Full transcript: Jocko Willink, Lessons From War
0:13 Warriors, mythological beings who sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Supermen, protecting us from evil, who stare steely-eyed into the face of death.
0:37 I always wondered how would I stack up? Would I run into the gunfire?
0:50 Would I sacrifice my life to defend my country? How could these people be real? Yet they were ordinary men who performed at the highest levels in the most brutal environment known to man,
1:14 War. How did they do it?
1:23 These men can never tell their stories, but once I met a man that could, and I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. This is London Real, I am Brian Rose, my guest today is Jocko Willink who is a retired Navy Seal officer and author of the number one New York Times and number one Wall Street Journal best-selling book, Extreme Ownership. Jocko, welcome to London Real. Thanks for having me on. You once said that, when a nation goes to war, they have to be prepared for two big things, and one is they have to be prepared to kill, and then prepared to die.
2:04 Where the will to kill comes in is that we forget that war is an imperfect effort, and there’s gonna be collateral damage. And when you go and drop bombs on ISIS, you’re gonna kill some civilians, kill some kids, you’re gonna kill some women, and it’s awful. And it is the reality of war.
2:36 Jocko Willink is the former Navy SEAL commander of Task Unit Bruiser, one of the most decorated teams in the Iraq War. A living legend, who spent his life on the battlefield.
2:53 There, he found challenges and reward. But Jocko is interesting because he’s much more than a Navy SEAL. After years of service, he came back to civilian life with a mission, to teach ordinary people the lessons he learned on the battlefield. His mantra, discipline equals freedom. Do the right things today so you have choices tomorrow.
3:21 His doctrine, extreme ownership. All the bad things that happen in your life are your fault. His answer, exercise leadership, in your own life and with others.
3:44 Before meeting Jocko, the word leadership didn’t mean much to me. I was a lone wolf doing things my own way, avoiding others, but Jocko made me think again. Whether you’re in the SEAL teams, or whether you’re in the Army or the Marine Corps, the people that are working for you are not robots. They’re people, and you cannot give them orders and expect them to just execute like a robot would. If the military was like that, then military leadership would be the easiest thing in the world.
4:14 It would be so easy, ’cause you just tell your guys what to do and they go do it. Ordering people to do things does not work. You actually have to lead them.
4:25 Now London Real was growing, and there was a crucial missing ingredient. Leadership. So I listened to Jocko’s podcasts, read his books, and applied all the lessons I could, and I discovered that Jocko is not just a guy beating the war drum. His lessons are about much more. Jocko is teaching us about life.
4:50 If you break, it means it’s time to fortify your will to make it stronger. In fact, if you break, the fight is just beginning. And as you crawl up and out of that dismal and wretched place, covered, and you’re covered in blood, and sweat, and dirt, and filth, as you rise above what you were. You will see that in the very act of standing up, in the very act of fighting on, you will become, and you will remain unbroken.
5:45 Now, two years later, I have the opportunity to learn from Jocko again. But this time I wanna go big and get Jocko in his element. On London’s biggest monument to war, the HMS Belfast. One of the most decorated warships in British history, where true warriors lived and died. It sank German U-boats, survived underwater mines, and protected the allied forces invasion of Normandy in 1944.
6:23 It’s a ship that befits the man. I’m here to learn how ordinary men became extraordinary, and what war can teach us about ourselves from one of the scariest people I’ve ever met.
6:53 This is the centre of London, right here. A war ship is in the middle of it, and I mean, I wonder what that says about Britain? Well, I mean all you have to do is look at Britain’s history to know that they couldn’t have survived if it wasn’t a warrior culture. And especially in World War II. It was the German war machine against this little island.
7:18 I think about the city being bombed, night after night, in 1940. I mean, I guess there’s small American equivalence, but it’s a whole nother ball game when your territory is being threatened. For sure, no there’s, I mean, I guess the closest you could say is Pearl Harbour, or September 11th, but even both those, when you compare to the London bombings and the continued attacks night after night, after night, after night, it’s a nightmare. It’s an actual nightmare.
