539: Elevate From The Gray Slop In Your Head.

This is Jocko Podcast number 539 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So, Leonardo da Vinci. He said, there are three classes of people, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see. I want to talk to you about something that we brought up on the Underground Podcast. I coined, I called it on the podcast, Gray Slop. Gray Slop. Gray Matter. Like, you know, your brain is gray, gray slop. This has to do with detachment, which is another thing. You know, I've been talking about detachment for years. Detach from the chaos. Detach from the mayhem. Detach from your ego. Detach from your emotions. That's going to make your life so much better if you can do that. But lately, I've been looking around, and I'm realizing how truly difficult that can be for people. and at the same time seeing how important it is and how much it really fouls and jams people up. And when you look at someone, like you and I have talked about, you see someone that's drinking too much, and it's kind of bringing down their life, and you can see it so clear, but they don't get it. Or they're involved in a relationship that's a disaster, and you explain to them, but they're like, no, no, no, no, like this time or I can save her or whatever the thing is, right? Those are all emotional decisions. Those are just being all in your own gray slop, your gray matter, your core. So what is that? You know, this gray matter, actually, the gray matter that I'm talking about is called the limbic system. And we'll get into this some more later. But the limbic system is kind of the part of your brain with the animal instincts. It's the raw emotion. It's got the fear in there. It's got the rage in there. It's got the fight or flight things. It's very fast. It's very impulsive. It's very irrational. That's your limbic system. And then the other side, of course, you have the prefrontal cortex. This is the rational brain. This is the logic brain. This is what gives you impulse control. This is what allows you to execute long-term planning, which I know you like. Strategic thinking. Strategic is in your prefrontal cortex. So moderating your behavior so you don't go nuts is in your prefrontal cortex. And people have been talking about this for a long time. You know, this is nothing new. When I talk about detachment, I'm not the first person to come up with this, right? No, dude, people have been talking about this. Plato. Plato had the chariot allegory, and you had these two horses. One was the animal mind, and the other one was the spirit and the moral impulse. And the driver is reason that's supposed to guide those forces, right? So this is nothing new. Descartes had the machine versus the soul. And the animal is just instinct. And humans have the ability to override those instincts. You're supposed to have that ability. In more modern times, like nowadays, Daniel Kahneman, he wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Slow. He breaks it down to these two systems. You know, system one is the fast, the automatic, the emotional, the intuitive. and then system two is a slow, deliberate, the analytical one. Jonathan Haidt describes the elephant and the rider. And his point on the elephant, the elephant's big and strong. Kind of like if your emotions are big and strong, they can override the rider. It's just going to do what it wants. So that's a good analogy. We can take something away from that. Steve Peters, he wrote a book in 2012 called The Chimp Paradox. and then he wrote a children's book called My Hidden Chimp and then he wrote a guidebook to go along with that in 2018 and he wrote a book called The Path Through the Jungle and he runs a consultancy which is called Chimp Management because your inner chimp, when he calls the inner chimp, that's the thing that's going on emotion and going on animal instincts and the frontal cortex is the human thing So you've got to manage that chimp in your head. So, again, these are centuries worth of people that have talked about this and written about it. And clearly people understand it and they've been putting the word out forever. And yet it's very difficult for people to implement it, this detachment. And I don't think people have one thing I don't think people realize is how much influence that animal brain, that gray slop that's in your head, how much it really influences your logic and your rationality. I don't think people see that it's not actually each of these examples. They talk about it as two separate things, but there's all kinds of little wires going between the two. And I sometimes don't think people recognize how much they feel like they're being logical, but they're not. They feel like they're using their human, elevated, enlightened brain, but they're not. They're using the chimp brain. So we do things, and we kind of think that the animal instinct is kind of good because if something happens and you're afraid, you get extra strength. You were just talking about before you hit record. You see fighters that they're exhausted, but then they knock the guy out, and all of a sudden they have all this energy. For the celebration. Yeah, energy for the celebration. There's like a regulatory component that's going on, and then it overcomes it. But we get extra power when we need it sometimes. And it seems like it's helpful, but there's just so much more going on inside that gray slop, and I just don't think people recognize that a lot of times they think they're out of the gray slop, but it's really like they're neck deep. and it's still interfering