537: We See What's Happening But Miss What's Going On.

Summary

Jocko Podcast #537: "We See What's Happening But Miss What's Going On."

Date: April 22, 2026
Hosts: Jocko Willink & Echo Charles

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jocko and Echo dive deep into the difference between "what's happening" and "what's going on"—the distinction between visible events and underlying forces. They explore how individuals and societies frequently misjudge situations by focusing too much on surface-level details, neglecting the complex, often invisible dynamics shaping outcomes. Drawing from experiences in war, business, relationships, and everyday life, they advocate for detachment, strategic observation, and humility in judgment, especially amid today's nonstop news and information cycles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Question: “What’s Going On?”

• Importance of Self-Inventory: Jocko opens by noting the universal tendency to ask, “What’s going on?” in various life domains—from family and work to global events. This question is vital for self-assessment and strategic action.

  • Quote (Jocko, 00:07):
    “It’s a good question to ask because it’s a good way to take inventory...but even with that, it’s difficult to really know what’s going on.”

• The Challenge of Perspective: Even when immersed in a situation, our judgments are affected by emotions, biases, and incomplete perceptions. Jocko points out we frequently make poor decisions because we misinterpret present realities.

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The Limits of Certainty—Especially in War and the World

• Chaos of War as Metaphor: War, Jocko suggests, exemplifies ultimate uncertainty: it’s “mutilation and destruction and death.”

  • Quote (Jocko, 04:22):
    “War is the most horrible and wretched of things…when you see civilians being killed… it’s just terrible.”

• Balancing Emotion and Objectivity: While feeling for tragedy is natural, letting emotions dominate decision-making leads to clouded assessments. You must include emotions in your calculations, but they shouldn’t drive your actions.

  • Quote (Jocko, 06:41):
    “You can’t let your judgment be impaired by your emotions...listen, you have to put them in there...but you can’t let it be the main driver.”

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Humility and the Admission of Not Knowing

• Admitting Uncertainty: One of Jocko’s main lessons is embracing the “I don’t know” mindset, especially amid complex or global events.

  • Quote (Jocko, 08:47):
    “You better admit that you don’t understand and know everything about everything that’s going on in the world right now. This shouldn’t be a big ask.”

• The Fallacy of Experts: Even the most sophisticated professionals with massive resources (like those in financial markets) can’t predict outcomes with certainty.

  • Quote (Jocko, 10:59):
    “Everyone, including me, is guessing as to what’s going on...they don’t know. No one knows.”

• The “Fog” of War and Life: Drawing on military doctrine (Clausewitz, Marine Corps), Jocko equates the uncertainty in war to uncertainty in daily life—both are shaped by countless unpredictable human factors.

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Observation, Judgment, and the OODA Loop

• Gather Before Judging: Emphasizes observing and listening before forming judgments—this is the “O” in the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act).
  • Roadblock: Our brains immediately “put our own stank” on things, coloring everything through personal experience and bias.
  • Quote (Jocko, 16:12):
    “When you’re taking on data, to bring in the data and put it clean into the processor is a hard thing to do.”

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The Forces at Play: Visible and Invisible Factors

• Family Dinnertime Example (17:00–19:00): Even decisions like where to eat involve infinite forces—power dynamics, history, grievances, alliances, moods, finances, etc.

• Geopolitical Scaling (19:00–22:00): At larger scales (nations, corporations), forces multiply: traditions, power, revenge, resources, history, leverage, time, fatigue, morale, status, and more.

  • Quote (Jocko, 22:43):
    “There’s many more, seen and unseen, heard and unheard, felt and unfelt. …Forces that people don’t even feel, right?”

• Missing the Forest for the Trees: People lock onto a few variables and mistake this for understanding the whole.

  • Quote (Jocko, 24:20):
    “…they miss the forest for the trees...they get wrapped up in a particular detail and then apply that mirage of understanding to the entire complex ecosystem.”

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What’s Happening vs. What’s Going On (25:30)

• Jiu Jitsu Analogy: In grappling, focusing on small movements leads you to miss the big shifts. Same in life, business, and war: hyper-focusing on details means missing systemic direction.

  • Quote (Jocko, 27:08):
    “If you’re trying to hang onto a big scenario...you’re gonna get swept.”

• Application to News & Events:

  • “24-hour News Cycle” Analogy (29:55): News media treat every event as hugely significant—like obsessing over a single punch in a fight rather than the entire match.
  • Quote (Jocko, 34:21):
    “The intricacies of war...Do I really know what the training for this other military unit is like? …You have no idea what they’re talking about in their barracks. You don’t know anything.”

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Manipulation & Detachment as a Discipline

• Media & Emotional Manipulation: News, governments, and interest groups push narratives that grab your emotions, focus, and biases—often by distracting you with small details.

  • Quote (Jocko, 35:22):
    “They want to tell you what they want you to think is going on…by manipulating your emotions…”

• The Antidote: Detachment:

  • Step back, collect all available data, and delay judgment.
  • Use time and distance as filters for clarity.
  • Quote (Jocko, 37:43):
    “Detach, take a step back, look around, recognize…there’s a bunch of things you’ve got to recognize.”

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Iterative Decision-Making & The Importance of Patterns

• Small, Rapid Decisions: Instead of trying to perfectly understand everything, take the smallest reasonable action, observe feedback, and adjust.

  • Quote (Jocko, 45:55):
    “Take measure of what’s happening...make a small possible decision...pay attention to the feedback.”

• Not All Events Are Equal: Recognize when a detail is truly strategic (e.g., a resignation or the loss of a vital bridge) vs. just one more “punch” in the fight.

• Conscious Understatement: Jocko makes it a point to downplay initial drama, aiming for calm unless undeniable patterns emerge.

  • Quote (Jocko, 46:23):
    “I try and say, man, probably won’t be that big of a deal…when it becomes a major issue, you will see it. It’s unavoidable.”

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Discussion of Unseen Forces: Morale, Momentum, and Behavior

• Morale & Momentum Are Real: Echo and Jocko share sports and war stories highlighting how morale and mood are powerful, often invisible drivers of outcome.

  • Quote (Jocko, 61:22):
    “The momentum has shifted. Think about that—yeah, that’s a real thing…The looser you play, the better you play…when a shot is critical, there’s all this pressure, people choke more.”

• Behavior Can Be Unfathomable: They reflect on how people’s actions often defy understanding due to hidden drivers—even “market beliefs” act like invisible forces.

• Humility in Prediction: All systems, from stock markets to personal conflicts, are subject to variables we only partially see.

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“Stress Patches” and Relieving Anxiety

• The Residue of Events: Echo shares how incidents (e.g. an argument) can imprint “stress patches” on our psyche—unresolved, non-conscious stress that affects subsequent behavior.
• Jiu Jitsu as a Reset: Practicing jiu jitsu (or any intense, absorbing activity) can “wash away” these stress patches, offering cognitive and emotional relief.
  • Quote (Echo, 71:33):
    “What jiu jitsu is—those stress patches get washed away…for you to get that stress patch back, you have to actively pursue it.”

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Practical Protocols & Takeaways

• Key Protocol for Clarity:

  • Step back to detach and see the whole field.
  • Use time and distance—don’t rush to judge.
  • Don’t over-index on details or the first report.
  • Wait for patterns, and recognize when a small thing becomes strategically significant.
  • Acknowledge the limits of your own knowledge.

• Daily Discipline:

  • “Train detachment. Train jiu jitsu. Don’t over-index on any bit of information. Pay attention for patterns."
  • (Jocko’s summary, 71:41–72:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• ”We see what’s happening, but miss what’s going on.” (Jocko, 25:30 & 52:07) — The central idea crystalized.

• On Forces:

  • “Actively think: what forces are at play? …Like gravity, you don’t always see it, but it’s keeping everything together.” (Jocko, 54:36)

• On “The Fallacy of Finality” in News:

  • “Every hour there’s a catastrophic event. Every hour…That’s like me telling you there’s a catastrophic update every three seconds in an MMA fight.” (Jocko, 38:21)

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Useful Timestamps

• 00:07 – The nature of “what’s going on?” in life
• 04:22 – The horror and chaos of war as a metaphor
• 08:47 – Value of admitting “I don’t know” and limits of certainty
• 13:44 – Clausewitz, unpredictability, and human factors in war and life
• 16:12 – Difficulties of observing without judgment
• 17:16 – Family decision-making as an example of infinite forces at play
• 25:30 – “We see what’s happening, but miss what’s going on”
• 27:08 – Jiu jitsu analogy: holding on to details vs. reading the big picture
• 34:21–38:17 – The media, emotional manipulation, and the antidote of detachment
• 45:55 – Small, iterative decision-making and spotting patterns
• 61:22 – Morale and momentum in sports and war
• 71:33 – Jiu jitsu “washes away” emotional stress

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Final Messages & Tone

Patient, strategic detachment is the overarching theme. Instead of being swept up by headlines or fixating on details, cultivate humility and observation. The episode affirms that the world’s complexity can’t be predicted, but effective leadership (and peaceful day-to-day living) starts by stepping back, refusing to make snap judgments, and accepting—without anxiety—that much remains unknown.