7:44 And I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the navy in World War II. I would rather have been in the army or in the marine corps because on a ship, you’re at the whim of what’s gonna hit you. And you only have so much control over it. It’s a hell of a job.
8:07 You know, the Tower of London’s over there, as well. 1066, that was built. Yeah, yeah. I mean, has war changed in the last thousand years? You know, this is a topic that comes up a lot, and the fact of the matter is, I mean, of course there’s some tactical changes, there’s technological changes, obviously, but at the end of the day you’ve got human beings.
8:30 Men with some kind of weapons trying to kill other men. The human nature behind that, and the psychology behind that, doesn’t change very much as far as I’ve seen.
8:47 People try and say that war is something different. That it can be softer, or that there can be other ways, and sure, that’s great. Use other ways if you can find them, but at the end of the day when everything else fails, it’s gonna be human beings killing other human beings. You should try everything you can before you get to that point, but when you get to that point and you’ve got to belligerence that will not compromise with each other, someone’s gonna have to fight, and that’s the way it is.
9:21 It’s a real thing and people are gonna die on both sides, and yeah, that’s why they say war is hell. Everyone throws that around, but war is actual hell.
9:50 War is a nightmare. It is indifferent, and devastating, and evil.
10:03 But war is also an incredible teacher, a brutal teacher. War teaches you about sorrow, and loss, and pain, and it teaches you about the preciousness, and the fragility of human life.
10:29 In war you are forced to see humanity at it’s absolute worst, and you are also blessed to see humanity in it’s most glorious moments. And unfortunately, war teaches you the most when things go wrong.
11:06 What was 18 year old Jocko like before he joined up with the navy and then the SEALs? Oh, I was just a crazy, out of control, rebellious kid. Pretty much, you know? And luckily, luckily I joined the military. It was like, that was the best thing I could’ve done.
11:25 If I could’ve joined the military when I was 13, I should’ve done that. But they won’t let you. Did you ever worry that you wouldn’t get to fight? You wouldn’t get to go to a war? Oh yeah, I was definitely worried about that.
11:36 You feel lucky? Yeah, luckiest person in the world, for sure. When I first got to Iraq, my first deployment, we were all excited to be there. We were all excited to do our job. It was what we had trained to do, and we had that same mindset, you know, that we’re gonna go do this.
11:53 When you joined the navy, was it always to be a SEAL? Yeah. I don’t know the details of what it’s like to be in BUD/S, but I know in BUD/S there is a bell that you ring yourself when you decide to quit, right? If you wanna quit, you ring that bell three times. You have a helmet with your name on it, and when you quit you put your helmet by the bell and they line up the helmets.
12:14 There’s 200 people, or 150 people, that start the class. There’s 100 helmets of people that quit. Grown men, whose dream it was to be a SEAL, that get there, that did all this physical training, and all this preparation, and signed that dotted line, and committed to six years, and they show up there and they get to that training and they ring that bell. No one knows who’s gonna make it through that programme.
12:40 The only way to know what’s in the core of a human being is to rip that thing apart and see what’s in there. And until you rip it apart and see what’s in there, you don’t know.
12:52 You’re watching the kids, and they’re beat down, they’re chaffed, they’re bleeding between their legs. Just misery, and then you get the result.
13:04 What does it take to not ring the bell. Don’t quit. People always ask me, what should I concentrate on? What’s your advice for me going to BUD/S? Don’t quit.
13:14 Don’t quit, like train hard, don’t quit. Or quit, ’cause we don’t want you here.
13:23 Do not take the easy way out. Do not give up based on instinct. If you are forced to stand down, to retreat, so that you can rebuild and re-attack, so be it.
13:43 But make that decision based on logic, not on the instinct of surrender and defeat. And you need to train that instinct, your instinct. Train it to say get up. Go, fight on. And if that is what you become, if that becomes your fundamental reaction to adversity, if that becomes your gut instinct, then you will overcome just about anything that stands in your path.
14:47 Boom. Yeah.
