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March 2, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
38:40
20240302_jocko-willink-on-discipline-joe-rogan-andrew-tate-
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Morning Discipline and Jiu-Jitsu Roots 00:10:40
John Gretton Jocko Willink Jr. is a former U.S. Navy SEALs commander who earned bronze and silver stars for serving his country in Iraq and other places.
Many millions now know him as an author, an entrepreneur, and a doyen of discipline.
Legions listen to his podcast on leadership.
Joe Rogan and Dr. Jordan Peterson are friends and fans.
Brace yourselves because Jock Willink today is going uncensored.
If you're arrogant and you think, oh, nothing will ever happen, we're more than prepared to do this.
Well, then you might cut corners.
Then you might not train as hard.
Then you might not prepare as well.
I was never in a situation where I was sitting there having my life flash before my eyes.
I was always sitting there trying to figure out what our next move was going to be.
How do you deal with death?
Are you an emotional guy?
What's your view of Tate?
When was the last time you cried?
What do you think of Putin?
I think that Putin looks out for his country.
You're in a bar and there's a bunch of Navy SEALs in one corner.
There's a bunch of the British SAS in the other.
Someone says the wrong thing.
It all kicks off.
Who wins?
The owner of the bar because we're going to drink a lot of beers together.
It's great to have you on our sensor.
Thank you so much for sparing me the time.
I think Jocko is your nickname.
John Gretton Willink Jr. is your full name.
You've had an extraordinary career because it's sort of split in half.
One, you're this heroic Navy SEAL, and the other is life after that, which can be very difficult for people who leave the military.
You know, my brother was a British Army officer.
My brother-in-law the same.
It's tricky to navigate your way out of the military into Civi Street.
You've done it incredibly successfully.
And I think you've managed to do that because you've applied the same skill sets that you had in the military to civilian life to great effect.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I think one thing that I, when I talk to veterans about getting out of the military and what they're going to do in their next phase of life, one of the most important things I think they need to do and one of the things that I did was you have to find a new mission.
So while you're in the military, of course, you have this mission, you're focused, you know what your job is, you have this long-term strategic goal of what you're trying to accomplish.
And if you leave the military without finding a new mission, that can be problematic.
And that's where I think sometimes guys get tripped up and they end up going down in a bad direction.
But I found a new mission once I retired from the military and I started focusing on that.
Jiu-Jitsu is one of your many skills.
You've been described as one of the most dangerous people alive.
And there was a rumor that when you were a Navy SEAL, that you actually tapped out 20 other SEALs in one Jiu-Jitsu session.
Is that true?
Well, I can understand where the rumor came from.
So you got to remember, Pierce, I was very early into the Jiu-Jitsu game.
I started training in 1992.
And so I had a lot of advantages in the fact that I trained for a long time.
And when you know Jiu-Jitsu and you're going against people that don't know Jiu-Jitsu, it's actually not that big of a deal to be able to beat them in that sport.
Just like if you were a tennis player and I never played tennis before, you could beat me very easily.
And then if I lined up 20 of my friends that had never played tennis before, you could beat them all very easily.
And so it didn't make, it was nothing special about me.
It was something special about Jiu-Jitsu.
So I trained Jiu-Jitsu all the time.
And when I was in a platoon, I would train with the guys that didn't know anything.
And yes, I'd be able to beat them.
But again, it wasn't because I was tough.
It was just because I knew Jiu-Jitsu and they didn't.
We're talking about not just average people.
These are other Navy SEALs.
These are the most strong, highly disciplined, aggressive warriors in the world.
And you're just taking them down like nine pins.
Well, again, if you played me in tennis and you played tennis your whole life and I'd never played before, it wouldn't matter how big and strong and tough I was.
You would obliterate me in the game of tennis.
So jiu-jitsu is the same thing.
It's a skill that you can learn.
There's techniques, there's moves.
And if you don't know the techniques, you're going to get beat by people that do know the techniques.
So again, it was nothing about me being special.
It's just that I happened to have been lucky enough to have trained jiu-jitsu for a while before that, before I was in that platoon training with those guys.