Closing Motto:

"Stay detached. Don’t hyperfixate on small details. Use time and distance as tools for clarity. Don’t mistake what’s happening for what’s going on." (Jocko, 83:05)

Transcript

[A]

This is Jocko, podcast number 537 with Echo, Charles, and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[B]

Good evening.

[A]

What is going on? What is going on? This is a. It's a common question that we ask ourselves on a bunch of different levels, right? You might say it about your family. You might say it about your job. You might say, what's going on with my family right now? Or what's going on with my job right now, or what's going on with my life right now? And it's a good question to ask, right? It's a good question to ask because it's a good way to take inventory kind of where you are and what your goals are and what the scenario is that's happening and what you need to do to execute on those things, right? So what's. But if you think about a little bit, there's. In those particular cases, right, in your job, in your family, in your particular life, there's a. There's a level of. I don't want to maybe use the word certainty, but there is some level of certainty about what's happening in your job and in your family and in your life because you're in it. And so you can see it, you can hear it, you can touch it, you can. You can feel it. But even with that, it's difficult to know what's. What's going on, right? To really know what's going on. And that's because, you know, we. We have our own emotions, we have biases, we have our perspective. People don't always tell the truth, right? People don't always say what they mean. We don't always hear what they say. It's not. Not your fault. You say something to me, and I take it a different way. That happens. And then I have my perspective in my brain that morphs what you said into something else or what I saw into something else. And sometimes we make, you know, bad decisions. We make bad decisions based on our own inability to compute what is going on. You know what I'm saying? Like. Or you can watch people do this. You watch people from the outside, and it's so clear what is going on, but they don't. They can't see what's going on. They don't know what's going on. And we do that. We make bad decisions because we can't accurately interpret what is going on in front of our own eyes, right? Despite what we see, despite what we hear with our own ears. It can be challenging because, let's face it, if Everyone was just making perfect decisions based on the actual scenario that they were in. Everyone's life would be that much better, and there would be no drama. It'd be like, what, the Truman Show?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[A]

Everything would just be like, oh, hi, how are you? Oh, yep, everything's great. You know, I'm going to do this, and then, because I see these things here, and I'll get this outcome. Oh, that sounds like a great plan. Go ahead and you do it and everything goes the way you wanted it to. But we don't do that even in our own lives. We misjudge what is happening right in front of us on a regular basis. Which is kind of an interesting statement, because then when you start looking at the broader picture, like, what's going on in the. Like, let's look at what's going on in the world right now. In the world right now, there are wars happening in multiple regions of the world and all the chaos that that entails. Right. I don't know if there's anything much more chaotic than war. Maybe natural disasters, maybe like a tsunami, earthquakes and earthquakes and arrows. But even those things, they. They only last as long as it lasts, right? And then it kind of settles war. We don't know what, you know, that's a. It's just chaos. And so on that larger scale, that's a question that many people are asking right now about the whole world. When they look at the whole world right now, what's going on, or maybe even in some cases, they ask what the hell is going on in the world right now. And some people are very, you know, get very drawn into this. Some people are very emotionally affected by what they see. And I'm not trying to say that war is not upsetting. And I think if it certainly is, and if. If you've listened to this podcast, we've made that clear over and over and over again that war is the most horrible and wretched of things. Right? War is mutilation and destruction and death. That's what it is. And it's horrible to see. And it's horrible to see when. It's horrible to see when soldiers are killing soldiers, but then when you see civilians being killed, when you see women and children being killed, it's just terrible. And so it would be unhealthy for a person to be like, see that stuff happening and be void of emotions. That wouldn't make any sense, you know, but it's also, I would say, not healthy to become so emotionally in. Engaged in something that's happening that it negatively impacts your own life. So we gotta find some balance there. This is something that happens in, you know, that I had to deal with and that guys were in combat have had to deal with, which is that horrible things are gonna happen, right? People get wounded, people get killed. Your friends get wounded, Friends get killed. Civilians are wounded. Civilians get killed. It's. Those things are awful. And while we in a leadership position, and not even a leadership position, if you're in combat, you have to, you have to put those emotions into the calculus to figure out what's going on. But you can't let it throw your assessment off, right? You can't, you can't let your judgment be impaired by your emotions or by your ego or by your fear or by your past experience or by your personal beliefs or by your need to belong to the group or by the stress or the fatigue or the group loyalty or your optimism or your pessimism. Like, you can't. There's all these little things that are coming into play, and you cannot let those things be the majority share of your decision making process. Listen, you have to put them in there, right? Because you got to figure if I'm mad about something, my team is going to be mad too. If I'm sad about something, my team's gonna be sad too. If I'm fatigued, my team is fatigued. You gotta, you got to put it into the calculus. And by the way, you also got to think like, what's the enemy doing? Oh, the enemy scored a big win yesterday. Oh, they're probably going to be energetic today. They're probably gonna be enthusiastic. They're probably gonna be showing some more bravado. You gotta, you gotta put it in there. You can't ignore it, but you can't let it be the main driver. And that's. These are all things that distort reality or misshape reality and convince us that something is real when it's not real, or convince us that something is fake when it is real. So what that means is oftentimes what we need to do and what we should do more often is leave some room in your brain for I don't

[B]

know

[A]

or I'm not sure, or that depends on how it develops. Or this could go in a lot of different directions, Right? To admit, which is a weird thing to say, you have to. It's like me saying, hey, you have to admit, Echo, you better admit that you need to breathe. You know what I mean? Like, hey, you better admit that you don't understand and know everything about everything that's going on in the world right now. You better admit that this isn't. This shouldn't be a big ask.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, we should hear a lot more people that are saying, I'm not really sure about that. Well, this could go a bunch of different ways. There are some outcomes that could take place. Here's some possibilities even none of these are guaranteed, but you don't hear that very often.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I get asked a lot, you know, what the hell is going on? What's going on? Or, you know, why are you not mad about this? Or why are you not supportive of this? Or why are you not shocked by this? Or why are you not afraid of this? Or why are you not overwhelmed by this? Or why are you not more compassionate about this? Or why aren't you more sick? Like, I'll get asked. I mean, these are people I know. I mean, never mind the bots on the interwebs, but like, people, I myself, my friends will ask me and say these kind of things. And I think the reason that I'm not angry, not shocked, not afraid, not overwhelmed, not cynical. Like, the reason I'm not is because of what I experienced in combat. Realizing what I learned in combat was that emotions like these don't really help. And I'm not saying you shouldn't feel them. And I'm not saying I don't feel them. I'm saying that I recognize that they color the lens pretty drastically. So where does that leave me? Well, just like everybody else, I still. You can't just abandon, right? It's like, oh, I don't know what's going on. So abandon, right? No, it's not that. I have to try and still figure out to the best of my ability what's going on.

[B]

On, Right.

[A]

What is going on. I mean, we've got to take assessment of what's going on out there in the world. And so I think when I do that, for me to say, for me to try and say, and figure out what's going on, the thing. The first thing I start with is that admission that I don't know exactly what's going on. And neither does anybody, by the way. Neither does anybody. The smartest person in the world. You know, when you look at the stock market, yeah. And there's people that, you know, they, they, they have dozens, if not hundreds of people on staff with AI and algorithms and historical studies and all the data you can possibly put together. And guess what? They ain't right all the time. They're barely right, they're hedging. It's like they don't know. They can't tell you. They can't tell you if the price of gold is going to go up or down tomorrow. No one can tell you that. Right? They can make a guess and it might be a little bit more accurate, but they don't know. So with all that information and all that capital to be gained, because if you could figure that out, obviously you'd be the richest guy in the world, but. But they don't. But no one knows the. When the real estate market tanked, there was like, there was like five people that saw that coming. Everyone else was just to put money in shitty mortgages. Like, oh. So the whole industry with all their predictive models and all that, they didn't know. So the first thing I think when we talk about what's going on is to start with the admission that I don't really know and neither does anybody else. Everyone, including me, is guessing as to what's going on. And again, that's interesting and it's kind of funny and in some cases it's very disturbing that some people, some people talk as if they do know what's going on. And here's a hint, they don't. They don't know what's going on. No one does. But I wanted to talk about some things that I do when I am trying to not so much know what's going on, but understand a situation and, and try and figure out what's going on to the best of my ability and at a minimum, try and figure out, like, things that might be happening. Well, remember, that's nothing, Nothing's ever guaranteed. There's a. The United States Marine Corps War Fighting Manual. Manual number one. It says the very nature of war makes certainty impossible. All actions in war will be based on incomplete, inaccurate, or even contradictory information. War is intrinsically unpredictable. And what makes it unpredictable is it's filled with a bunch of human beings that are doing weird because we know how far the gun's going to shoot. We know how far the. We know how far the missile's going to fire. We know all these things. We know how, how long someone can walk in a certain amount of time. Well, do we?

