was your observation about how winning and Losing would impact people in the short and long term. From the perspective of leadership and maybe more importantly, from the perspective of yourself, how do you work with that? How do you calibrate wins and losses? How do you transmute losses into energy? Because wins, we know convert to energy, but losses oftentimes can SAP our energy way, way down.

[B]

To start with, I think that the selection process to get into the SEAL teams is going to weed out a bunch of people that can't recover very quickly from something bad. The kid that was the star of the football team, the star of the basketball team, the captain of this, the captain of that, he's been winning his whole life. He goes to Bud's and he quits. Because in buds, you're not going to win. You're certainly not going to win everything. They're going to find what you're not good at and they're going to exploit that and you're going to lose. A lot of guys that may lose and it disrupts their motivation. They're probably just going to quit. And so that's why you get this massive attrition rate with guys that are studs, Division one athlete, Division one wrestlers, Division one football players, Division one runners and swimmers. They all come to buds, they all quit. Not all of them quit, but there's plenty of examples of the highest level of collegiate athlete in sports that translate very well to what you're doing in basic SEAL training. And they quit. And sometimes it's because they don't know how to lose. They don't know how to recover from a loss. So I think already, once you get to a SEAL team, you've got people that are, generally speaking, going to be pretty resilient when it comes to dealing with a loss. Now, once you're in the teams and what you're talking about is now you start taking much more significant loss. You're not losing a race, you're losing one of your friends. And this is what, from a leadership perspective, you have to. You have to pay attention to. So when you're a leader in any organization, you're basically in charge of a mob when it comes to what their morale is. And they feed off of each other just like a mob rioting in the streets going, oh, we can break this window, let's break all the windows. And they move this mob mentality. And that happens with morale inside of a team. And you as a leader, can't get caught up with the mob. You have to detach yourself from the mob mentally so that you don't get caught up in their emotions and their morale. Because if you get caught up in their emotions and you get caught up in their morale, you can't correct it. So we go out on a mission, the mission goes great. We get into a gunfight, kill a couple bad guys, everyone's okay, high fives, everyone's feeling great. You come back to base, hey, we don't need to debrief. That was perfect. Hey, we don't need to get our gear, you know, maintained. We can just go to bed. We're awesome. That's when the leader has to say, oh, we've got the mob. And the mob is becoming slightly arrogant. Hey, guys, real quick, that was a good op, but there's some things we could improve upon. You got to bring that mob back and bring them back to center line. Same thing in the other direction. You go out on an operation, it doesn't go well. You go out on operation, you take casualties. Now you come back to base, you see guys moping around. You see the spirit starting to break. And same thing. If you're part of that mob, you'll be with them. Your morale will be breaking, your spirit will be breaking. You got to look at them and say, oh, I see what's happening. And, hey, guys, listen up. That was tough. Didn't go the way we wanted it to go. We need to learn some lessons. Here's some things I can do better. What can we do better to make sure that that never happens again? So as a leader, when it comes to winning and losing, you're generally going to be the person countering what the mob mentality is, because when the mob starts winning, they want to keep winning, and they might get arrogant. When the mob is losing, they might start to lose more because their attitude goes down the drain. So that's what you have to pay attention to from a leadership perspective. For me, personally, I think I know what I did when I lost, guys, was focus on, all right, we need to celebrate the life. We need to move the law, mourning the loss. And then we need to go to work. We need to get our gear back on. We need to lock and load our weapons. We need to get back out there. I know that that's what we needed to do. You know, so often the best way to contend with problems, with issues with adversity is action, is by taking action. The more you sit and the more you wait and the more time you spend with that adversity with the upper hand inside your head, the worse it's going to get. So for Me always taking action, making something happen. It doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be some mammoth triumph that you're going to go and pursue. But if you say, hey, listen, this is what happened, didn't go the way we wanted it to, we're going to get our gear back on, we're going to go back out, we're going to do this other mission, and it's in your personal life, too. You know, something doesn't go the way you wanted it to go. You didn't get the job you wanted. You didn't get the hire, you didn't get the promotion. You can go home and sit there and dwell on it. That's not getting you any progress. Or you say, okay, you know what, let me do a quick analysis. Why didn't I get that promotion? Oh, it's because I didn't get this qualification or I hadn't jumped through this gate. Okay, cool. What do I need? Let me look into how do I get to jump through that gate. So next time I will get the promotion. You start taking action. Action for me is a cure for a lot of problems that we have in life.

