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- [00:01]
A
This is the manual podcast number three. Musashi the sword fighter. He's got a quote, accept everything just the way it is. He's got an adjacent quote, truth is not what you want it to be. It is what it is and you must bend to its power or live a lie. So we have to accept things. And I like those statements from Musashi. I believe those statements from Musashi. I support those statements from Musashi and I have spent a decent amount of time backing them up. Right. And probably the premier case I have of that was when I talk was when I talk about Jim Sersley and Lewis Puller Jr. Right? Jim Sersley, who was wounded in Vietnam, lost both of his legs just below the hip, lost one arm and he was able to thrive in his life. And the other counter example is Lewis Puller Jr. Who was also severely wounded, lost both of his legs, had severe damage to his hands, but he did not thrive. He struggled with alcohol, he just struggled in a bunch of different categories and he eventually spiraled down and killed himself. And when we talked to Jim Sersley, they had been roommates or not roommates, but they, they were both in rehab at the same time. And Jim Sersley had completely followed Musashi's advice and just accepted the situation he was in. And he said that Lewis Puller Jr. Didn't quite get there. He didn't quite get there. So we have to accept things that you have to. And in fact, I even, even from a leadership perspective, like people get in a bad situation and they try and ignore it. They try and act like it's, it's something that it's not. It's like, no, actually you're losing money or you're out of money or your product is failing or whatever the case may be. And people. Look, I don't know if it's like.
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B
No, no, no, no, no.
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A
Actually, this is the situation. You have to accept it. And once you accept it now, we can start doing a good assessment of the true circumstances. You're not going to waste any time fighting things that you can't change, right? It's going to allow you to faster adapt to whatever the situation is. It's going to help you be responsive instead of reactive. It's going to reduce frustration and anxiety because you get frustrated when you can't change the thing. You think it can be changed, you think it's not the thing, and it is. So you have to accept things. And this will also, believe it or not, this will also give you the ability to say good in bad situations. To look at the situation and say, oh, this is a problem. Things didn't go the way I expected. I'm out of money. My employees are leaving. No one likes my product. Good. Now I can make adjustments. Good. Now I don't have to try that same product again. Good. Now I can tighten up my budget. Right. It gives you the ability to try and figure out what good is going to come from the situation that you're in. So as a rule, like Musashi says, you have to accept things the way they are. Just the way they are. Gotta accept it. But. And this is. It's. It's so bizarre to have these totally contrary views, right? To say you have to accept things, but there are things that you do not have to accept. There are situations that occur where you have to find another way. I think a great example of this is Ernest Shackleton, who was on his ship, the Endurance, was crushed by. This is a book that we have never covered on the podcast, Ernest. I've always said I would cover it on the podcast. But first I'm going to cover another expedition, which is the Greeley Expedition, which went to the North Pole or attempted to go to the North Pole, and they ran into problems, and they were caught in ice and they completely, like, did not succeed. And they. There's reports of cannibalism. They killed each other. Like, it was. It was the opposite of Shackleton. You know, Shackleton was this incredible leader, but he did not accept the situation that they were in. Like, their. Their ship gets crushed by ice. There's 27 men stranded. They abandon the ship. They take whatever they can. They live on these, like, ice floes. But then the ice starts to break up, and finally they take the lifeboats. They. They paddle the lifeboats and sail the lifeboats to this place called Elephant Island. And then Shackleton and Five again. This is all to just. I'm not accepting this. I'm not accepting that our. That we're going to die because our ice or because our vessel's trapped. We're going to get out and we're going to set up business on these ice floes. Oh, those things are cracking and breaking up and sinking.
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B
Cool.
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A
We're not going to accept that. We're going to get in these lifeboats. We're going to. We're going to get somewhere. Oh, we're going to get to this Elephant Island. Once we get to Elephant island unoccupied. Oh, what are we going to do there? Die? No, we're going to. We're going to Set up camp, we're going to start working, we're start hunting, we're going to make things work. And by the way, eventually Shackleton's going to say, you know what, I'm going to go get a help. And he's gonna go 800 miles in a freaking lifeboat. And once he gets to a place called South Georgia, he lands, but there's no one there. So he has to cross this mountainous, unmapped, uncharted terrain and get to an old whaling town, a little whaling station, not even a town, a little whaling station, and convince people that, hey, we need to go rescue these 20, whatever, 20 guys are left on this elephant island. And he organizes the rescue and they go and save everybody and everyone survives. So there's like 14 times when you know, well, the situation is we're all going to die. And he said, no.