with their nose. It's kind of getting little sprinkles into their eyes and it's just bad. And it's real, man. And this again, this is not me saying my theory. This is like factual information. The amygdala, which is part of the limbic system, it wants us to categorize people as us or them. Right? That's part of our nature. That means prejudice. That means irrational polarization. That's why we get into cliques. Right? Social status. Social status posturing. Right? You might think that's like, Oh, well, he's got a big ego because he's insecure. But actually, as an animal, higher status positioning means you get more food. It means you get better mating rights than the other animals. So you're actually genetically programmed to kind of posture up and act tough and show off. That's an animal instinct that you have. And by the way, how does it make you look? It makes you look arrogant. It makes you look stupid. there's all kinds of things that translate this animal behavior that translates into our what we think is oftentimes elevated behavior this is stuff we talk about all the time the feeling like i need to be right because if i'm right i have more status if i have more status i have better you know position in the hierarchy the urge to show off the pain of the pain of social rejection is you feel that there's that's like a similar it's processed almost the same way as physical pain yeah that's why people are so scared of it hyper vigilance negativity bias like we focus on bad news you're genetically programmed as an animal to focus on bad news because good news won't kill you. That's why we get hyper folks fixated on it. The resource hoarding means I need more. Why? Well, it's a human instinct. That's why people do impulsive shopping. That's why people binge eat. That's why there's actual hoarders in the world that hoard things. Their whole house is filled with stuff that they will never, ever, ever need. here's one, displacement aggression. So when an animal gets stressed by a more dominant animal and it can't fight back because it knows it's going to lose, it turns and attacks weaker animals. Does that sound like something humans might do? Hell yeah, it is. So all these things play into it. And of course, we got the one that we hear about all the time, which is, again, pure animal instinct. It's instant gratification from the dopamine loop. Dopamine wants reward right now It doesn't care about five days from now It doesn't care about five years from now It doesn't even care about five hours from now It wants dopamine right now So that's why you're doom scrolling That's why you're eating junk food That's why you're making all these short term decisions that are bad It's genetically programmed into you It used to keep you alive Because you were like I'm just going to keep looking for these berries Until I find them so I get food Or I'm just going to keep going after this animal Until I get it so I have food I'm going to keep chasing down this cave woman So I can procreate Like, all those things. And yet, they made it into our world right now. And the people, this is what I think is interesting, is I think people have varying levels of escaping their gray slop. And, most important, it's difficult to see. Most of the people, when you're just swimming in your own gray slop animal instincts, you don't see it. It doesn't feel different. You don't know it. It's not like the temperature drops and you go, oh, wait a second, it just got cold in here. No, you're just like everything looks the same except for you're really emotional now. And you don't say, oh, I see what's going on. This is my – I mean, this is the problem people have is they start getting emotional and they don't go, oh, this is an animal instinct of mine taking over. And I shouldn't allow that to happen. So – and people have varying levels. of being able to escape their gray slop that's given them all these animal instincts. And by the way, when you're little, you're just in it. You know what I mean? That's why little kids lose their temper. That's why they get nuts. That's why they, even a little baby, what does it do when it's hungry? Screams. That's what they do. As we get older, hopefully we don't scream as much. But when a little kid gets bullied, how do they react to it, right? When a little kid is afraid, how do they react? Sometimes they cry, they freeze up. But then as you get older, hopefully you control those emotions. When you get dumped in 10th grade, I can't believe I got dumped, you know, crying in the school or whatever. When you get dumped when you're 24, you're like, okay, hey, it didn't work out. You're a little bit more mature. You have a little bit more control. But at least you hope. But let's face it, there's a chance. By the way, there's a reason that people get murdered after they dump someone. Because people just succumb to just gray slop and it's the end of the world and it's total emotion and it's ego and it's chaos. And they go and kill people. So we're supposed to grow out of it. But it takes time. This is why a young male driver has a really high insurance. because this dude is just, I mean, he's an animal, right? He's just, how fast can I go? I'm going to take risks. I'm going to make things happen. I think I can survive. I'm going to push the envelope. Hopefully, over time, you get more and more elevated out of this gray slop, and you get a little bit of distance from it. but it still drives so much in people. And by the way, this is like one of those things where if you think, if you think you're not insane, that's the person that's