[B]

Yeah, in theory.

[A]

In theory, you know, like there's all these unknowns, and all the unknowns come from the humans. So it's another, like another Clausewitz, what he said. War is a human endeavor, a fundamentally human clash of wills often fought among populations. It is not a mechanical process that can be controlled precisely by machine statistics or laws. It is in the realm of uncertainty. Three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. Like, you don't know. But by the way, this is just everything. And war is a reflection of life. And there are just as many variables in war. The misinformation, the contradictory information, the uncertainty, the fog. Life is the same way. So how do we assess what's going on? First of all, we have to gather data, right? Which means you spend more time listening than talking, which means you spend more time looking and watching than you do showing. This is observation, Right. This is the O in the OODA loop. And what's tricky about these things is doing these things. This sounds so easy, doing these things without judgment. Observing and listening and hearing and seeing things without judgment, which is very, very difficult to do. Very, very difficult to do. You think about everything, like kind of everything that you look at. I mean, that's just the way it is. When you look at anything, you're immediately putting your own stank on it. You know what I'm saying? Like, anything that you see, you're like, oh, I see. Oh, I. Yeah, you know, oh, Echo said this. Here's what is happening with Echo, right. Like, that is. That is the way we operate. So when we hear something or we see something, we immediately see it in the context of our own background and our own reality. That's the way we see things. And that's why two people can see the same thing and have completely different viewpoints on it, because they're putting that thing, that singular event with all this context around it. You can see this with the news. I mean, clearly with the news, one event will happen. And to watch the. The. The right and the left report on the same thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's. It's insanity. It's insanity. So to actually be able to pull your own judgment, you can make judgment later. But I'm saying when you're taking on data, to bring in the data and put it clean into the processor is a hard thing to do. Yeah, it's a very difficult thing to do also. And this is where we get. This is where things are going to get. This is where things get very, very challenging. Very, very difficult to know what's going on. Because ultimately, I think when we try and figure out what's going on, what we're trying to figure out is what. What forces are at play. That seems real simple, right? That's. If you think about Your family dynamics. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Your wife wants to go to one place to dinner. Your kids want to go to another place to dinner, and you want to go to a third place. So it's three different. Three different options here. Now, think. Just think about in that simple scenario, what forces are at play?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, there are things we could. We could literally write about that. The forces at play in that scenario forever.

[B]

You.

[A]

Because, you know, you've got this thing. You've got the. You know, remember that time back in the day when your wife wanted to do something and you forced her to do something else and she was really mad about. And she held it against you? That's in your. Like, that's a force. Yeah, that's a force that's in your mind as a human being, and it's been in your. For. In your head for 19 years or whatever since that time that you did that. And then, by the way, you got your kids. Oh, by the way, we didn't talk about the forces between your two kids, because are they unified together? Probably not. But there's. There's this whole force, like, what is going on with them? And are they trying to win dad over right now? Because Dad's the one that's in charge of, you know, where we go on Saturday night, so we want to make him happy, so we're gonna. Well, these are all forces. These are forces that are at play. And so that's just in a family unit, man.

[B]

Under one circumstance.

[A]

Not to mention finances. Right. Not. Not to mention time constraints, financial constraints. What is happening? Like, these forces that are in play. Go ahead. I cut you off.

[B]

Yeah. No, no, just not to put too fine of a point on it, you're. You're saying that's just the family dynamic. Just the family dynamic under one relatively unimportant circumstance. Seems so. It's like. It's kind of a good example, because you can start kind of quote, unquote, simple, even though the forces, like you said, are infinite. But. Yeah, it makes. It kind of gives you a little bit of perspective on how much you kind of don't know.

[A]

Yeah. And I. This idea, when you think about what's going on and. And thinking. Instead of thinking about the. Like a lot of times people think about the facts. Right. Or they think about the history. It's like, think about the forces that are at play, because that's really. And when you start thinking about, There's. That this goes deep, because when you start thinking about. Okay, so let's. Let's think of of a more like geopolitical situation. What forces are at play in a geopolitical situation? Well, you have traditions, right? There's traditions in with peoples and with countries that they're going to follow. That's. That's a force. There's precedents. Well, this is what's happened before in the past. There's power, obviously, power dynamics. Same thing with your family. There's power dynamics in geopolitical situations. Clearly money, clearly self interest versus group interest. Like it's my company, but then what's best for me even inside my own company. Those are two disparate things. Like I might want to drive the stock price up so I can sell off my thing. But at the same time that might not be good for the company, but it's good for me right now because I'm going to leave in two. Like. See what I'm saying?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Fully forces at play. Emotions, clearly. Ego. That's a force. Revenge. Is revenge a force that plays a role? Yeah, it certainly is. Leverage. Like are we going to give up leverage? Are we going to take some leverage? That's a force that's at play. What about just fatigue? We're tired. Resources. That's a force. Hey, if I'm, if I'm a super strong country and I have unlimited resources, that's a huge force. And it's going to play out in. It's going to impact where this thing goes. And it's kind of like a. You ever used a, a regular old school compass before? You know, like that thing's supposed to point north but when you get it around metal, it starts. You know, there's other forces besides just that mag. Just the magnetic north. Yeah, there's other forces. You where. When we would dive in the, in the teams, we would, you know, you'd be diving underwater and you're just pure compass. There's no GPS underwater. Pure compass. And you're also in, let's say a bay. And in the bay what people throw the, you know, people drop stuff. There's anchors that get dropped, there's pieces of metal. People throw overboards, chairs and whatnot. So you'll be driving all sudden. You will watch your compass just kind of spin sometimes. So that's what's happening here. So anyone that says, oh yeah, here's the direction everything's going to go there. There's all these things that are playing into it, man. Alignment. Like how aligned are we? What about history? What force does history have over what's going on? Because that has a pole. What about how much time we have. Time has a. Time has an impact. Time is a force. Debt. We like being in debt. No one likes being in debt. Is that a force that might make me act a certain way? Yes, it is. Resentment. How strong is that force? It can be overwhelmingly strong. But put that up against loyalty. Well, how's that play in. What about identity? What about status? What about narrative? What about grievances? What about threats? What about culture? What about trust or lack of trust? There's. You could. I could just go on and on and on with all of these forces. And by the way, imagine the nuance in. In each one of those particular forces. Infinite nuance within each one of those

[B]

forces at any given time.

[A]

At any given time. And it's shifting so there's many more, seen and unseen, heard and unheard, felt and unfelt. Like there's forces that people don't even feel, right? There's forces that they could not explain why they did something, but they did it. And there's an underlying force. They don't even know what it is. So to think that anyone could fully comprehend all these factors and calculate exactly what's happening right now or what is going to happen in the future, it's kind of ridiculous. It's kind of. We can't know. We can. We can guess. We can guess. And I think what happens is. What I see happen with people is people lock into. You take this massive list of variables that I just. And there's. There's an infinite number, but people lock into one or two or four particular variables that they think they understand, and then they think they understand the whole thing. So in other words, if I say, well, you know, I know that echo. He made his wife mad years ago, and now he kind of. When she asked what. What they're gonna do, he kind of goes and listens to her. And now I think I understand the whole situation, but it's not even close. That's one element. And by the way, that's one element simplified because there's infinite amount of nuance around that element as well. But people think they. They understand two or three or four little components of a big giant scenario. And they think, oh, yeah, these are the most important components here. I understand them. Therefore, I will tell you what's going to happen. And it's very ignorant to say that. And what. Here's what's also very bad about that is when. When someone locks into two or three components in a situation, they miss the forest for the trees, right? They think they understand Everything. They get wrapped up in a particular detail, and then they apply that mirage of understanding to the entire complex ecosystem that they truly have no idea what's going on. So we focus a lot. We focus so much on what's happening that we miss what's going on. Do you see the difference between these two things?

[B]

Yes, I do.

[A]

What's happening and what's going on. What's happening is like, oh, we see this, we see that, we see the things that are happening, but we miss what is going on. And this is one of the most important things I learned in jiu jitsu at a certain point. So I'm. I'm usually, let's say on the bigger side. Right. 225. Like, if you're on the mats. 225. Generally speaking, most rooms, you're going to be heavier than. Than most of the room.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Most of your training partners. But then you're going to find eventually you're going to get some big boys. And as I got to train with more and more big guys, one of the most important lessons I learned is that when you, if you get. If you get a good position on a big guy, like, you're on top, you got a big guy, and they're. They start to move, they start to try and escape. Of course, if you hang on to one limb or you hang on to their neck or you hang on to their legs to try and keep them controlled, if you hang on tight to one thing, you'll get swept. And what you have to do is you have to kind of let go of the small things and let them move around and let them kind of exasperate themselves. And you just keep a little. You know, distance is a strong word to use because you're still, like, in contact, but you're not hanging on, because if you hang on, you're gonna have problems. Now, look, when someone's smaller, you can squeeze them and you can, you can manually keep your position.