15:03 Can you imagine the noise? You’re in here, you don’t even know what’s happening outside, right? I mean, you don’t know where the enemy is coming, you don’t know what they’re shooting, you’re just in here doing your job. That’s gotta be a horrifying feeling. Respect.
15:23 Evil is like a big theme that a lot of your podcasts have. Like recognising there’s evil out there. Yeah. There’s evil inside all of us. It seems like you’re constantly telling people be on the watch or be aware of this.
15:37 Yeah, part of the reason for that is, like I said earlier, you can be very comfortable living in America, and you can forget that there’s evil people out there, and a lot of them. And they can do the most heinous, and horrendous, and horrific things. And you need to be reminded of that so that you, two things, number one, you appreciate what you have, and number two, you are on at least some kind of awareness that these people are out there. Because if you think the world is filled with rainbows and lollipops, it’s gonna be a rude awakening when something bad happens.
16:14 So it’s important. It’s important to understand that there’s evil in the world, for sure. So we have to constantly be on the watch because it’s inside all of us, and so it can start growing, kind of like a mould grows. Yeah, and I don’t wanna sit here and sound like I’m all paranoid and like waiting for everyone to start doing evil things, ’cause that’s not true. ‘Cause there’s a lot of good in people, as well, and there’s people who do unbelievably heroic things, even in the face of horror, and in the face of evil.
16:40 There’s people that stand up and do incredibly heroic things knowing that they’re gonna sacrifice their life or whatever horrible situation they’re gonna encounter. What you have to do is you have to understand human nature, and you have to understand that there are both sides to human nature, and that people can be led down the wrong path, and that people can do horrible things. And you also have to realise that people can be led down a good path, and that people can do the right things.
17:05 The thing that reveals human nature, clearer than any other situation, is when human beings are put in traumatic scenarios. And whether that’s war, or whether it’s an atrocity, whether it’s a prison camp, that’s where human nature is revealed. And again, in war you see the best side of human nature and you can also see the worst side of human nature. And that’s why I talk about war a lot. When you were on last time, ISIS was flaring up and doing some horrible things.
17:33 You said ISIS must be killed. Yeah, it was a accurate statement. Right, and you said– And now you’re starting to see the aftermath of what they’ve left behind, and sick, sadistic, it’s unspeakable horrors. It’s absolutely unspeakable horrors, what they were doing.
17:59 War is not the best option, but in situations like that, where you’ve got people that are doing the most despicable, and vial, and evil things to other human beings, I don’t know that there’s any other choice. Do you ever think about how something like that happens? In this age of, the information age, and how this little pocket opens up with the black flag, and people doing these inhuman things. I mean, do you ever wonder how that happens? Well, I’m not surprised.
18:30 Even the My Lai Massacre’s a great example, because when leadership fails, people can be led pretty easily to do bad things. Because people are human beings, people are animals, and if people are led the wrong way, they can do horrible things and that’s a classic example. The My Lai Massacre, they murdered, raped, mutilated 500 innocent, mostly women and children. And when the report got back, one of the helicopters got back and said, hey this is what’s happening.
19:05 These guys are out there killing people, innocent people. One person got on the radio and called up and said stop killing people. And they literally stopped immediately. They literally stopped immediately, and that’s the power of leadership. And that’s why it’s a complete leadership failure, because if someone would’ve said, hey wait, no, stop what you’re doing.
19:29 Hey, we’re not doing that. If someone would’ve said that early on, it wouldn’t have happened. But the leaders actually led them down that dark path, and that’s why it doesn’t surprise me when you get some sick leaders from ISIS that lead these people down that path who have some sort of twisted evil inside of them, that could be restrained if they were led properly, but when it becomes unrestrained, and they’re led incorrectly, and they’re led immorally, that’s what happens.
19:59 And a lot of other people are talking about peace, and love, and forgiveness. And you seem like one of the few people out there that are saying, okay that’s great, but let’s also focus on this thing. Well, of course, yeah, peace is awesome, and there’s no one that wishes for peace more than people that have been in a war. Because when the war drums sound, it’s my friends that are going to fight. That’s who’s going to fight.