[A]

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[B]

Well, clearly it's a very similar thing to what I just talked about. You know, if your kid is doing well and wins the wrestling tournament and is like, yeah, I won the wrestling tournament. And what do they want to do? They want to eat a triple cheese pizza, right? I mean, they want to go crazy. And you, as a leader and as a, and as a parent and as a friend, need to say, hey, man, I mean, you did good. That was awesome. You had a great day. But let's start thinking a little bit about next week too. How about we just have a few slices of pizza, right, as a reward? And this goes with yourself as well. You know, you do something, you have a success and you say, oh, that's great, but all glory is fleeting and I need to get back to work and look and do people go too far with that sometimes? Yes, absolutely. Sometimes people, they don't stop and celebrate at all. And those are the kind of people, I think that get burned out eventually because they never say, hey, that was awesome, we had a big win, cool, high five. So I think as a leader, as a friend, as a parent, as a spouse, you want to be able to modulate that, help modulate that. Don't shut it down. You know, your kid walks off the wrestling mat for a high five and you say you could have won by more. No, I'm not talking about that. Or your kid walks off the mat after losing, you say you got what you deserve. No, you've gotta be the counter, the counterweight to the emotions that other people have. When you're doing a good job as a leader, as a friend, as a spouse, as whatever, you're doing a good job as a counterweight. I think that's a good way to look at it. You want to provide some balance for people to make sure that they don't get out of control. And you notice when people have a downfall, it's normally because they've surrounded themselves with people that there's no counter to, there's no counterbalance. You know, if you were my best friend and I, you know, I went out drinking last night, and had a great time and partied all night and met a girl, and you're like, heck, yeah, let's do it again tonight. Eventually. Where are we gonna be? We're gonna be in the gutter somewhere. But if you say, hey, dude, that was awesome. But, hey, remember, we got school on Monday, right? And you kind of pull me back. That's. We gotta find balance in life and ourselves. And. And then we got as much as we can provide balance for other people. Because people are emotional and they get caught up in what they're doing, and you want to keep people balanced.

[A]

You seem to have a very strong sense of context and self. Was there something in your upbringing, your parents, or was it just kind of how you always imagined yourself as, like, yeah, this is who I am. Because I actually think that many people do not have a very firm sense of self, or their sense of self is so rigid that they can only operate in this, like, narrow trench of one domain of life, and they end up very, very isolated.

[B]

As far as kind of where I became me, I just actually have to kind of give a lot of credit to the music that I grew up listening to and the attitude that we had back then, listening to hardcore music, being able to stand up against what other people were saying, which is what you're doing when you're in that scene, and the whole DIY nature of it, hey, we. We can just do this ourselves. We can just make this happen for ourselves. We don't need anybody else. We can do this. And that hardcore attitude and sticking by your friends and standing up and getting in fights and, like, that's what you're going to do. That's kind of my attitude. That music is the soundtrack to my life. And so I always would have that music running in my head. But to your question, I had something in me that when I heard that music for the first time, I was like, okay, here it is. You know, Here it is. This is. You know, I hear the Beatles, I hear the Grateful Dead, I hear the Rolling Stones, I hear the whoever. And you go, okay, that's fine. But when I heard hardcore music for the first time, when I heard the Chromax, when I heard Agnostic Front, when I heard the Bad Brains, I thought that was just, like, it was part of me already. I'm like a kid living in the woods in Connecticut. I'm just kind of hearing what I'm hearing. Listen to the lyrics. Listen to the lyrics of Minor Threat. Listen to the lyrics. And you go, okay, this stuff. I agree with this Stuff. And I just think that that kind of set a datum in my head of being okay with being outside, being okay with saying no, being okay with being a rebel, being okay with not going along with what everyone else is doing. That became very important when I was in the military and I looked at what leadership might be telling me to do and might think to myself, hey, that doesn't seem like a good idea. And having the wherewithal to say, hey, boss, I'm not sure this is a good idea. Not to be a jerk about it, but just to say there might be a better way to get this done. What do you think of this? Or, hey, boss, can I ask you a question about that? So I think if I had to trace it back, you know, having Black Flag My War side two on my record player for like a year and a half straight, that's gonna leave a mark, man. And I think it left a mark on me.

[A]

What are your sources of motivation?

[B]

Well, you probably heard me say that motivation isn't something that I am going to count on because it's just an emotion that's going to come and go. Just like feeling happy. You feel happy right now, maybe you won't feel happy in 15 minutes. You feel sad now, maybe you won't feel sad in 15 minutes. You feel motivated right now, you might not feel motivated in 15 minutes. Therefore, I can't rely on it. So I'm not going to put any money on just being motivated because it doesn't really matter to me. So the daily actions that I take aren't from motivation, they're just from discipline. Like I said earlier, I'm not going to get up and go through some big debate about, well, really, do I really feel like doing this? No, I don't feel like doing this, but it doesn't matter. So I'm just going to go do it.