[B]

Yes. Different, for sure.

[A]

You can have control over that smaller individual because you're a bigger individual. Kind of like if you have a small scenario, you can have mental control over the things that are going on in that small scenario. You can, you could keep a handle on it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But if you're trying to hang on to a big scenario like that, you're going to get swept. So what you have to do is, you have to. You have to figure out, you have to learn what minor movements don't matter. Because what you'll sense is if you're trying to hang on to these little movements. You're trying to track their little movements. You'll miss the big movements. And when you miss the big movements, that's when you get swept. That's when you end up on the bottom and now you're getting smashed. And by the way, this happens in every aspect of our lives because

[B]

if

[A]

you get hyper focused on some small behavior that your kid is displaying, you're going to miss the broad direction that their life is heading. If you, you can do the same thing with your wife, if you or your spouse, if you focus on some small behavior or some small idiosyncratic thing that's going that they do, like they start doing some little thing in their life and you focus on that little thing, you can miss this broad change that is happening that you're going to miss, and it's going to be problematic. This happens a lot with kids, by the way.

[B]

Yeah, happens with a lot. Everybody.

[A]

It happens. Everybody. Like there's this one thing we miss who that person is. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a very easy thing. You know, we're, we're hunters by nature. So when we see something to focus on, we, we dive into. Happens in business, of course. I mean, the examples in business, like, you know, you get in the weeds on some marketing project or some new technology, and then you miss the market shifting or you miss the competition reacting so that, you know, that's just hyper fixation. Right. But on, in business, in a personal, personal interaction, same thing. You focus on somebody who's got a particular habit, a peculiar habit, and it draws your attention and you miss everything else. And when the reality is like, I see there's something that you do, echo Charles, that like, I focus on, but I miss the way your ego responds. I miss what's going on with your family. I miss what's going on with health factors. Like, there's all these other things, but I only saw this one little thing, and I should have seen the big picture. So do you think you're going to be able to look at all the intricate complexities of someone else's life, someone else's whole life, and figure out how to make, like, a perfect decision based on some little thing? No, you're not. So on every level, this, this mode of operating that we have of like, focusing in on small things makes us miss what's happening more broadly. And that's actually you and I talked about. Which brings me to this final topic, which we were talking about the other day when you start talking about like geopolitical events. And I was saying to you, because if you watch the 24 hour news cycle, right, the 24 hour news cycle, they report each event as a holistic view of the entire unfolding of history. And when I was talking to you, I compared it to if we were watching an MMA fight and the fight starts, it's a five round championship fight. The fight starts, one guy comes out, throws a hook, throws, throws a one, two and then a hook. And the hook kind of glances, but it's not a great shot. And you and I stop. Like that fight is continuing on, but you and I start to go, okay, well let's take another look at that hook. You can see if it was a little bit more, if he had set it up a little bit, he made it maybe taken a half a step forward, he might have been able to connect. And by the way, if he would have connected with that, you can see where it would have hit his face. That would have been a knockout. So that tells you that this guy's defenses are weak. You see what I'm saying? Like this is one punch in a fight that's going to have 500 punches, 500 punches. And not to mention all the feints that get thrown, right? Or somebody comes out, stuffs a takedown. Oh, what a. Oh, Echo. Echo versus Jocko. Echo comes out, shoots a takedown. I stuffed the takedown. Oh, what a pathetic strategy. Echo. Charles had to try and shoot on Jocko. Everyone knows Jocko's got a good sprawl and a good guillotine and you can see that Echo hasn't thought through. This is one shot and we're making it like it's the whole fight. It's not. So we see this with geopolitical events, you know, whether it's international relations or tribal interactions or diplomatic strategies or territorial discipline disputes or state level politics and armed conflict. With all of these things, we see one little thing and we think we got it figured out. And by the way, the intricacies of war, intricacies of war. You know, you got weapons systems, you got supply chains, you got logistics capabilities, you got like, do I really know what the training for this other military unit is like, what their preparedness is? Do I know? Oh, I know they have these certain weapon systems. Do I know how well that they were maintained? Do I know how well trained they are on them? Oh, they have, they obviously have logistics, but do I know what their logistical capabilities are? I don't know, you know, oh, we've Seen it on paper. We know they have trucks. How well do those, When's the last time those trucks got. So like, there's all these things that we don't know. And by the way, when we start talking about human beings, you think, you think you understand the morale of some group of soldiers or sailors or airmen from a different culture that you've never met? You don't even know their rank structure. You don't know what their basic training is like. You have no idea what they're talking about in their barracks. You have no idea. You don't know anything. And so with all that, there's some little, some little detail that you can grasp onto, some little thing that you understand or some, some little thing that becomes an anchor in your brain and then you extrapolate the knowledge of one little thing into understanding this whole scenario. Really? You think that's a good call? No, it's not. And by the way, on top of, on top of your, you know, assessment of, you know, you've been studying their culture for a while. I know their culture and I, I actually took a class on, on, on their military, their military traditions, and I read three books about. Okay, you know, on top of all that, you. We haven't even talked about disinformation, misinformation, right. Propaganda, bad intelligence, poor reporting, human error, people rushing to publish reports. What about anonymous, anonymous sources? What about a complete lack of context? What about exaggeration? Like, you don't think somebody that's trying to get a news story out there might exaggerate something a little bit, or they might have a little bias, or they might cherry pick a little bit, or they might oversimplify something for a headline, or they might just, they might just lie. You don't think that could be happening a little bit or, or even just something as simple as inaccurate translations? I know we got, you know, the Google Translate, but you don't think that that thing. I've, I've put some stuff, stuff through that before. You think that thing's going to be perfect? No, but with all these things that you, that there's no possible way, you know, but you think you know how this is going to go down?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And by the way, all that stuff that I just mentioned, all this propaganda and bad intelligence and poor reporting and human error, all those things, these are things that are utilized proactively by governments, by the media, by religious groups, by ethno states, by, by political elements, by advertisers and talking heads and networks and every human being out there in the world that has some kind of agenda that they're pushing. They're all doing all these things actively, purposefully, and you think you're going to just see through all that. You're not. They want to tell you what they want you to think is going on. So that's what they're telling you. And by manipulating your emotions and by manipulating your ego and by manipulating your passion and by manipulating your beliefs and by manipulating your biases, you buy into it. And I would recommend that you don't do that. It's my. My recommendation is that you did not do that. I recommend that you don't let your emotions and your ego and your passions and your biases and your beliefs and your goals and your life. I recommend that you do not let those things get manipulated. I would recommend that you do something different. I would recommend that you take a step back and you detach. Of course. I mean, you've heard me talking about this for years, and I talk about it. When you're in a gunfight, you better take a step back and detach so you can see what's actually happening. Well, yes, believe it or not, I recommend the exact same thing. To try and figure out what's going on in the world. You want to figure out what's going on in. In a gunfight, get off your gun, Stop looking down the side of your weapon. Stop pulling the trigger. Take a step back and look around. That's how you figure out what's going on in a gunfight. You want to figure out what's going on in the world, do the same thing. Take a step back and detach. Because all this data, all these opinions, all this information, all this media, all this. All this AI slop, it's all there to get you to feel a certain way. And the. Probably the primary mode that they do that by is getting you to focus on small tactical details. Small tactical details. That's what they want you to get you to focus on. You know, if I was trying to. If we were. You know, they have on MMA fights now, you can bet as the fight is going on, right? You can bet, like, now it's. Now it's the. It's the second round. You can bet, like, now I think Echo is going to win. And if you dominated the first round, you know, the. The odds are going up for you. So I'm not going to make as much money, but it's a little bit safer bet.