insane, right? The person that's like, I'm not crazy. You know, like, no, no, that's the person you have to watch out for. This is the catch 22, the book catch 22. If you were, if you were sane enough to say, Hey, I don't want to fly on these raids, then, well, it doesn't make sense. So when we're crazy, we don't know that we're crazy. And when we're caught in the gray slop, we don't know that we're caught in the gray slop. And so think about all the things that are in your head that drive decision-making process. Right? Fear and anxiety. What does that make us do? It makes us freeze up. It makes us play safe. What about anger? Anger drives us to the short-sighted win. you're right. Like, I'm right. Oh, that's great. That's a good way to win an argument with your wife, to show her approval. That's all it is. Greed. Greed is the other end of the spectrum. Now you're just ignoring obvious risk. Or you got excessive optimism. These are monkey minds right here. Sadness. When we're really sad, when someone's really sad, they lower the bar. They settle for less. Oh, this is as good as I can get. Just an emotion. Need for validation. This is an animal instinct. And now you're doing things just for approval. Making decisions so that you can get approval. Fear of rejection. What happens if you have fear of rejection? Which is an animal instinct to have. Well, you don't step up. You don't take it. You keep quiet. You know, I have to be right. I'm better than them. You know, this is an attack. There's so many mistakes that we make. I'll start tomorrow. Right? Even conformity, the herd instinct. These are all things that will make us make bad decisions. I mean, how many teenagers have made bad decisions because they're trying to conform with what everyone else is doing? This is peer pressure. There's a thing called HALT, H-A-L-T. Hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. These things all disrupt your decision-making process. We even have a combined name, hangry. Right? When I'm hangry, people are like mad. Just get out of my way. I need to get into the freaking KFC line, ASAP. Get that Domino's pizza right now. That's hangry. But people make dumb decisions when they're low meat. People make dumb decisions when they're tired. So many of these decisions that bad decisions that we make, they're just rooted in this gray slop, in this limbic system, in this chimp brain. And generally speaking, like I said, they're not good decisions. So here's something that I think a lot of people don't recognize. If you can elevate above it. If you can get out of the gray slop, if you can get out of your own limbic system, not only will you then be able to see the errors that you could make that are being driven by your animal instincts, but a huge bonus is that I can see now Echo's chimp brain in action. so in other words if I'm walking down the street and I see Echo Charles and he mouths off to me like get out of my way or something like that if I'm in the gray slop what am I going to do? who the hell are you telling me get out of your way? maybe I push him maybe I attack him maybe we escalate the situation but if I'm elevated if I'm enlightened above my own gray slop and I'm walking down the street and Echo says get out of my way I see that it is his animal instinct that is causing this behavior. And I say, oh, that guy must be having a rough day. Probably not much game to interact with him. I'm just going to move a little bit to his right and carry on. So when you're not caught up in your own animal brain, you can see when other people are. But you want to see problems? at alcohol, right? Which unleashes our chimpanzee brain. And now all of a sudden, you bump into me in the bar and that is a challenge and we're fighting. But if I'm elevated and you bump into me in the bar and I go, oh, hey man, this guy must be having a rough day. Hey, sorry about that. And I can de-escalate. Here's the thing. This doesn't only apply to like physical altercations, we do so many dumb things based on our ego and our emotions and our chimpanzee brain that have nothing to do with physical interactions at all. And that's because the mind recognizes things that are rooted in physical survival, but they're not actual physical survival in today's day and age. In other words, like, hey, if I'm protecting myself, like I have to have some animal instincts, but if I'm just protecting my ego, why I don't need no animal instincts to do that? If I'm trying to show that I'm superior because I need to get more food for myself in a caveman situation, okay, makes some sense. If I'm trying to show my superiority in a board meeting, you know what I'm saying? so that I can prove my position in the hierarchy. It doesn't make sense to do it there. And so we make stupid mistakes. And by the way, those things, when I try and prove a point in the board meeting and make Echo look like he didn't know what he's talking about, that doesn't help me. It doesn't help Echo. It's not the right thing to do. So the instinct is actually wrong when removed from this physical world. this is why people talk down to other people this is why people impose their plan on a group hey you need to do it like this this is why people try and get the credit because I'm trying to improve my status this is why people make little maneuvers to try and get the promotion because it's based on their hierarchical status and they want to rise up this is why people escalate an argument instead of de-escalating an argument. That's why they do it. This is why people talk instead of listen. It's all just monkey brain. It's