Joker, you did a TED talk where you talked very movingly about a friendly fire incident in Iraq.
And you talked about accountability there, where you went around a room of other SEALs and other people who'd been taking part and asked them who's to blame for what happened for this disaster, which happened, which was a friendly fire.
And everyone wanted to accept responsibility, all the other SEALs you talked to, but you wouldn't let them.
In the end, you took responsibility yourself because you were the commanding officer.
And I thought that was a great illustration of what real leadership is.
But I was also impressed that so many of your team were prepared to put their hands up and also take responsibility.
How important is that to any team, that you have a guy at the top prepared to put his hand up on their behalf and say, I'm the guy at the top, the bucks dots with me.
But also to have people strong-minded enough below you who also are prepared to admit when they've get something wrong.
That's absolutely critical for any winning team to have that attitude.
And let me tell you what the opposite example is.
The opposite example is where someone in a leadership position, instead of taking ownership when something goes wrong, they start pointing the fingers at other people and blaming them.
You didn't do your part of the job.
This was your fault.
And what that causes, that causes the other people on the team to get defensive.
And when those people start to get defensive, because they're being blamed, they point their finger to someone else.
And then that person points their finger at someone else.
And what you end up with is a team where everyone on the team is pointing their fingers at each other.
They're blaming each other.
No one is actually taking any ownership of the problems.
And therefore, the problems never get solved.
So the opposite of that is when the leader does step up and take accountability and take ownership when things go wrong.
And that is actually also contagious.
And it allows other people to say, no, boss, actually, this is what I could have done better.
This is what I could have done different.
And then you end up with an entire team where everyone on the team is looking at a problem and trying to see what they could do to prevent that problem from happening again.
And that's what I was lucky enough to have growing up in that culture of the SEAL teams.
And that's the way my task unit responded when we had issues inside that task unit.
The other cultural thing that you learned from the SEALs was about timekeeping.
And in particular, what time to get out of bed.
And I'm told that you had three watches.
This was the advice of a badass Navy SEAL guy who said to you, do you have three watches?
One is electric power, one is battery powered, and one's an old-fashioned wind-up one.
Then you never have any excuse for missing an alarm call, a time you have to get out of bed.
And you still, I believe, have the three watches and you set them for 4.30 in the morning, even though you have no real need to be out of bed at 4.30 in the morning.
You do it out of habit.
Is all that true?
That is all true.
Yes, I get up early in the morning.
And the reason that I ended up began actually getting up early in the morning was I wasn't the best SEAL.
I wasn't the smartest guy.
I wasn't the strongest guy.
I wasn't the best shot.
And what I needed to do to level up to the people in my platoon was get to work a little bit earlier and work a little bit harder than them.
And I found out that if I got to work a little bit earlier than them, then I could maybe keep up with them.
And so I ended up getting in the habit of waking up very early and getting to work and getting a head start on the day so I could keep up with the rest of the guys in the teams.
It just gives you the edge, right?
Well, I'd say it kept me, it kept me at the edge.
I don't think it gave me any edge.
Does it give you an edge in your life now?
I mean, you're not in combat zones.
It's not a matter of life and death.
But having that steely discipline, having the ability to spring out of bed at 4:30 and attack the day, does that give you an edge in your life now, do you feel?
I think that anybody that has the discipline to get up early in the morning and get started on their day before anyone else has, you're certainly going to have an advantage.
If I've been up for two hours doing work before you show up, then I'm going to end up being more productive than you are.
And if you multiply that times weeks and months and years, I'm going to probably end up being a lot more productive than you are if you're sleeping in every morning and not rolling out of bed until the crack of 8.30.
So yes, I believe that over time, if you get up early and you work hard, you will end up ahead.
That being said, there's some people that are night owls and they do their best work, you know, at two o'clock in the morning and they stay up until two o'clock in the morning and then they sleep in until 10.
I think it's just a matter of finding a good schedule that works for you and then sticking to that schedule and getting your work done.