[B]

Oh, so the odds, like, adjust the

[A]

odds, Adjust real time.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

Real time. But if I was trying to manipulate you. I'd be like, oh, did you see when Echo almost got punched? And that. Let's, let's watch that replay again. So you watch the little replay of the one punch that barely missed Echoes Chin and now you think, no, actually Echo doesn't have a good chance. He dominated the whole round. But they show you that one little piece of it over and over again. That's what's happening with the 24 hour news cycle. Every hour, every hour there's a critical story. Every hour there's a catastrophic event. Every hour there's breaking news. Every hour there's an urgent report, a major update, an important announcement, a new development. Every hour. Really? Really? That's like me telling you that there is a catastrophic update every three seconds in an MMA fight. People are throwing punches. Guess what? That's what happens in an MMA fight. And it again, this is something that I learned as a leader in combat. Things are going to be happening. There's going to be shooting going on, there's going to be elements maneuvering, there's going to be friendly elements maneuvering, there's going to be enemy elements maneuvering, there's going to be explosions, there's gonna be vehicles going down, there's gonna be people getting wounded. And each one of those things seem extremely important. But if you focus on one of those things, you're gonna miss everything else and you're gonna make bad decisions. This is why we talk so much about not getting sucked into some detail that locks up your brain. And even a wounded guy, God forbid, or someone, someone gets killed in action, even as horrible as those things are, that is not the time to hyper focus on that particular event, as awful as it might be, because if you're not careful, you might miss that the enemy's maneuvering on you, or you might miss what fire support is available, or you might miss what friendlies are entering your zone. And any of those are going to have even more catastrophic outcome. So we cannot allow ourselves to be do that. And you hear this with war. With WAR reporting. Every small tactical exchange is reported on as if it is a culminating point, which is like a doctrinal term meaning like the. This is going to be a victory or a defeat for this entire situation. Like this moment is the culminating point. It's not, it's not. It's another punch thrown. Hey, can there be a knockout punch? Yes. Can there be a, you know, the guy gets to take down and gets the back and now he's starting to sink in the Choke. Yes, that, that does happen, but it doesn't happen every three seconds. You hear this with business reporting as well. Like business reporting like they may never recover from this restock issue that they had or, or you know, political reporting. This is the final, the final blow to so and so's campaign. Like you hear this stuff, the final blow. You have to detach from these type of headlines. You have to take a step back, you have to collect the data. Because look, if there is a restock issue with some company, it's sure it's going to have some kind of an impact, it's some kind of a negative impact or if someone out on a campaign trail does something really stupid, is it going to, can be a setback. You know, occasionally you get a knockout blow. Like just happened to that guy, that was the California guy that was running for governor. Oh yeah, yeah, like that was a knockout blow. But you know how many little knockout blows that guy's had? I mean he's been, he's been dinged up the whole time he was, you know, having sexual relations with a Chinese spy. Like he was, he's, he rolled right through that. You know, it wasn't until he was straight up raping women. But all the other things that he did, they were just like little, little, little scuffs. So we got to pay attention and collect the data. But don't over index on something. And by the way, it makes you not understand, it makes people not understand the difference between like what is a real death blow and what's just day to day operations for the world. Detach, take a step back, look around, Recognize, recognize. There's a bunch of things got to recognize. You got to recognize. The first report is always wrong. You've heard me say that before. The first report is always wrong. You get the guys calling from the field, hey, this is what's going on. That first report is going to be wrong. Not that they're lying to you. Not that they don't have a portion of the information, but they don't have the whole picture. They can't, it's only their perspective. So the first report is going to be wrong. The second report and the third report and the fourth, the fifth and sixth report. They're all going to be kind of wrong. But what we have to do is not take those reports as individual gospel. We have to take them as a whole and correlate them together over time so we can get a picture of what's going on. This is an important thing to think about when it Comes to trying to figure out what's going on is time and distance are good tools to use. Time and distance. Now, can you be too far separated from something? Of course you can. Too much distance where you don't understand what the hell is going on. Too much time has passed and it doesn't matter anymore. Of course you can go too far with those things. But time and distance are very good tools to help you suss out reality. A little bit of time, give it a little time before you make that judgment call. Get a little space. Use time and distance to help you gain perspective. And that, by the way, that's why we use the iterative decision making process. That's why we try and make small decisions rapidly. We don't, we don't try and comprehend everything in a big holistic way because we don't have that capability. So what we do is we take measure of what's happening, we take measure of what's happening right now, and we make a small possible decision, the smallest possible decision we can to kind of guess what we should do next. And then we do that little tiny thing and then we pay attention to the feedback. That's what we do. If we get good feedback, we continue in that direction. If we get bad feedback, we go in a different direction. We try something else. So these are the things to close this out. These are the things that we have to do in the world to try and figure out what's going on in the world. Take a step back, relax, look around. Don't rush to judge anything. Don't rush to judge anything. Don't get sucked into little tactical events that occur. You can make note of them. You can add them to the broad calculus. Put them in the soup, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, put them in the soup. Put them in there. But don't put an inordinate amount of weight on any one thing. And by the way, how do you know if a little tactical thing is having a strategic impact? You want to know how you know that it has a strategic impact? Like how do you know that this guy's campaign fell apart? It's because he announced his resignation. Okay, yeah, that was a big deal.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

[A]

It's not tactical anymore. How do you know in, in, in war, when, oh, this, this loss of this bridge, this was a strategic loss. How do you know that? Well, when all of a sudden the tide shifts and now the other team starts winning. And they were losing, but this bridge was taken out. Resupplies couldn't happen. Because you take out that bridge and they go, oh, no, the bridge is gone. But, oh, guess what? They had a engineering battalion that went in and built another bridge in two days. It was no factor. We forgot about that. You have to look and see. I, I try. Here's, here's a good protocol to run. And our, our, our instinct is to take a small thing and make it bigger. That's our instinct. Our instinct is to see a piece of news and make it bigger. And by the way, the news, they do that with us too, right? They take a small thing, they make it bigger, and then our brain takes the thing that they already made bigger and we make it even bigger. Catastrophic end of the world, every day, Catastrophic end of the world. I consciously, when I hear something, I try and say, man, probably won't be that big of a deal. I try and say how this probably, hey, they took out that bridge. But you know what? It's not going to take that long to rebuild the bridge. They have the capabilities. And by the way, there's an area down south where they have another bridge they can easily reroute to. Oh, yeah, that happened on his campaign. Yeah, but there's going to be a lot of he said, she said, like, okay, it's probably not going to be that big of a deal. Like what? You need to try and figure out how it's going to be minimal because that's probably what's going to happen. And believe me, when it becomes a major issue, you will see it. It's, it's unavoidable. Use time and distance as a filter as much as you can. Use time, let things set, let them develop a little bit before you lose your freaking mind. Get a little distance from them before you lose your freaking mind. There's things going on in some world, and the only people that care about is the people are in that world. No one else cares about it. Some business thing, some political thing, some war thing. It's the most important thing in this little tiny fraction of the world. But the rest of people are like, it doesn't affect me at all. So use time and use distance as a filter. And if you do these things, you won't know exactly what's happening. You won't know. You won't know exactly what is going to happen, because that's impossible and no one does. But if you use this type of protocol, you will have the best possibility of understanding what is going on. And that's what I got.

[B]

Yes, sir.

[A]

You were writing all kinds of notes over there.

[B]

Well, you know. Yeah, it's for. With everything you went down, it just became more and more clear that this applies to everything, even everyday life, you know, regardless of the news, no news, whatever. Like, you know, like one of the initial things we're talking about is like the forces at play, you know, and. Yeah, but we're. I think. Well, I believe at this point in my life that the forces are big, small in the past, a prediction of the future. Like, there's so many forces. Some that you know, some you don't know, and some you don't know, you don't know. And then some, you know, you don't know kind of on purpose, like you're ignoring them on purpose because your mood or all this stuff, and then some you don't know because you have no access to it. Right. So the, the going to dinner analogy that like, at the end of the day it's going to be all these. It's like this tug of war of like, almost like conflicts of interest, you know. And what I learned early on, as you know from this outfit, is one of the, the main ways to see kind of everything is this tug of war between the, the big picture and the small picture, the strategic and the tactical, essentially. So really, at any given moment, you're gonna have basically that weird tug of war of conflict of interest within you and with others and how they relate to you in every way, moment to moment. And then whichever interest at any given moment wins, that's the direction things are going to go. And then what that's based on is like, unpredictable, because you're talking about like, just like how you were saying. Like, it's. We're talking with like, people, like, the kind of mood someone is in determines how they get to work, by the way. So you know how, like, and I mentioned this before, where, you know how, like, you're at the stoplight and someone peels out and they didn't have to peel out. They're not, you know, they peel out. He did that because he was in a mood or she or whoever. Usually he did that because he was in a certain mood that was caused by something that happened maybe that day, maybe yesterday, you know, and then you just go down the rabbit hole of all those forces that caused that one thing for him to peel out, which is going to have some effect. You see what I'm saying? So all these, like at any given moment could be anything. Very hard to keep your. Your keep a handle on everything. Right? So which is another was one of the big, the Biggest what is Messages of this whole thing. We see what's happening, but miss what's going on.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the jujitsu analogy, in my opinion, was very, Was pretty much perfect. Where that's why, like, and in boxing or whatever, you have like faints and stuff, right? You know how they say in like, boxing stuff, like, don't look at their hands. That's only what's happening. Yeah, I'm saying, like, what's going on is the body, the feet, you know, all this other stuff. So it's like, yeah, if you're distracted by what's happening, you're gonna miss what's going on here.