all a bunch of emotion and ego. And we have to get away from it. It is not easy. It is so intertwined. Again, the metaphors that I raised, the elephant and the chariot and all these things, these are metaphors that make it seem like There's a really good, clear bifurcation between these two elements. But, in my opinion, they are much more intertwined. There's little wires going all in between the two of them. And I found a good article about this. Now, the article relates to it somewhat, what we're talking about. It's from a combat perspective. but again this doesn't just apply to combat but I want to read some sections from this article the article is called Neuroscience for Combat Leaders and it's written by a guy named Major Andrew Stedman and a little footnote about him it says Major Andrew Stedman, U.S. Army is an infantry officer and a student at the Command and General Staff College Fort Leavenworth, Kansas holds a BS from the U.S. Air Force Academy He must have switched from the U.S. Air Force Academy to the Army. His combat experience includes two deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. So this article is called A Brain-Based Approach to Leading on the Modern Battlefield. And I think you're going to see some examples of what I'm talking about, and then we can extrapolate this combat situation to the rest of our lives. Of course, everything in combat is more pronounced. So it should seem real obvious in combat. When someone gets caught up in their freaking animal brain, it causes real catastrophic situations, but makes us stand out. When we get caught up in our animal brain during an argument with our spouse, it doesn't lead to a catastrophic scenario, hopefully most of the time. but if that's how you live your life, your life is not where it should be. So here we go. Let's get to this article. Everything you do in life is based on your brain's determination to minimize danger or maximize reward. The brain wants to move towards things in life that give it pleasure or ensure survival and away from things that cause it pain or threaten survival. Combat demands that military individuals overcome this natural impulse to survive and move toward the danger. From this perspective, succeeding in combat is a measure of how well the brain copes with dangerous situations and performs tasks that ensure survival. The field of neuroscience has seen significant advances in recent years, and the benefits of this knowledge can positively affect numerous disciplines, including combat leadership. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, surgical methods and experiment-based approaches, researchers have revealed many of the biological processes that underlie our most basic emotional and cognitive behaviors, such as how and why we react to threatening situations. How our brains allocate energy to cope with competing demands and how our senses interact with our minds to create the world we know. So, again, threatening situations. What's a threatening situation? Look, when we're reading an article that's written by an infantry officer, you think threatening situation is gunfight, IED threat, mortars inbound. But a threatening situation for a normal person is like, oh, this guy's maneuvering and trying to get credit for the project that I led. That's a threatening situation. Right? That's a threatening situation. And this is what triggers our limbic brain to kick into gear. Back to the article. Learning about brain function and physical reactions to stress does not simply inform the leader but creates self-awareness that makes him better able to control these processes. Tactical level military leaders can use new knowledge to understand the effects of combat, anticipate and recognize cognitive reactions, and adjust their leadership abilities to succeed in difficult situations. They can do this by performing exercises to decrease physiological stress reactions using emotionally controlled leadership to guide their organizations and creating an environment during battle that facilitates effective decision making. So we're going to force our brain out of the animal mode and into the logical mode when we're in stressful situations. That's what a combat leader is going to have to do. by educating soldiers about brain function and incorporating cognitive stressors into training, leaders can prepare their units to perform battle with emotional stability, but it is not just combat if you can do this when you're having a conversation with your boss, when your kid is getting mad at you when your kid does something stupid which they're going to do because they're a kid you can react like an animal and do bad things, do things that are going to have a negative impact on the situation, or you can control your brain. You can get out of your own gray slop. Basics of the brain. Combat leaders need a basic knowledge of cerebral biology to understand the importance of the mind's function during combat. The two major areas most relevant to this topic are the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The former is the collection of brain regions involved in emotions, learning, and memory. The latter is for higher level thinking. That's a prefrontal cortex. Actively influences body functions and performance. Inputs travel along pathways in both these systems and allow us to react to scenarios with a balance of emotion and reason. That's what they're supposed to do. Why does our emotion so often take lead? So often. It's ridiculous. It's embarrassing for us as humans to let our animal instincts run the show. Located in