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B
So.
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A
There are times when you are going to be caught off guard. Things are going to occur that you don't expect, that you don't like. You're going to fall short, you're going to hit an obstacle that you didn't expect that's going to happen. And although Musashi says you got to accept everything just the way it is, sometimes you got to say, no, I don't accept that. And this is something that you pointed out that I do. Don't accept it. There are times, you, where you have to say, no, I'm not going to accept this. I'm going to do something different. And then it's very important to be able to take a step back and detach and, and reassess the situation, reassess the situation that you're in and assess the path and assess your goal and assess your resources and find a freaking way you have to do that. But what's difficult about this in life is you have to be able to discern which is which. That's. That's what you have to do. And in order to do that, you have to get out of procedural memory mode. You have to remove your unconscious habit, you have to take away your behavioral inertia and you have to go into manual mode because you can look at a big obstacle and say, I'll never be able to get over that. Because you've never made it over that obstacle before, right? And you're used to that. And if that's the way you operate, you're not going to make the changes that are required. So you have to switch into manual mode. You have to decide, actively decide, what you need to accept, because something is truly Unchangeable. And you're going to have to change your course. You're going to have to change your being, or you're gonna have to figure out what you need to reject, what things you will not accept. And then you've got to impose your will, or you've got to open your mind, which are. Again, these are two opposite things. I'm gonna impose my. Well, I'm gonna need to get through it. Or open mind, say, wait, how can I get around this? How can I avoid this? But both those options are there. And if you allow your. Your behavioral inertia just to guide your life, you. You're. There's going to be things that you're just gonna. You're just gonna accept, and you're just gonna go with what happens. And there's gonna be opportunities where you could have rejected things that were occurring in your life, and you don't. You just accept them. And that's not good. That is not good. Sometimes you have to stand up and say, no, I don't freaking accept this thing. It's not happening. Watch this.
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B
Yep, you're. That was a. Especially when you. When we actually talked about it, I always felt this because remember, you know the part of the canon, right. One that one day we were rolling and in jiu jitsu, we're training, you know, it got. Didn't get heated, but it kind of got heated. And then I.
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A
You and me.
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B
Yeah, it was a long time ago. They got. Put it this way, you know, this role, it was a good role. And it started to get escalated as far as, like, intensity, we'll say. And then I. My knee.
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A
Did you want to fight me?
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B
No, no, no, no. Not. Not mentally or.
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A
Em.
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B
Kind of a physical.
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A
Good role.
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B
Good role. This is all like. And my knee hit you in the face. Not the kind, like, glance. Like it hit you in the face. Sorry. It was hard. Yeah, I felt it on me. So I stopped, you know. You stopped the roll out of courtesy. You know, like, hey, oh, are you good? Like, you know, whatever. And you're. You looked at me like. And you said, what. What happened? Like, as if you didn't feel it. Which I said, look, of course you felt it, but I saw. I saw what you're doing. I was like, oh, that is some cool. If I can use this. And it didn't really, like, gel with me, but I always remembered that where I'm like, oh, I see what you're doing. But it's like, you know how useful that is if you can do that. To yourself, you know, where. And then, like, later on, like, years later, which was more on the recent side of things, where I'd be like, brian, you know who you are. So it was like, now that you're, like, older, we'll say, for lack of a better term, I said, you don't accept, like, certain stuff, you know, like this. Okay, so this idea, this old idea of being over the hill, you know that. Right. I was like, yeah, I'm over the hill, so I'm gonna spend less time doing XYZ or whatever, you know, kind of a thing. But a big part of that is just kind of giving up, you know, on yourself, you know, kind of a thing, like, accepting, like, oh, yeah, I can't, you know, I. I can't work out as often as I could before, whether because I'm physically. I physically g. Or because, like, my schedules and my responsibilities are a little bit more, you know, more robust nowadays. So I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna give up on this other thing where it's like, no, Brad, you don't have to accept that. You can still do that stuff if you. If you. Yeah. If you don't accept that, you know, and if that's, like, your normal way of doing it, you'd be surprised what you can do.