There's a famous address by Admiral McCraven where he talks, I imagine you may even have served under him, but he talked about the importance of getting up and making your bed, that even though it seems like a kind of insignificant thing to do, the discipline of making your bed in the morning, which obviously is ingrained into people in the military, but even in your civilian life, the small things like that give you the right mindset for the day.
Yeah, true.
I am married and my wife does not get up at 4.30, so I do not make my bed at 4.30 in the morning.
But, you know, what Admiral McCraven talks about there is just making sure you accomplish a small task first thing in the morning.
For me, I always exercise first thing in the morning, and I believe that's a great way to start your day and get your head in the right space and take care of the long-term strategic goal of staying healthy as a human being.
So when I wake up in the morning, I quietly get out of bed, leave my wife alone, and then I go and exercise.
You know, Jocko, we live in a weird world now where a lot of young people, young men, seem to really struggle with life, with normal life stuff to deal with.
Waves of Emotion After War 00:11:00
They find themselves almost unskilled in how to deal with life.
Have you noticed this?
What do we do about it?
You know, I would say, Pierce, that I hear about that, but I don't see it when I go around and actually talk to people.
So I have a consulting company.
We do leadership consulting and we work with all types of different industries.
Everyone from construction companies to energy companies to financial companies and everything in between.
And so I'm out all the time talking to companies across the country and I'm meeting these people.
I'm meeting young men and young women that are out there 20, 23, 25 years old.
I meet them on job sites.
I meet them in boardrooms.
I meet them all the time.
And you know what they're doing?
They're working extremely hard.
They're focused.
They're trying to make things happen.
That's what I see as I travel across America.
I see people that are working really hard to make things happen.
So I think there might be some static and some stray voltage about people that are having a hard time finding their way.
I think those people have always existed.
I mean, you can go watch movies from the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s.
There's always stories about people that are between the ages of 15 and 20 that are having a hard time figuring out what to do with their lives.
And they exist today.
But I don't think there are a preponderance of the people out there.
I think most people are out there finding jobs and working really hard to make themselves and their world better.
I've talked to many great sportsmen, many of whom have got extraordinarily confident personas.
And I've always asked them, you know, is that really what you're like?
Or do you go through the same kind of fears and concerns and nerves as everybody else?
You just don't show us.
And almost invariably they say, yeah, we feel it, we just don't show it.
They have a veneer which allows them not to show that they're nervous or fearful, be it footballers or cricketers or swimmers, whatever it may be, anyone involved in hard elite level competition.
What about you?
And when you were a Navy SEAL, you're one of the most highly trained people in the world in terms of military.
Did you experience real fear, nerves, before you went into battle?
Yeah, so for me, there's really two components for that.
And the number one question that you asked, did I feel fear and nervousness?
The answer is absolutely.
When you're going out on an operation, I would feel almost sick to my stomach with fear that one of my guys was going to get wounded or killed during an operation.
That is a feeling that is very disturbing and it's very hard to deal with.
Now, that being said, and I talked about this on my podcast a while ago, I also had a little bit of a switch.
And for me, for doing operations, it was actually the moment when we would start up our vehicles or the moment when I would put down my night vision goggles.
And then I would sort of flip a switch in my head where I would become very confident in what we had done to prepare for this operation and the confidence in the execution of the operation.
I'd known we had planned, we'd prepared, we'd trained.
I knew that we had done everything that we could to be ready to conduct this operation.
I also knew that there were a couple things that we can't control.
There are certain parts of life, there are certain things in the world that we have no control over.
And I would just cast those out of my brain.
I wouldn't worry about them anymore.
I would focus on the things that I could control, focus on the training and the preparation that we had done.
And I would become very confident once we started to go out and execute that operation.
And I feel that many sports people feel the same way.
Listen, if you're arrogant and you think, oh, nothing will ever happen, we're more than prepared to do this.
Well, then you might cut corners.
Then you might not train as hard.
Then you might not prepare as well.
So you have to be humble when you're preparing for an operation.
But when you actually go to execute an operation, you have to be confident and believe that you have prepared and planned and you're ready to execute this thing.
Otherwise, it's going to be nerve-wracking.