20:26 It’s my friends that are going to put their lives on the line. So when the war drum sound, the people that have been to war are the ones that actually say let’s think about this first. So, and you see that all the time with politicians. They don’t understand war, they never went to war. They wanna send everyone to war.
20:47 And like no, actually you should think about it. You should think about what the goal is, what the end state is, if there’s any way we can avoid this conflict. Because, like I said before, and like everyone says all the time, and they say it like it’s no big deal, but war is hell. And when you take a 18 year old kid, and you’re gonna go put him in a situation where he’s gonna have to kill people, and possibly get wounded, or possibly get killed himself, that’s traumatic experience.
21:14 And so, before you do that, you should think about why you’re doing it. And understand if the people have the will to fight, and the will to fight, as I’ve said many times before, the will to fight is the will to kill, and it’s the will to die. And those are some pretty big wills that you need to have.
21:46 One of the most impactful lessons that I learned from war was in the spring of 2006, in the city of Ramadi, Iraq. Through a series of mistakes, and human error, and poor judgement , and Murphy’s Law, and just plain bad luck, a horrendous firefight broke out. This firefight, tragically, was between us and us.
22:24 And it was reported up the chain of command what had happened. That we had fought, and wounded, and killed each other. It meant that somebody had to pay. It meant that somebody had to get fired for what had happened. There were so many people that I could incriminate with guilt.
22:48 And then I told them that there was only one person at fault for what had happened. There was only one person to blame, and that person was me. I am the commander, I am the senior man on the battle field, and I am responsible for everything that happens. Everything.
23:17 And you know what? I didn’t get fired. In fact, my commanding officer, when I took responsibility, when I took ownership, he now trusted me even more.
23:35 And my men, they didn’t lose respect for me. Everyone took ownership of their mistakes. Everyone took ownership of the problems. And when a team takes ownership of it’s problems, the problems get solved. I gotta make a confession.
24:00 When you were on London Real two years ago, I hadn’t yet read Extreme Ownership. But you made a bit of an impression on me, Jocko. And so afterwards, I read it and listened to it many, many times, and so did the whole team. And I’m constantly trying to remind myself to take extreme ownership, and usually when I’m telling someone else to take extreme ownership, I realise I’m not. And I know you wrote that with Leif on the lessons you learned in Ramadi, but when it comes to that idea, and that concept, what’s the biggest way people get that wrong?
24:34 The biggest obstacle is their ego, right? That’s the biggest obstacle, is we don’t wanna take the blame for when things go wrong. We wanna blame everyone else. And if your boss isn’t giving you what you need, that’s not your boss’s fault. It’s your fault.
24:48 If your team isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, that’s not your teams fault. It’s your fault. You’re the one that’s in charge of the team. You’re in charge of them. If they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, it’s your fault.
24:59 And when you do take ownership of a situation, it starts to spread through the organisation. If I say to my team, hey guys, this wasn’t your fault, this was my fault, here’s what we’re gonna do to fix it, my team looks at me and says, ah, you know what? We should’ve done a better job. They don’t say, yeah you’re right, it’s your fault. They don’t do that.
25:17 They say, we should’ve done a better job. I shoulda owned this, I shoulda stepped up. And now you start to have an organisation where everyone on the team takes ownership, and that’s a totally different, that is when you become unstoppable. Take ownership of everything in your world. The good and the bad.
25:37 Take ownership of your mistakes, take ownership of your shortfalls, take ownership of your problems, and then take ownership of the solutions that will get those problems solved. It’s constant reminder that it’s the ego. That’s what I’m finding out. And it’s honestly, leadership, it’s something I stayed away from. I used to work in the city in one of these big banks here, and I never wanted to lead a team, and I was like I don’t wanna do that.
26:03 And now that I’m forced to, it’s the most humbling experience. It’s the biggest, steepest learning curve I’ve ever been on. Every day is a day where I’ve gotta just drop the ego again, and drop the ego and look in the mirror. It’s challenging. Oh yeah, leadership is the most challenging thing in the world because you got all these people that you’re dealing with that are crazy, including yourself.