[A]

Miss what's going on. The first of all, the forces at play. Right. This is not some, you know, Nobel Prize winning statement, but it. There are so many people that are in scenarios and they are not remotely calculating the forces that are at play. Right. Like just hearing this and when you go into your next conflict or you go into your next conversation, or you go into your next relationship or you go into your next, next business deal, if you start thinking about what forces are at play, it will make everything so much more. It'll make, it'll make your ability to understand and your ability to negotiate, your ability to say the right things so much better. Because these forces, when we don't recognize them or ignore them or don't see them, or we, or we, we kind of treat them as if they're, they're, they're there, but they're not real. Right. We think of them as like gravity. Like, how often do you actually think about gravity? You know, you don't really think about it a lot, but it's keeping everything together. Yeah, it's literally keeping every, like, I don't go, man, I hope gravity holds this pen right when I let go of it right now and puts it on the table. Hope it doesn't float away. No, you don't think about it. It's just kind of there and you just kind of know it's going to be there. But to actively think like, oh, what forces are at play? And by the way, when you start to look at people's behavior, because people, people's behavior is being driven by various forces. And by the way, people do things that I do not understand, you know what I'm saying? Like, people do things that I do not understand. I can't. You know, you and I had this conversation on the underground podcast the other day. Like, you love sushi. I don't. I've never eaten a piece of sushi in my life. I probably never will. You eat sushi almost every day. Just like I ca. I cannot under. What food do you hate?

[B]

I. I gotta be honest. And after that conversation, I actually thought about it, coincidentally, where I was like, what is the food that I'm, like, just not down for the way you're not down for sushi. I don't. I could not identify one, but let's just say, I don't know, some obvious stuff. Like liver. Yeah, but. No, but I like liver. Like, you know how. Like, sometimes they'll prepare it a certain way, so it's. I don't know, but whatever. Yeah.

[A]

Just. There's certain things that you. You could. You couldn't comprehend why I, like. You can't comprehend why I don't like sushi. It's got to be hard for you to understand. I mean, I live in San Diego. We got fresh sushi all over the place. There's a sushi shop on every corner. Like, what is wrong with. I. I'm. I'm a waterman, by the way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm out in the ocean all the time. I grew up in Maine, like, in New England, in Connecticut. It's like, we. There's seafood everywhere.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And now you're telling me you don't like sushi. What? That's. It's kind of hard to comprehend.

[B]

There's a calculation that I'm not just not getting the answer to.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. You can't, like, comprehend, like, what is wrong with you. What is wrong with you. You can't comprehend it. And people do things. People have behaviors that we. I literally. Sometimes I cannot comprehend. I cannot comprehend what you're doing. So we have to do there is. Try and figure out what forces are at play. Yeah, but what we. What is incalculable is we. We just can't. We can make an estimate, but we can't say for sure. You know what? There was a fight the other day, and. Oh, no, it was a soccer game, and I was at. I was at a San Diego soccer game, and I was talking with the CEO, Tom, and. And, you know, we were. I said, hey, you know, how's this looking for tonight? And he's. You know, he said, this was actually last season. I see. I said, how's it looking for tonight? You know, how we. How do we stack up on this team? He goes, you know, like, we stack up pretty good. We should be able to win, but we still have to play the game. You know what I'm saying? Why is that? Because the outcome is. The outcome is unknown. We can't just put stuff on paper. Like I was saying, with the stock market, all these big stock people with their big calculators and algorithms and quants and the whole nine yards and years of college and years of experience, they don't get it. Right. They can't tell you if the price of oil is going up or down. Right. Now who's, who knows? No, no one knows. Gold, where's it going up or down? They can't tell you. They can tell you what they think. And they lose. Right. They win and they lose. So all that's. Because that is a. That is. Those are prime examples of like all these forces that are at play. Yeah, forces. Forces that even include the belief of the market. Yeah, think about that. A force like gravity, like, you know, I said, some of these are seen in unseen forces. An unseen force is like the belief of the market. How do you predict the belief of the market? You know what I'm saying? And that is a legitimate thing. Hey, the market believes that oil's gonna get cheaper, so the price is going down. This is what they believe. And by the way, when it turns out tomorrow that they were wrong. Hey, they were wrong. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter. But we had to put that into the calculus.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's the, it's the availability, it's the belief of the market. It's all these things. It's the natural disasters, fires, war, all these things affect it, but the belief of the market is one of them, one of the many. But if you can at least take in that, that calculus and, and know that there are so many things that we don't understand, and even the things we understand, we can't predict accurately. So keeping that in mind, what I'm hoping that all this does, by the way, is I'm hoping it helps soothe people's anxiety on day to day emotional roller coasters of what is going on. Because a lot of people, they're watching those highlights from the fight or the highlight from, you know, the highlight from the fight, whatever that fight is. A political fight, social fight, an economic fight. They've wrapped us into showing us the replay of one of three seconds of a fight and telling you to like, change your bets and everything's gonna be different. We don't know who's gonna win. And now this guy's definitely gonna win because he almost caught him with that punch. And watch it again. Watch in slow motion. If he would have just put his foot over here like that's what they're saying to you. This fight is totally different now. And guess what? They're gonna tell you in an hour. No, it's changed again. So I'm hoping that the ability to take a step back, detach, not over index on any piece of information. That is such a good skill to not over index on any one piece of information. If you do that, you're going to get caught. You just can't. You can't over index on. On little things. Now, again, if you're paying enough attention from a broad perspective, you'll start to see a pattern. You go, oh, hold on a second. I see a pattern now. Yeah, now a little thing. Now, I can predict that there's probably a big thing coming, and that's okay. But don't over index on those little things. They'll hurt you.

[B]

The as far as unseen forces goes, one that you opened my eyes to a while ago, I forget what book it was. It was morale, you know, Morale, right? So. Because I'd hear it in football games and stuff like, oh, this quarterback, he's feeling confident. So this adds to. And I'm like, bro, that's not gonna. The quarterback is feeling confident.

[A]

You know, like, so what?

[B]

Now they're gonna win the game versus lose it? Like, bruh, bruh. That's not a factor. See, I'm saying the guy either, either has a skill or he don't have the skill, and they're gonna work together, you know, and whatever. And then it was. I forget some book, man. I forget the exact wording. But you opened my eyes to the idea, which is true. Literally, like every single day. If you don't want to be there versus you really do want to be there. It's two completely different things. Two different outcomes, two different pursuits. It's two different events, literally. So. And I. Brian, this 100, bro, from my sports days to just working out to freaking Jiu Jitsu, bruh. If I don't want to be at Jiu Jitsu, Brian, I don't want to be at anywhere.

[A]

The morale thing. And you can watch this in any sports. You can watch when they will say, the announcers will say. Because it's so clear the momentum has shifted.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that's another one.

[A]

The momentum has shifted. Think about that. Yeah, that's a real thing. And they're all. They're all these little micro, little collective things that happen inside of a team. For instance, if I'm playing basketball and you know where we just got. We just scored 12 points unanswered and I'm about to take a three pointer. How much pressure is on me?

[B]

Yeah,

[A]

there's almost no pressure. And so guess what? Now it's a 15 point lead. And now my next shot, there's even less pressure. And so you just. You're just playing looser and looser. And the looser you play, the better you play. Now you go the other direction. When. When it. A shot is critical, there's all this pressure. People choke more.

[B]

More stuff.

[A]

So, yeah, that momentum is a real thing. Morale is a little thing. And Napoleon said, I forget what the number is, but he gave it a ratio. Like morale is to. Is to numbers as 3 is to 1 or something like that. Like morale is more important.

[B]

Yeah. So you ever.

[A]

So didn't you ever play football though, where like you're. You did feel the morale of the quarterback being like, all right, guys. Oh, yeah. You know.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

For you just to.

[B]

It would be more.

[A]

Forget about it.

[B]

It's more the. The whole team morale in my experience. But as far as morale goes. Yeah. And it was never illustrated like that to me. So I, I remember when my. And I'm literally remembering this like it had just happened where it was our. Actually the first game I ever played. First game game I ever played against this team. And we were like seated to be the. The team. This Kaloa, Pop Warner, by the way, Kauai, Southside, where we at. We played against Kapa and Kapa had some good guys on there, but whatever we had, you know, with me and my brother, some freaking other heavy hitters, you know, 10, 11 years or whatever. And that, bro, they came out and they just started freaking defeating us right from the first play. Like it was bad. And we're like, what the hell? Like everyone was like coordinated in these. These guys, these two bro cousins, Jared and Kalani, they were just like freak athletes all of a sudden. So they just started beating us. And I remember feeling like, bruh, hey, I don't even want to be here anymore. Be like, I didn't like have any drive to put in effort because we just lose anyway. See, I'm saying to the point where I was doing this regular play where they pitch you the ball. Just didn't catch the ball. Straight up. Didn't catch the ball. Not a hard ball to cat. Like, it just didn't. And I remember thinking. And then I was just like, whatever. Like it doesn't. Like that's an extreme version of your morale just going. And then literally directly affecting the outcome.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just Because I don't want to be there. You ever phoned something in? No, actually, that's why I asked, but, bruh, I would pray, like, if I had, like, a competition or, you know, in your case, you're in the. On the battlefield, you're gonna freaking face this group of guys, you know, Bro, you're praying they just phone it in that day. You're praying that they're just like, bro, I don't want to be here. I'm gonna phone it in. Do the bare minimum, you know, and that's what you're compelled to do when you don't want to be there when morale is low.