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A
Yeah. And there's. There's a little. It's. It's. It's like a little psychological trick, too.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because let's face it, you're going to get older.
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B
Yeah. Yeah.
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A
But to just accept that without, like, scrapping.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Like, don't do that, man. And you're going to. You know, you might have something happen in your life, in your world. It's like, maybe it's a. Maybe it's a battle that you're going to lose.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But doesn't mean you have to accept it. Doesn't mean you have to roll over.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And listen, are there some things in life where you know you're going to lose your business because you screwed up and you're in the hole and you're upside down, you're a whole bunch of people, and you try and hang on as best you can. Right. And a certain point you go, you know what? This is not working. And you. You're better off just to walk away. Does that happen? Of course it does. But there's also situations. You ever notice. You ever been in. I was rolling with a dude the other day, and I had him in. In a. Like a cobra choke.
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B
Yeah. Yeah.
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A
And I was, like, stabilized, you know, Just fully stabilized. Stabilized. And. And he ended up tapping. But it was like. It was like when. When he did. And he goes, dude, I was just like. He was like hanging on. Right. And I almost let go.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know what I mean? Because it's just. Well, I mean, is he gonna tap? I'm wasting strength. I need to improve my position.
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B
So.
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A
So that's. That stuff happens where it's like, if I can hold on just a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer. You never know what's going to change.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So. But if you just accept and same thing like that guy. If he held on a little bit longer, I might have let go.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Now look, I was stabilized. But you know, you're stabilized. You're like, oh, I'm not, not going anywhere. So. But if he held on, maybe I'm like, now I'm starting to get like, maybe I start to lose position a little. Whatever the case may be. So how long can you actually just hold on? You ever. You know, there's stories about people in boxing. I think there's one when Muhammad Ali. And I forget who it was, he was saying, hey, cut my gloves off, I'm done. And whoever's cornerman is like, no, you go, you're going to keep going. And then the other guy didn't answer the bell.
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B
That was Hicks. And that happened Hickson to remember with Zulu, I think.
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A
Oh, that happened with him.
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B
Yeah. Where he was like, I can't do it. I can't do it. And then finally, finally got convinced or whatever and the guy couldn't. Yeah.
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A
So you hold on just a little bit longer.
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B
Yeah, that makes sense.
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A
Just hold on a little bit longer. They're freaking hurting too. But that's. This is just fighting, man. This is life. And sometimes you just gotta not accept these things. Just don't accept them.
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B
Yeah. This is what it feel. Seems like the differentiator is between like accepting things the way they are. Like Musashi, that's like facts in the moment, you know, like where if it's like, hey, like we're losing money, we lost money again today. That's a fact. So you got to accept that. Don't turn your back to these things like now, but don't accept the future, you know, this potential future. Don't just start accepting the negative parts of it.
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A
You see what I'm saying?
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B
It's like. It's like the course of. Or the. What do you call the path of least resistance, almost kind of a thing where it's like, well, you know, I lifted today. I did. Let's say I did shoulder press today and I couldn't get my normal 10 reps is what I deal with from time to time. And I only got, like, nine, and I was kind of struggling. Well, I'm 48 now, so I guess, you know, that's not really. That's not really for me anymore. You know, it's like I'm over the hill and I just accept it.
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A
No, Nope.
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B
This is what I'm gonna accept. I accepted the fact that I only got nine today. I'm gonna accept that as it is. But I don't accept the fact that that's my fate. See what I'm saying? My. That's a. That's a potential future. So it's like, yeah, if you don't accept a. The negative potential, you know, downhill potential future, whatever. I feel like that's where you can succeed. That's where you can. Yeah. Change that. That trajectory or. Sorry, keep the successful trajectory, regardless of that Painful.
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A
I think to sum up what you're saying, accept your circumstances, but don't accept your fate. So that's what we're doing.
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B
Current.
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A
You got to be in manual mode to discern those things. You have to be in manual mode to discern those things. You have to constantly think about that. Accept your circumstances. This is where you're at. But don't accept your fate. Fight it. That's all we've got for tonight. And if you want to support, you can go to jockofuel.com originusa.com jocastore.com or echelonfront.com. thanks for listening. Until next time. This is Echo and Jocko out.