26:24 Another analogy I use is like being a woodworker. So if you’re a woodworker, you have to learn how to work all the different tools. Just like in your leadership, you’ve got different leadership tools. And then you have to know how to apply those tools to all these different types of wood. And then, once you know about the different types of wood, each individual piece of wood is different, just like every individual human being is different.
26:44 And so, being a leader is always hard because you’re dealing with different tools, different types of wood, and then different individual pieces down on the front lines. Lead. Lead yourself, and your team, and the people in your life. Lead them all to victory.
27:26 And so you started as an enlisted guy and you went back and got your degree. And it always surprised me, the degree you got, ’cause I think most people thought you would’ve got a degree in like demolition. How did you choose your degree? Yeah so, yeah I was an English major. I got my degree in English because I realised when I showed up at, while I was heading to college, I said what’s gonna be the most beneficial?
27:54 What will help me the most be able to do a good job as a SEAL officer? Have good command of the English language, be able to write well, be able to read well, and be able to speak well. That’s why I did it. And it served you well. Yeah, it was very helpful.
28:10 Very helpful. It was helpful in everything I did, yeah. So you’re reading all the classics, and poems, and Shakespeare. Shakespeare, yeah. Are people surprised to hear that?
28:20 No, Shakespeare’s, I always recommend people read Shakespeare. Shakespeare was very, very helpful for me. “This day is called the feast of Crispian. “He that outlives this day and comes home safe “will stand to tip-toe when the day is named, “and rouse him at the name of Crispian. “He that shall see this day, and live old age, “will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, “and say tomorrow is Saint Crispian.
28:57 “Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, “and say these wounds I had on Crispin’s Day. “Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot, “but he’ll remember with advantages “what feats he did that day, “then shall our names. “Familiar in his mouth as household words, “Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, “Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, “be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
29:41 “This story shall the good man teach his son, “and Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, “from this day to the ending of the world, “but we in it shall be remember’d. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, “for he today that sheds his blood with me “shall be my brother.” Which leads me to my next question, children’s books. Way of the Warrior Kid. Most people didn’t see this coming. When they see you on the surface, they see Jocko Willink, former badass US Navy SEAL.
30:33 First of all, what’s he doing with an English major? Second of all, why is he writing a children’s book? You realise how hard it is to be a kid, right? And this is something, I’ve got four kids, so being a kid is hard. And as adults, we think being a kid is easy.
30:49 And for them, when you’re a kid and you’re getting picked on, or you’re a kid and you don’t know your times tables, or you’re a kid and someone’s making fun of you, or you don’t know how to swim, that’s your whole world. So it is hard to be a kid, and I wanted these books to help kids realise that, yeah it’s hard, but you can get through it. But yeah, the book has done phenomenally well, and I get incredible feedback from all over the world about kids that are on the right path.
31:18 And it’s a real simple kind of archetype story, but that’s what it is. Mark’s this boy and he doesn’t have a male figure in his life, which I think was an interesting choice. And so Mark learns all sorts of things. He learns jiu-jitsu, which is awesome. He learns how to get over, I guess, mental and physical barriers that sometimes he just set up in his brain, right?
31:45 The fears. It’s true. It’s those simple, straightforward, and that’s the thing, Uncle Jake has to explain this stuff to a 10 year old kid. There’s no cryptic messages there. It’s like, here’s the deal kid.
31:56 Here’s what you need to do if you wanna win, if you wanna get through this, if you wanna get over that. And so it’s really a good book for people to take that lesson away from. Or take those very simple lessons away. Well, I pre-ordered the next Warrior Kid book, so I’m looking forward to that one. Right on.
32:13 And I know I wanna get my boys in jiu-jitsu as soon as possible, I think two’s still a little young. But they probably won’t listen to me, so it’s good that Mark’s doing jiu-jitsu. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
32:36 Remember me. Remember what I sacrificed so you can truly appreciate the incredible treasures you have. Don’t waste it. Don’t waste any of your time on this earth. Live a life that honours the sacrifice of our fallen heroes.