[A]

Yeah. You know what you just talked about. About. So you. What you got caught in. In that football team.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Was you got caught in the. In the. In the shock. Right. So this is something. I was talking about this with some Jiu Jitsu competitors the other day. If you. If you are. If you expect the shock, like, hey, this is going to. This is going to start off wild.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you're just ready for wildness, you'll be okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you're not ready for wildness, you're gonna get. You're gonna fall behind.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So a classic case of what you're talking about is, oh, we think we're the better team. We kind of roll out there. Like, we kind of got this one in the bag, and then they come out there ready to murder you, and you get hit with that shock, and all of a sudden you guys are looking around 11 years old like, bro, what's going on? And you get overwhelmed by the shock. But it's. And what you just said, it's the surprise. And the surprise immediately defeats your morale. Well, how do you calculate that? Yeah, like, how do you put that into the. How do you put what. How do we calculate that force? How can I predict that your team. Because by the way, it can also go like, we're gonna destroy this team. And we go out there, and you can over shock them. Like, they come at you, stuff their face, and all of a sudden it's like, yo, you ever had that in Jiu jitsu where you're like. You get a submission on someone and you're going like, you. Like 30 seconds into a round, you get a submission and you work real hard and they get out.

[B]

Yeah, I'm thinking of a.

[A]

That is total demoralization.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I was rolling with this guy. We know he's a black belt now. He wasn't a black belt at the time. And. And he's smaller than me too. And I was. You know how you kind of like, you kind of modulate, right? And then this guy's not really that much of a threat, but, you know, so he kind of is bringing it. And I'm like, all right, like, it's getting kind of boring. I'm going to turn up the heat a little bit. And bro, this guy's like defending and kind of get the better of me a little bit. Started and then my morale went down. Yeah. And he's, I think apparently his went up, but I'm like, yeah, it's that exact thing where I was like, wait a second, I wasn't ready for this. Like, mentally. Yep. Yeah.

[A]

That is a force in a two person jiu jitsu match, totally confined environment. And now we think we're going to understand the morale of some foreign military, like, bro. And by the way, every different unit, and they're all out there, they have good leaders, bad leaders, good, good NCOs, bad NCOs. Like, some have been eaten. Well, some of them haven't been. Like, what, what are you talking about? All these forces come into play and we think we can calculate the whole thing and we're making our big predictions. So I hope that this will help everyone become a little bit more detached, which is, not, which is, which is counter to our culture right now. We're getting force fed information 24 hours a day. It's in your pocket. It's, it's, it's. I heard something the other day that like the average person looks at their phone 150 times a day just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, sir. 150 times a day, you're getting a, you're getting a catastrophic headline shoved down your throat, bro. It don't matter. It literally doesn't matter. You could wait a week before you look at your phone again and not. You won't miss it. Damn thing. And by the way, if there's something that you should have missed, someone's going to tell you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like someone's going to say, hey, did you see that? You know, there was an earthquake in Texas and there's a tidal wave that just wiped out half of Houston. You'd be like, no, I didn't see that. Okay, well take a look at and you can go look at it. You see, you see what I'm saying? Like, it's absolutely right. There's no reason. There's nothing that's going to happen in the next hour that's going to, That's Going to impact you from a global news perspective. And quite honestly, probably not from your own life perspective. Look, could you have an emergency once a year where your kid needs to call you? Cool. Have an emergency phone, have an emergency punch through number. But most of this stuff doesn't matter. Most of this stuff is just little tiny tactical interactions that are going on in the world and we're freaking out about all of them. Don't.

[B]

A lot of this is like the. You kind of mentioned where it's the shortcut of your brain. Right. Because it doesn't want to do that much work. So it'll just like pass judgment or it'll just summarize or just, you know, like I don't want to have to think through all these freaking unseen forces. So I'm just, you know, like. So I talked to Jason Calipa and he ended up mentioning this. But it's like. You ever forget why you're in a bad mood? Like you're kind of in a bad mood, but you just forgot why?

[A]

No.

[B]

Or at the very least, like, you have to almost like remind yourself, yourself. Wait, like I'm not feeling that. Like, I mean, I'm mad about something or I'm just whatever. Bothered. Whatever. You don't have to be.

[A]

I think the closest I could have to that is like, let's say I got some important kind of negative thing going on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'll wake up in the morning and won't remember it for like the first three minutes.

[B]

Right. But are you. But do you still feel the feeling though?

[A]

That's the point. Okay, that's a different thing.

[B]

Yeah, that's a different thing.

[A]

You're just saying you're in a bad mood. You're like, this sucks.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, wait, why?

[B]

You know, like, let's say you had a. Okay, let's say a typical situation. Say you argue with your wife about something, right. And it puts you in a bad mood because you didn't resolve it. Then you go to wherever. Right. Go to work. And then you, you know, you do your work and your brain as if

[A]

you had a job.

[B]

You know, you concentrate on this and that and this cast that task or whatever. And then like it's almost lunch break and you're like freaking still kind of in this weird bad mood. It kind of that movie mood kind of drifted with you. You know, it carried along with you throughout the day, but you don't really consciously remember what it was that made you in the bad mood or why you're in the bad mood. You Almost have to be like, wait, why am I feeling like this again? Oh, yeah, argument went with my wife. Oh, wait, what was that about again? Okay, it's like, you got to remember, but the bad mood is still there. And that bad mood can affect other stuff. Yeah, you don't even know why you're in a bad mood anymore.

[A]

Yeah, that's the.

[B]

The point is, side note, the reason why this came up is Jason, Jason Calipa about Jiu Jitsu, about like one of the benefits and like how this particular benefit works. You know how they say it's a stress reliever, right? They're like, why is it a stress reliever? And the obvious one is like, oh, because you get to do this in physical and like all this stuff. It's true. But let's say you have that same thing. You have an argument with your wife or whatever, and you know you have other stuff to do. So you're not just con. Continuously thinking about, like what actually happened that's making you in the bad mood. Right. You're just left with a bad mood. So that bad mood is called a stress patch that just kind of gets attached to your brain. The rest of it is secondary seem, but it's just adding to your stress for the day. Maybe something else bad happens now you got another stress patch. You forget about the actual event because it's not happening right now anymore. It was in the past, but you still have the mood from it. There's two patches, maybe three patches, maybe four. You go to Jiu Jitsu, you gotta forget about all that, all the way down to your emotional state. You got to forget because freaking jock was trying to choke me. I'm trying to choke this guy. He's trying to pass my guard and freaking hold me inside mount. All freaking for five minutes or whatever. Like you're. You're concerned about bigger things in that particular moment. Add everything else on. What jujitsu is. Those stress patches get washed away. So I'm saying, so you forget consciously and emotionally about that stress that you had before.

[A]

So.

[B]

So for you to get that stress patch back, you have to actively pursue it, which you're not in the mood to do because you're kind of in a good mood. See, I'm saying that's how it works, bro.

[A]

I'm here to tell you so trained Jiu Jitsu.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I say detach. Take a step back, look around, don't over index. You say train Jiu Jitsu.

[B]

It's one of those things.

[A]

I can't. I can't deny that. I think it will helpful. Be helpful. Be helpful for your mental path, it'll be helpful for your psychological path and it'll help your. Help your physical path as well. So that's what we got. Speaking of Jiu jitsu, speaking of training, speaking of getting after it, you should do all the above. And when you do that, you're need fuel. Check out jockeyfuel.com get yourself some protein, get yourself some energy, get yourself some hydration, get yourself some joint warfare. Super Krill Time war greens. Creatine.

[B]

Creatine 100.

[A]

We got a new creatine coming, by the way.

[B]

What kind of creatine? Little something.

[A]

A little something. A little something. Okay, a little something. A very highest quality creatine. We're going to have some flavored versions of it as well. For those of you that aren't dry scooping straight up like I am right now.

[B]

Yeah, that's why I mix the hydrate with it because it's like a little flavored creatine.

[A]

Yeah. Well, we got. We're going to have you covered. Jockofuel.com you can get [e-mail] or you can get it wherever you get stuff. We're all over the place. We're in stores all across the country. So if they don't have jocko fuel, ask them for it. In the meantime, get some. Also, since we're training Jiu Jitsu, we recommend that you get gear that's made in America. 100%. Check out OriginUSA.com and get yourself a GI. Get yourself some rash guard, get yourself some training shorts, get yourself some jeans, some boots. By the way, women's jeans coming. Did you know that?

[B]

I did not know that until right now.

[A]

Jeans are coming.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Women's jeans are coming. Check out the site. Get on that early request list. Some one that I know got one of the early pairs of women's jeans. My wife.

[B]

All right.

[A]

I think they're putting her in the ad too.

[B]

Okay. All right.

[A]

Because I made an impromptu video to like show, you know, the fit and whatever.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You know, and choose the model or whatever.

[A]

And so she was looking, you know, let's face it, let's put her in the ad. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

I dig it, man. I dig.

[A]

So Origin USA.com get your wife some jeans.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

American made jeans that fit good, look good, feel good, and they're made in America. They're made with freedom. That's what we do. Origin USA.com check it out.