And I don't even know how you would deal with that.
War is about killing at its heart.
That's what a war is.
You as a Navy SEAL for 20 years or so, you would have presumably killed a lot of people and seen many of your colleagues killed.
How do you deal with death?
Both deaths of people around you, friends, colleagues, and having to take other people's lives in combat in war?
Well, you said it, Pierce, and I think a lot of times people forget this fact that what war is, is war is death.
War is killing and it is being killed.
And it's something that I think sometimes we go into wars thinking that we're going to somehow get through a war without killing people.
And we're going to get through a war without having our own forces killed.
So that is one of the most premier things we need to think about if we're going to engage in a conflict around the world.
You've got to go into that with the will to go out there and kill the enemy.
You also have to be, you also have to recognize the fact that going into a combat situation, there is a high probability, if not an absolute certainty, that civilians are going to be killed as well.
And you've got to have that understanding that there's nothing that you can do that's going to prevent your own forces from being killed.
That's what war is.
So war is death.
And when you're in war, you're going to deal with death.
Unfortunately, I did lose my own guys.
I lost many friends over the two decades of war that we fought.
And it is a terrible thing to have to deal with.
I did start to recognize a pattern when it came to dealing with death.
And that is the initial shockwave of, oh, I've lost one of my friends, one of my brothers.
And it's a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling.
And it's really waves of emotions that are going to hit you that are going to be very difficult to control, which is not something you're used to as a grown adult, having emotions hit you that you're not able to control.
And sometimes that can be very scary for people because all of a sudden, for the first time in many years, they're in scenarios where they're getting emotional and they can't control their emotions.
Now, what I learned over time was those emotions will eventually start to dissipate.
And the waves of emotion will become less frequent and they will also become less powerful over time.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
I think sometimes people feel, oh, I don't feel as emotional as I used to.
Am I a bad person?
No, you're not a bad person.
You're just learning to, you're learning to get through the loss of one of your friends.
So I unfortunately experienced this many times, these waves of emotion that hit when you first lose someone in combat and then feeling those waves dissipate over time.
And I think that's actually what's supposed to happen.
And I think when people are struggling with loss, which everyone's going to experience loss in their lives, I mean, that's what's going to happen.
You're going to lose people that you love, family, friends, it's going to happen.
And what you have to recognize is that those terrible emotions that you feel at first, they're going to dissipate over time, and that's okay.
And you also have to recognize that it's not a good idea to dwell on the past, to constantly think about this loss that you've suffered.
Instead, you have to remember, you remember the people that you've lost, but you have to move forward.
You have to move forward with your life.
I can guarantee you right now, the friends and brothers that I lost, the absolute last thing that they would want me to do would be to sit around for the rest of my life and mourn for their loss.
In fact, the absolute opposite is true.
What they would want me to do would be to go out and live the best possible life I can.
And that's what I try and do.
What was the closest you came to being killed in action?
Probably just getting hit with mortars or just getting hit by machine gun fire.
I mean, you're out.
The last deployment I did was in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.
And when you're out in the street, you're going to hear rounds going over your head.
I had mortars hit very close to me and kill people that were in my proximity.
So probably those situations.
What goes through your mind?
I mean, does anything...
Obviously, you're involved in combat.
It's different to, I guess, civilians having near-death experience.
But people often talk about the life flashes before them.
Did you ever have that?
No, I never really had my life flash before my eyes.
What you're focused on in those situations is you're focused on doing your job.
And you're focused on, hey, where am I going to maneuver my troops to?
Hey, is everyone else okay?
Hey, did I get a headcount to make sure no one got hit?
Those are the things you're focused on when you're in combat.
I was never in a situation where I was sitting there having my life flash before my eyes.
I was always sitting there trying to figure out what our next move was going to be.
Do you sleep well?
Or I hear from many ex-servicemen that they find to sleep hard, that a lot of stuff comes back at night.
I have some dreams that are maybe not the most pleasant dreams to have, but I wake up, shake it off, and try and go back to sleep.
How easy is that?