[A]

You particular have said several times that rather than looking for sources of things outside you, like a job or a relationship, which are all great, but as sources of energy or motivation or inspiration to use action as a positive action, as a source of energy.

[B]

Yeah. And positive action is when you have to contend with something, when there's something that you're afraid of. Right. Step into it, move towards it. You don't solve problems by running away from them. You solve them by moving towards them and figuring out what's going on. Then we could go down the whole path of talking about the indirect approach, which is a theory of combat, which I completely believe in, but it also applies to you know, interacting with other people. If you have a problem with some other person, to think to myself, well, I got, I got a problem with Andrew, I'm going to go confront him on it. And that might not be the best solution. In fact, it's probably not the best solution for me to go confront you with the problem because now we're going to have a confrontation. It might be better for me to take an indirect approach and not confront you, but instead engage in a conversation with you about something that's maybe adjacent to the problem that I have. And then eventually that builds our relationship to a point where you start to recognize, oh, I bet Jock will feels something about this thing and we can move towards a solution instead of me trying to punch you in the face with some truth that I believe versus the truth that you believe. And now we're engaged in combat and that's bad, there's going to be casualties. I'd rather take an indirect approach and build a relationship where we can solve problems in a more positive way.

[A]

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes sodium, magnesium and potassium in the correct amounts, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium and potassium are vital for functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16-32 oz. When I first wake up in the morning and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. I love the raspberry. I love the citrus flavor. Right now, Element has a limited edition lemonade flavor that is absolutely delicious. I hate to say that I love one more than all the others, but this lemonade flavor is right up there with my favorite other one, which is raspberry or watermelon. Again, I can't pick just One flavor. I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com huberman spelled drinklm n t.com huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with a purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com huberman to claim a free sample pack. I also heard you say something earlier that's still flagging in my mind, which is, you know, not thinking too much and you've talked about third personing of the self. I'd love to talk a little bit more about this, even though it's a topic you've delved into before and. And in particular the topic of meditation. Do you meditate? And if you don't do a kind of standard meditation, are there times throughout your day, in your routine, in your week where, as I'm describing this, it maps to something that kind of feels like open monitoring or focused meditation?

[B]

Yeah. So no, I don't meditate. I haven't ever. I don't think I've ever actually meditated for one second in my life, and I've never tried to do it. That being said, if the goal is to take a step back and detach from what's going on, I do that all day, every day. So that is something that I've talked about and it's something I tried to teach. You know, I tried to teach the young SEAL leaders not to get caught up in what's happening right in front of them, but to take a step back, detach from the situation, detach from their emotions on the battlefield. I want people to be able to see more angles, more maneuvers, more opportunities, more of what the enemy might do, more perspective. And it goes to what I was saying earlier about the mob being able to be part of a team, part of the mob, part of the gang, but still have the ability to take a step back, detach from that and assess what is the best way for this team to move forward. To me, is the true superpower of life. And, you know, this goes back to when you start talking about people that are having. Going through struggles in life, right? And I've described this before as, you know, if I'm looking at you and you're in a bad state, right? You're depressed, you're sad, you're moping around, you're not getting anything done. And I'm looking at you from the outside and I'm thinking, for me, I see this storm cloud around your head. All you see, no matter what direction you look, is storm. All you see is darkness. I'm outside and I'm looking, I'm like, hey, man, this guy's got a great education. He's healthy, he's got a good team around him. Like, he's got all these things going for him. But you in that state, you literally cannot see anything but the darkness of the storm. And that's what's so scary about when people enter that mode, is you can look. I can look at it from the outside and be like, andrew, you just got to move like four feet forward and you're going to be through this thing. And yet you might hear me say that. And you go, no, Jocko, I'm looking ahead. There's nothing but darkness. So helping people move forward, take action, and be able to get that perspective, detach and get outside themselves, get outside their own heads. You know, Tim Ferriss said, get out of your head, get into your body. That's one way to do it. Take action, go do things. It's very scary. And I'm sure you've had this experience where you're talking to someone that you know and you're looking at him going, hey, man, no, it's going to be okay. Like, you can clearly see that whatever they're. Whatever is bothering them and dragging them now, you can clearly see, you know, a lot of times it's a relationship, right? The. The girl, the guy they got, they got dumped, and you go, hey, man, that person was a disaster. Anyways, you're better off without them. And they cannot compute that they are stuck there. Or maybe it's the school that they didn't get into or the job that they didn't get, and they get so wrapped up in that they can't. They can't get out of that storm. It's such a helpless feeling. And that's why trying to engage with people and trying to give people that superpower of detachment where they can take a step back and say, you know what? You're right, man. That girl, she wasn't who I really thought she was. I should move on. Yes, the solution to your problem is not going to be found in the problem. It's not going to be found in there. You have to get out of the problem so that you can look at it, make an assessment, and you can assess how to solve the problem or whether you need to solve the problem or not. You. So detachment is a superpower, man.