33:06 Most recently I had a guy on named Dakota Meyer. You know, I’m sitting here talking to a guy that, he lost his whole team. And I’m sitting there thinking about they’re calling for help, they’re calling for support, and they’re not getting it. And for me, thinking about like if my guys were in the field, what would I be thinking? What would I be doing?
33:28 What would I feel if I was in those situations where my guys weren’t getting the support they needed in the field? That podcast was the hardest podcast for me to do.
33:44 And it’s for a bunch of reasons that I didn’t even talk about on the podcast because we, it was too much. And just to be sitting across from Dakota who’s just a, he was 21 years old when that happened. 21 years old when that happened. And to sit across from him and be able to talk to him about it, and– You went silent a bunch on that one. I was listening, I didn’t watch you, but I couldn’t tell what was going on with you.
34:11 But there were times you just went silent for like 10 seconds, or 15 seconds. Yeah, there’s a lot of moments of silence in that podcast. There’s lot of time where I didn’t have anything to say, Dakota didn’t have anything to say, and we just sat there. You know, it’s real, real emotional for both of us. Ganjgal was one of the deadliest, small arms battles of the Afghanistan war.
34:37 It’s a fight from an earlier century, but. But some things don’t change. It’s a fact. Is this you kind of being a therapist to these guys, to a certain extent? I don’t think I’m a therapist, I think I’m a therapist to myself.
35:07 I think this stuff helps me more than it helps them. You know? I think it, it helps me. I learn so much from all these guys, all these guests that I’ve had on my podcast, all the books that I’ve read on my podcast. I’m real lucky that I kind of rolled into that.
35:26 And it’s not just the learning, it’s this emotional processing. Like, you know, you’re having emotional moments, so you’re figuring things out. And then, not to mention the million other people that are listening. A lot of those veterans who don’t know how to process it. Some of ’em, maybe they’re drinking, or on the pills, or don’t know their next mission.
35:44 I mean, that must be therapy for people out there. Yeah, and I have many times people say they pull their car over while they’re driving and they have to stop and they have to cry. Or they have to stop and they have to listen, they have to stop and they have to think. So yeah, I think it hits people in a pretty impactful way. And it hits me that way, too.
36:07 When I’m talking on the podcast like I don’t see millions of people, but I know some of the people that are listening, I know who they are. And some of ’em aren’t here anymore, you know? Like I know my guys are listening. I always picture that my guys, I always picture that Marc Lee’s listening, and he’s putting me in check. You know?
36:28 Mike Monsoor is listening, he’s putting me in check. In conjunction with them, you know it’s like people that I’ve met that have been through really traumatic experiences, and it’s everyone from like the single mom that’s working three different jobs, and she’s like thank you for making that podcast. That’s keeping me going. That’s keeping me at work. That’s keeping me in the game right now.
36:48 They feel like they know me, and I feel like I know them, too, because we’ve had the same big, long, two, three, four hour conversations. So there’s a real connection that gets made. Yeah, and it’s heightened because you know people are watching, people are listening. Not to mention those guys up above or wherever watching. And it makes even Jacko Willink raise his game, right?
37:11 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I don’t wanna do anything to dishonour my friends, for sure. Final words to people out there that are looking for answers in themselves. What do you tell them if they wanna know how they can get out of the hole they’re in?
37:31 You know, I would say this, and I’ve said it before. Your life is a campaign. It’s a campaign of battles, and some battles you’re gonna win, and some battles you’re gonna lose. But what you wanna do is win the campaign, you wanna win the war. So when you lose a battle, don’t get distraught.
37:46 That’s no reason to surrender. It’s one battle. Step back up, regroup, go and attack again. Win the campaign and win the war. Recalibrate, re-engage, reload.
37:59 There you go. And go back out on the attack. Go back out on the attack. Yup, yup, that’s it.
38:18 One last question. Would you like to join me for a chocolate chip cookie? Where? You have ’em on. I’m good.