Sometimes it's a little tricky, but I think more of the time when I can't sleep, it's just because I'm focused on the things I want to do, the places I want to go, the things that I have to do.
That's what I think about.
I'm not dwelling on the past or dwelling on situations that are no longer under my control.
I can't imagine anyone would be this stupid, but does anyone ever try and pick a fight with you?
I haven't had anybody try and pick a fight with me in quite some time.
It wouldn't end well, would it?
Well, you know, in this day and age, you never know what you're going to get.
And some knucklehead could pick a fight with you and you square off with him and then, you know, he stabs you in the neck.
So I think people avoid fighting with me and I do my best to avoid fighting with other people.
Navigating Political Attrition Today 00:11:27
Are you an emotional guy?
I mean, when was the last time you cried?
I would say the last time I cried is the last funeral that I went to for one of my friends.
And then, as I said, there's waves of emotion that I can get hit with.
You know, I talk about the fact that sometimes when I hear the national anthem of the United States of America, sometimes that brings tears to my eyes.
I have a lot of memories of the sacrifices that have been made for that flag.
And so sometimes when I hear the national anthem at a sporting event, I'll get a tear in my eye.
And so am I an emotional person?
I can tell you that I don't make decisions based on emotions.
I mean, I put the emotions into the calculus of decision-making, but I don't make decisions based on my emotions.
But am I an emotional person?
Do I cry?
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a lot of role models out there for young men in particular.
Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, too.
Andrew Tate is another one.
What's your view of Tate?
Do you think he's a force for good or not?
I actually have not met him before.
I've met, obviously, I've met Jordan Peterson many times.
I've met Joe Rogan many times.
And both those guys, when people ask me about what they're like, I can tell you that what they're like is what you see.
And they both are very helpful, very positive people with great, I think great input for other people to follow.
But I've never met Andrew Tate before.
I know who he is, but I've never met him before.
And so I couldn't really assess what his situation is.
I know there's some level of controversy around him, but I don't know enough about it that I could fairly assess whether he is a force for good or not.
I don't know enough about him.
Where was he heading towards a big election in America?
What's your view about the state of your country at the moment?
Well, again, Pierce, luckily for me, I have the opportunity to travel around the country and I meet people all the time.
And when I travel around the country and I meet people and I talk to people, sure, are there some fringe people that want to talk about politics and are extremely passionate, even borderline, totally insane because of politics?
Yes, there are those people.
They do exist in America.
And those are the ones that are the loudest, especially on social media.
But when I go out and travel the land and interact with people, what we talk about is how to move forward, how to improve their business, how to improve their profitability, how to take care of their workers, how to grow.
That's what people talk about with me.
So I think that we are getting a little bit of a false impression of what America at large is like, because I think America at large is normal people out there doing normal things.
And I think that social media has given a voice to a small number of people who are extremely loud and extremely extreme as well.
And that's where they get the most, that's where people get the most likes and clicks and everything else.
But when I go out and talk to normal human beings across this country, they're not wrapped up in politics.
They're trying to improve their world for their family and for their community.
When you're in the military, obviously you just do what your government and president tell you to do.
President's the commander-in-chief.
When you look at Joe Biden, who many people feel is not really in control of his faculties these days, and you look at Donald Trump, who people love or hate and he's facing all these criminal charges and so on, which one would you feel more comfortable taking orders from?
Well, as you said, I'm not sure when I look at Joe Biden that Joe Biden is the person that is coming up with plans or figuring out what to do with the country.
It certainly doesn't seem that way.
I just don't, when I hear him talk, when I hear him communicate, I don't really see cohesive thought.
So I'm sure there's some kind of people behind the scenes that must be making decisions.
Donald Trump, you know, he's a very blunt communicator, but I think it is, you know, I think there's really no doubt that when Donald Trump speaks, it's Donald Trump that is talking, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
I think he gets himself in trouble a lot.
But as far as those two, and if I was in the military, I would probably lean towards having somebody that actually had the cognitive capacity to understand what was happening and make decisions a little bit more with a clear mind than someone that is probably at a point in their life where their cognitive capacity is really failing.