[A]

What is your process for engaging detachment or for disengaging?

[B]

I recognized, like, in a moment what detachment was and how helpful it was on an oil rig doing a training mission. My whole platoon is in a skirmish line looking at a large area of the oil rig that we're supposed to be clearing. Again, it's not combat. This is in the 90s. There's nothing going on. We're just doing training. And I'm standing in this skirmish line. And by the way, I'm the youngest and most junior guy in my platoon, and I'm standing there looking down the sight of my weapon. And I'm waiting for someone to make a call and tell us what to do. And I wait for five seconds and I wait for 10 seconds, and I wait for 20 seconds and no one's saying anything. And we're waiting for a leader in my platoon to make a call to tell us what to do, to tell me what to do. And finally, after like 30 seconds, which seems like an eternity, I can't take it anymore. I take a step off the skirmish line, I look to my left, I look to my right, and what I see is every other guy in my platoon is staring down their weapon, which means their field of view is tiny. It's like a 20 degree field of view. You're looking down the scope of your weapon or the sight of your weapon, and that's how big their field of view is. And I'm looking, I'm thinking, oh, there's my platoon commander, he's looking down the scope of the sight of his weapon. There's my platoon chief, he's looking down the side of his weapon. There's my leading petty officer, he's looking down the side of his weapon. There's my assistant platoon commander, he's looking down. So everyone, the platoon is looking down the side of their weapon, which means they all have a very narrow field of vision. Well, when I take a step back and look to my left and look to my right, guess what kind of field of vision I got? I got a massive one. I can see the whole scene and I can see exactly what it is we need to do. Look, as a new guy, you need to keep your mouth shut. You don't say anything. And I'm thinking, well, but no one else is saying anything. So I muster up all the courage I can and I open my mouth and I say, hold left, clear right. Which is a basic tactical call. This is not a patent level genius maneuver. It's just a normal call to make in a situation that we were in. I say, hold left, clear right. And I'm expecting to get kind of slapped, told, shut up, New guy. But instead, everyone just repeats the call. Hold left, clear right. Hold left, clear right. We get to the top of the oil rig, which means we cleared the whole thing. We're on the helo deck at the top, and we go into a debrief. And now I'm expecting, okay, now I'm gonna get told, hey, what were you doing? You need to keep your mouth shut. And instead the platoon chief goes, hey, Jonko, good call on the cellar deck down there. And I was kind of like, yeah, that's right. But then I thought to myself, hold on a second. If I'm the youngest, most junior guy in this platoon, why was I able to see what we needed to do and make that call? Why did that, why did that just happen? And then I realized it was because I took. Took a step back. I broadened my field of view, which allowed me to think more clearly, because instead of being hyper focused and narrowly focused, I broadened my range of vision. I took a breath before I made my call, right? I had to take my. Take a nice breath to speak clearly. And I realized that taking a step back and detaching, I got to see infinitely more than even the most experienced guys in my platoon. And I started doing it all the time. And I started doing it in land warfare, I started doing it in urban combat. I started doing it in all these tactical training scenarios. These are just training. This is the 90s. I started doing these training scenarios, and it always allowed me to see what we needed to do. Then I started doing it, like when I was having conversations with people. I'm having a conversation with my platoon chief, and I can see that he's starting to turn a little red in the face and we're about to argue about something. I said, oh, wait a second, I'm taking a step back, looking, going, he's getting mad right now and he's the platoon chief. And I'd say, hey, you know what, Chief, that sounds good. Let me go take a, let me go re look at the plan or whatever. And so I started to do this kind of with my normal life, was to not get wrapped up in my own emotions, not get wrapped up in the gun fight that was happening right in front of my face. Not to get wrapped up in the details of what was going on, but instead take a step back, detach, look around, and then you can make a much, much better decision. Now listen, if you are the only person in a gunfight, it's going to be harder for you to do that because you've Got to be focused on whatever you're shooting at. But when you have 16 guys or 20 guys, they're all looking in the same direction. It's very easy to be the guy that goes, I want to take a step back, look around, make a call. When I teach this to people now, the mechanics of it, take a step back. Literally, you and I are at a meeting. There's a bunch of people. This starts to get a heated argument. I will literally push my chair back away from the table, change my perspective open, widen my field of view. The other thing, like in the SEAL teams, you don't want to sound panicked on the radio for a couple reasons. Number one, because when you panic on the radio, it's going to cause other people to panic. Number two, if you panic on the radio and you sound panicked, everyone's going to make fun of you. So what would I do before I would key up my radio, Take a breath. And so here I'm manually slowing down my breath. I'm broadening my field of view. So if you're in a meeting or you're in a. You know, you're at the. At the supermarket parking lot and someone starts to yell at you, take a step back, take a breath. Broaden your field of view. Detach from those emotions that you're having, and make some space. And I'll tell you, here's another, like, weird little nuanced thing. Lift your chin up and put your hands down. When I get defensive, what am I going to do? I'm going to raise my hands up and put my chin down. That's like a fighting mode. So if you and I are having a discussion and I'm starting to get heated, and I'm starting to like, oh, he's not listening to me. Instead of me putting my chin down and put my hands, like, up to where I can put them in your face a little bit. No, I'm actually going to take a step back. I'm going to say, put my chin up. It changes my perspective a little bit more, changes my visual perspective just by changing the angle of my head. Take a step back, put my hands down. I'm not being in a defensive mood. I actually want to hear what you have to say. And if I start listening to what you have to say and not talking, it's very hard to be detached when you're talking. It's another key component you want to detach. Shut your mouth. I'm in a meeting in my companies. I'm not the one that's doing all the talking. In fact, I'm doing mostly listening. And that way I'm detached. I'm listening to what they have to say. I'm more capable of seeing what holes there are in their plans by not moving my mouth, not talking, I'm listening. So those are some of the methodologies that I use and that I advise people to use in order to effectively start down the pathway of being able to detach in various scenarios. It applies to everything that we do. If you're having a conversation with your significant other and you start to see that they're getting frustrated about something, now look, if you're in the conversation 100%, you're gonna get frustrated too. You're gonna get frustrated, they're frustrated. Next thing you know, you've got an emotional argument going on. Whereas if you can take a mental step back and say, wait, why are they frustrated right now? Oh, because I'm trying to solve their problem. When really what they're looking to do is vent. Okay, got it. Let them vent. Okay, cool. Oh, that sounds horrible. You know, what do you think you're going to do instead of saying, well, if that's the problem, here's what you should do, because people are always looking for that. So, yeah, this thing, this ability is. And it's something that can absolutely be trained. And that's what's cool about it. It can absolutely be trained. It's not a natural gift. Some people will be better at it than others, but it's something that you can train. And I used to see guys develop it and I see people developing now in the business world.