[B]

It's true. Also, don't forget about Jocko Store. We representing. Hey, we need, you know, shirts to wear on the path. You know, whether it be to work out or just to represent. See what I'm saying? The black on black. That's where you represent in public, in my opinion. Not doing too much, but not too little. See what I'm saying? You're in that sweet spot, threading the needle in that way. But yeah, we got some shirts.

[A]

Send me a sock support black on black shirt, please.

[B]

Yes. Oh, wait, did I not? Okay, my bad.

[A]

No, you did not. Otherwise I'd be wearing it right now.

[B]

Yeah, so I thought I just sent. But I sent one to tilt. Actually sent a bunch.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Appropriately. Yeah.

[A]

Hell yeah.

[B]

SOG legacy.com songlegacy.com yeah, this part, it's kind of. Kind of in the same vein as. As the, you know, Jocko Store. It's. Yeah. So the song is just the support stuff. So.

[A]

So you can represent without stolen valor.

[B]

Exactly. Right. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. On Twitter, long time ago, a guy said, you know, so and so, I, you know, so and so was in the SEAL teams. And, you know, he sent me this thing and is it appropriate for me to wear a trident even though I wasn't in the seal teams? Is it appropriate for you to wear a trident out in public? Even though I wasn't the seal teams. And I wrote back on Twitter, I wrote, I was in the seal teams for 20 years. No matter where I tried it in public.

[B]

Wait, a real trident?

[A]

Any trident? Like, yeah, like any trident thing is

[B]

even on a shirt. Because you remember when Jimmy May was on, I was like, what do you have on? No, no, he gave me a polo shirt and a hat.

[A]

But it said, beyond the brotherhood.

[B]

Yes, but I tried it on.

[A]

Oh, like a. Like a actual SEAL trident?

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

Or just like a three? Yeah, yeah, that's different. That's acceptable.

[B]

Okay, so that's different if it's a design of a trident.

[A]

Yeah. Of an actual, like, three pronged trident. Yeah. When I say trident, I mean the pin, the seal, Budweiser insignia.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It didn't have that chicken. The trident in real. It was. Yeah, yeah, it was. And I asked him, I was like, bro, can I wear this because I want to wear it. Yeah, both of them. To be honest with you, not at the same time. That'd be too much. But I didn't want to wear them from time to time. But I can't just be going out of the freaking in the clear with my freaking trident. On my hat and your tackle watch

[A]

at the same time.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Right. So I asked him, and he's like, no, no. In fact, you should wear it because it's like, support all this stuff. Perfect. Same thing with SOG Legacy, by the way. So. Yeah. And, you know, like, if you don't like the old, you know, the overt SOG freaking thing on your chest or whatever, or that's the way you're thinking. Even though it does look dope. I wear that thing all the time. You can do the black on black.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

See what I'm saying? Again, doing a lot, but not too much, not too little.

[A]

And that is support for Sock. Like, literally, you know, Tilt out there capturing these stories from all as many stock guys as he possibly can. Those guys are, you know. You know, you could debate about who, like, the greatest NBA player is or the greatest hockey. Like, there's a debate, right? There's a debate. There's no debate when it comes to special operations. And it's SOG and then everybody else, you know what I'm saying? Like, just. That's the way it is. SOG all day. So support your. Support your local SOG guys.

[B]

Yep, that's@SOG legacy.com. back to Jocko store real quick. The. The. We had these silicone wristband. Discipline equals freedom. They're little wristbands, you know, represent or whatever. And a lot of people wanted them. We sold out for a long time. I'm sorry. See what I'm saying? But after, like, a lot of pressure from the public, anyway, they're back in stock right now. Seems, you know, little wristband, the black on black, though. They're not black on black.

[A]

Yeah, you made a mistake, didn't you?

[B]

No, wait. No, they're so. But no, the wristband is black with white.

[A]

I'm saying, but not black on black.

[B]

I'll look into it for sure. But there's other black on black options.

[A]

Bring the Sharpie into play.

[B]

Anyway, oh, also the shirt locker, which is the new design, you know, if you're into the. Discipline equals freedom.

[A]

Representation, from what I understand, Life. Babin supported the last one.

[B]

Oh, yeah?

[A]

What was the last one?

[B]

He was very. So he's. He sent me the. A picture of his shirt. His most recent one, the Discipline, like, one. I forget the name. It's just red script Discipline. And this looks very clean, very nice, very. You know, when you wear it, it looks good on you. Like, that kind. I know you don't know about that kind of stuff, but other people do. Lot of us.

[A]

I was doing. I was doing a. An interview about origin a couple days ago, and they were asking me something, and I was basically. I was saying, like, listen. Oh, no. He asked me about, like, the popularity of denim in Japan.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I was like, hey, man, just FYI, right? You're starting to lean into the world of fashion, which I don't know anything about.

[B]

No, you do.

[A]

You're starting to talk about, like, I. I know that what you're talking about has something to do with fashion in Japan, and I know, like. Like Japanese, they're very particular about surfboards, right? Because I'm a surfer. And they. They like those. They like those longboards. They like that Josh Hall. They like that Joel Tudor. They got that vibe, right? They got that vibe, that longboard vibe. And then they got, like, a rockabilly thing going on over there. So they got some American culture, and. And that denim, I think, is in that area now. I know about surfboards, but fashion is not my thing.

[B]

I don't know, bro. So far, sounds like, you know, a little something.

[A]

And these things brought, like. There's a certain point where utility of clothing, like, this one end of the spectrum, and then the other end of the spectrum is like, I'm wearing something because it looks good, which is what you just said.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

I. I'm only on one side. I'm like. The utility of the clothing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But then it goes all the way to the fashion.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So you don't know much about the fashion.

[B]

You go a little bit. I mean, not to get too technical and put too fine of a point on it, but in the spirit of accuracy, you go a little bit down the spectrum, but only to. It's like a facility or a functional fashion.

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

See what I'm saying?

[A]

Yeah. Well, functional fashion is completely accessible.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Acceptable.

[B]

Yeah. You got to be squared away. See what I'm saying? Your belt buckle can't be all smudged. You see what I'm saying? Your shoes can't be all scoffed and got to be shined. See what I'm saying? For the most part, I don't know. Under certain circumstances.

[A]

Under certain circumstances.

[B]

Functional circumstances.

[A]

Functional for sure. There's a reason for you to be squared away.

[B]

Yes, sir.

[A]

Yeah. You can't just be lolly gagging around.

[B]

No. Can't be sloppy, either.

[A]

Can't be sloppy. You know, I will say my. When I put clothes on.

[B]

Sure. Hell, yeah. When you put clothes on.

[A]

I think pretty much the goal is that not wearing anything that would draw any special attention to it.

[B]

Special. Okay.

[A]

You know what I mean? Now, look, have I worn an occasional T shirt that has a little bit of zing to it? Yeah, sure. But that the goal, right? He's like, I don't want to wear something that people are. Is drawing attention.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's kind of where I'm at.

[B]

Yeah, I understand. So well. Okay, so as far as the shirt locker goes in for in that regard, we got a little bit of both. You know, usually we stay within the gray zone for sure, but this particular one Leif liked, what was it?

[A]

Oh, discipline.

[B]

The discipline one. Yeah. You know, I'm sure he put it on and was like, hey, this. This thing fit. Collar design really looks good on me. Let me, you know, let me say some words. Whatever sends me the tax. He said, hey, legit, you know, and. But he did ask for some past designs to be kind of released or whatever. I showed him that, you know, that good one, the other good one. I showed it to him and said, hey, we're kind of doing that Anyway, it was a thing. That's why he texted me, which I understand.

[A]

Well, if Leif is happy. Yes, we're all happy.

[B]

That is correct.

[A]

Shirt locker.

[B]

Shirt locker all day.

[A]

All right, cool. Also, we got some books. We got Put yout Legs on by Rob Jones. We got need to Lead by Dave Burke. I've written a bunch of books, too. Written a bunch of kids books, the whole nine yards. So check those out. Echelonfront.com if you have issues inside your organization, they are leadership issues. Did I just say that? Yes, I said that. Regardless of what they are, they're leadership issues. So if you need help with leadership inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com Also, if you need help as a leader in all aspects of your life, you can learn the skills of leadership@extreme ownership.com. so go and check that out. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org and finally, Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org and if you want to connect with us, you go to jocko.com and then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echoes that echo, Charles. Just be careful on there because it is not healthy. Should have a little warning label. Warning causes freaking anxiety.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So be careful. And of course, right now, around the entire globe, military men and women are they're living in this process that we're sitting here talking about. They are doing things that will impact the world and history. And we thank them for their service and sacrifice. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service and sacrifice here on the home front. And everyone else out there stayed attached. Don't hyper fixate on small details. Use time and distance as a tool for clarity. And don't mistake what's happening for what's going on. And that's all I've got for tonight and until next time. This is Echo and Jocko out.