So it would be Trump.
Yeah, I guess if you're putting these two people up, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, again, it doesn't seem like Joe Biden has the clearest thought at this juncture in his life.
So yeah, I wouldn't want to follow someone that wasn't making good decisions or clear decisions with their own cognitive abilities.
There are various wars raging at the moment, sadly, as there often are, of course.
I just want to ask your view about where you think we are with them.
Obviously, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's been two years now.
There's a growing belief in some quarters that Ukraine can't beat Russia and should do some kind of deal where they would let Putin keep the land he grabbed.
It seems to me that that, to me, it flies in the face of what most Americans historically would have thought about what you should do with a Russian dictator.
That if a Russian dictator invades a sovereign democratic country and takes a lot of land, it's the duty of the rest, the West, to stop him, not just let him take what he wants.
Where do you sit?
Well, when you say the duty of the West, does that mean we send American men and women over there to fight against the Russians?
Is that what you're arguing about doing?
I would say you ramp up sending the Ukrainians the military hardware they would need to actually repel the Russians.
Well, I think you're going to have to try and figure out a better solution than just sending everyone into a bloodbath to get killed.
This war has been really vicious.
And I think at a certain point, this is a war of attrition.
This isn't maneuver warfare.
It's not guerrilla warfare.
The way the Ukrainians are fighting this, it's attrition warfare.
And it's a huge population of Russia against a smaller population of Ukraine.
And you're eventually, they're going to run out of people.
So supplying people with weapons, although that can bolster them up for a time period, eventually you've got to figure out some kind of a rational solution where you can bring about peace and make some kind of a compromise so that we can stop killing each other.
What do you think of Putin?
I think that Putin looks out for his country.
And I think that that is what he's going to continue to do.
I think that he probably is a little bit on his back feet or on his heels a bit because I think this invasion of Ukraine ended up being a lot harder than he thought it was going to be.
And so, and I doubt he's willing to sacrifice that many more people.
So I think given the right circumstances, he could come to the table to negotiate some kind of peace there.
And when you look at the situation with Israel and their war with Hamas, and in particular, the collateral damage of so many civilians, particularly children, getting killed in the process of trying to eliminate Hamas.
What do you feel about that?
From a moral perspective, as a former SEAL, do you think it's a fair fight, what's happening there?
Do I think it's a fair fight that's happening in Gaza at this time?
You know, I saw a video clip the other day, Pierce, of some Israeli soldiers that were moving down the street in Gaza.
And as I was watching them move down the street, I remember that feeling I told you you get in your gut of that gut-wrenching, horrible feeling when someone's going to get wounded or killed?
As I was watching these Israeli soldiers move down the street, I got that feeling.
And I recognize that what these Israeli soldiers are feeling is that.
They're going into Gaza.
They're trying to get it cleared out.
And what's interesting about Israel is the government officials, the leaders of Israel, they've had that feeling as well.
I know what that feeling is, but the leaders of Israel know what that feeling is as well.
And so they don't want to put their troops into that situation.
They don't want, it's not worth it to them.
And so what are they doing?
They're being very heavy-handed with airstrikes.
And there's a ton of collateral damage.
And I think their feeling is, hey, we are willing to do some collateral damage to protect our people.
And I think that's why you're getting this amount of collateral damage.
And I think that once Israel gets to a point where they feel like Hamas has been significantly neutralized, I think they're going to put the brakes on.
And I think they're going to do their best to try and bring back some level of humanity to Gaza.
Will it be too late at that point?
I'm not sure.
This is the horrible thing about war is the only thing that explains what will happen at the end of a war is what happens at the end of a war.
The people of Gaza, how are they going to react?
How are they going to settle in if all of a sudden Israel starts trying to help them rebuild?
Have they been battered to a point where they won't ever accept that type of situation?
Or have they been battered to a point where they say, you know what, we've had enough.
We don't want Hamas here.
We want to live normal lives.
Let's cooperate.
How is that going to end up, Pierce?
I do not know.
Balancing SEAL Duty with Family 00:04:02
It's a mess, isn't it?