[A]

I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes protein bars unlike any other. Their newest bar, the bronze bar, has 20 grams of protein, only 150 calories and 0 grams of sugar. I have to say, these are the best tasting protein bars I've ever had. And I've tried a lot of protein bars over the years. These new David bars have a marshmallow base and they're covered in chocolate coating. And they're absolutely incredible. I, of course, eat regular whole foods. I eat meat, chicken, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, et cetera. But I also make it a point to eat one or two David bars per day as a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goal of 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. And that allows me to take in the protein I need without consuming excess calories. I love all the David Bronze bar flavors, including cookie dough, caramel, chocolate, double chocolate, peanut butter, Chocolate. They all actually taste like candy bars. Again, they're amazing. But again, they have no sugar and they have 20 grams of protein with just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com huberman Right now, David is offering a deal where if you buy four cartons, you get the fifth carton for free. You can also find David on Amazon or in stores such as Target, Walmart and Kroger. Again, to get the fifth carton for free, go to davidprotein.com huberman do you think there's value to doing things each day that suck a little bit or from time to time doing something that puts one into a state of deliberate discomfort?

[B]

100%? I mean, even in order to improve yourself, you got to impose some discipline on yourself, right? Just like you would develop your legs by doing squats and you would develop your back by doing pull ups, I think you would develop your resiliency by doing repetitions of things that require you to be tougher.

[A]

I just want to extend an enormous thank you as a civilian. Thank you for the work you did in the military, but also teaching people about the military, I think a lot of people don't realize what it's about at any level. And learning about your experience there and what you've observed, bringing other people's experiences from the military more broadly is super important. And sharing this and being able to entertain some of my scientific riffs. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

[B]

There's plenty of people that have done way more than I've ever done and sacrificed infinitely more than I ever sacrificed. So I'm thankful for being here. I know that you put all kinds of information and the same back at you. I have greatly benefited from the information that you put out. And so I thank you as well and appreciate coming on here and appreciate you spreading the word about how people can be better yourself. So thanks for having me. I appreciate it, man.

[A]

Let's do it again.