I mean, in terms of that whole region, this is a real mess.
Yeah, it's very unpredictable.
It's very unpredictable.
And especially for us sitting on the outside as the whole world sitting on the outside, trying to look at it and trying to understand the propaganda from both sides, trying to decipher what all that means is very difficult.
And as you said, it's a mess.
John Kevin, we've had a fascinating conversation.
I want to just end with some stuff about you.
I know you've been married to your wife, Helena, for a long time.
You have four children.
It can be very difficult to juggle being a Navy SEAL with love and marriage and kids and everything.
How successful have you been at that, do you think?
Well, I've been married for, I think, 27 years.
I have four kids.
They're all great kids.
And, you know, the credit goes, obviously, to my wife.
She was the one that was sitting at home taking care of the kids when I was on deployment.
She was getting the water heater repaired, getting the oil changed in the cars.
She was handling all the finances and she was raising all those kids at the same time while I was on deployment.
Quite frankly, when I was on deployment, I wasn't thinking about my wife.
I wasn't thinking about my kids.
I was thinking about my men.
I was thinking about our mission.
So the credit goes to my wife, who is a saint.
What's the secret of an enduring marriage, do you think?
You know, when people ask me about the qualities of my wife, I always say that she was and is emotionally independent.
So she wasn't relying on me to make her feel good or to prop her up every day.
She was emotionally independent.
She was working on her own world.
She was planning out what she was going to do with the kids every day.
She didn't rely on me for support.
In fact, the opposite.
She was supporting me and supporting my career while she was raising those kids.
So if you want to have a long-lasting marriage, look for an awesome partner that is going to be complementary to you and the way you live.
And it's the same thing with any leadership team.
You know, if I'm good at coming up with a plan, but I'm not good at articulating the plan, and Pierce, you're really articulate.
Well, we would be a good leadership team because I could come up with a good plan and then you could articulate it to the troops.
So I think it's very important in any leadership team, including a marriage, to make sure that you come up and you find people that are complementary to your own lacking areas.
So whereas, for instance, I wasn't always the most concerned about our finances, but my wife was absolutely focused on our finances and she paid every bill on time and took care of the bank account and all that.
And I never even thought about it.
So having someone that's complimentary to who you are is a very important part of a good marriage.
You've also been seen hanging around with the Hollywood actor Chris Pratt and in fact also his father-in-law, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And the internet has turned you into a superstar and likened you in memes to Chuck Norris back in the 2000s.
I think we've got some examples here of the memes.
When Jocko speaks, deaf people listen, there's one here.
You must be aware of these.
Are you enjoying your celebrity status, Jocko?
Or do you find it slightly uncomfortable?
Well, I certainly not a celebrity by any means.
And the internet and memes are very funny.
And my kids especially find a good time in sending me memes and making fun of me along with the rest of the internet.
So it's all good.
And yeah, Chris Pratt, great guy, really patriotic guy.
Memes, Celebrity, and Growing Power 00:01:29
And just had Arnold Schwarzenegger on my podcast and hearing his story, what he went through as a kid, growing up and doing what he did.
A very powerful story as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
He's a fascinating character, Schwarzenegger.
If there was a movie about your life, and there probably will be, let's be honest, who would you like to play you?
Well, I certainly don't think my life merits a movie in any way, shape, or form.
And I feel sorry for any actor that would have to get some kind of facial reconstruction to have a disturbing-looking face such as my own.
Finally, you're in a bar and there's a bunch of Navy SEALs in one corner, there's a bunch of the British SAS in the other.
Someone says the wrong thing.
It all kicks off.
Who wins?
The person that wins in that situation is the owner of the bar because we're going to drink a lot of beers together.
Jocko William, what a pleasure and an honor to talk to you.
Seriously, you're an incredibly impressive guy.
And I've been following what's happened to you in recent years.
You've become an extraordinarily influential person, I think, for all the right reasons.
You've turned the skills that you had in the military to such great effect now in communicating to people how they should deal with life.
And I think it's a really valuable thing that you do.
So thank you for coming on our sensitive.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on, Pierce.
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