the center of the brain, the limbic system primarily contains the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and the amygdala. It is the creator of emotions and memory. Its primary function is to interpret information sent from the body senses to issue emotional commands back to the body. The limbic system also sends its data to the executive areas of the brain, the frontal lobe, for cognitive processing and receives instructions about how the body should respond to the given situations. Sometimes the limbic system can independently respond to the world, like when we react to threatening situations. This occurs on a subconscious level when the amygdala, the fear and anxiety response center, compares data from the world with the hippocampus, which is the memory database of experience. If the incoming information corresponds to a threat that has been tagged as negative or dangerous, the amygdala immediately commands the body into action. We've all experienced this process when our reflexes have caused us to snatch a hand away from closing door and leap away from a snake. So there are some times where it's going to do something. And if you don't have control over it, those times are going to grow. Those times are going to be bigger than they should be. Right? You know, the classic thing that I tell people is if I said, hey, Echo, I'm going to be at your house when you come home and I'm going to scare you, there's probably 0% chance I'd be able to actually scare you. But if I just got in there and I tried to scare you, there's probably a really solid percentage that I would scare you. So having the cognitive pattern where you can get control of that quickly is very important. Back to the document. The more sophisticated process of the mind occur in a sheet of tissue just behind the forehead known as the prefrontal cortex. cortex um this is memory judgment planning sequence of activity abstract reasoning impulse control personality reactivity surroundings and mood that's a pretty big important block isn't it crazy it just gets overrun all the time like every time you see someone get road rage they've lost their mind yeah i actually i know that's funny you hear me say this when i when i talk about someone losing their mind and i've never thought about this until right now it's when they've lost control of their prefrontal cortex. And I say that a lot. I'll be like, oh, this dude just lost his mind. But the funny thing is, I say it when I'm talking about people that are doing something super emotional, their ego is out of control. Someone does and I'm like, oh, the dude, he lost his mind. You've heard me say this. I do this. But that's what I'm talking about. They've lost their mind. They've shut down their prefrontal cortex and they're just full chimp mode, just going. This area is what allows humans to solve math problems, develop abstract concepts, and ponder our own existence. It's also the area that military leaders use to balance risk in combat, develop courses of action, and create strategies to lead effectively. So there you go. That's what it's doing. It's got a little section in here about every part of the brain is packed with blood vessels. and it talks about how it actually, the brain redirects blood and glucose to appropriate areas based on what's happening. This allocation leaves less fuel for other brain functions like cognitive control, which requires vast amounts of blood and glucose to operate. When the limbic system is heavily engaged, as it is during high threat stress of combat, it will quite literally steal fuel from the prefrontal cortex, thus handicapping a leader's ability to combat the situation with cognition. So think about that right there. You're losing your mind. You're losing your mind. And this is something that you can train to. We used to call it stress inoculation. If you get put in stressful situations, often you eventually get used to them. And now it's not going to need to steal so much fuel, so much glucose and oxygen for your frontal cortex because you're not freaking out. That does explain panicking. Oh, for sure. Like where it steals blood and nutrients from your prefrontal cortex and gives it to other parts of your body. By the way, it gives it to the part of the brain that's freaking out. so basically your prefrontal your decision making goes down the rest of your the other part of your brain the panic mode that part the emotions is lit up and then it feeds the rest of your body that it needs you know how like like when you physically you know you're running away from a dog chasing you or something like this where you will you'll spring right into action but if there was no dog chasing you'd be like bro I'm not running nowhere see what I'm saying but all of a sudden And you have this energy out of nowhere. Spontaneous energy. Now that explains it. It also explains why people shut down. It explains why people do dumb things in the moment. It kind of explains crimes of passion. Like I'm so emotional that my prefrontal cortex, which is long-term planning, is like, oh, if I do this, I'm going to go to jail. My life is ruined. No, that's all shut down. And I'm just, I'm going to pay this person back. Yeah so you ever heard of this And I always wondered if it true I can help but believe that it is true Where some people they do a crime of passion whatever And then they won get convicted because they were temporarily insane or something like this And then from what I understand, like when they evaluate the person, they literally don't remember doing it. I was about to say, like sometimes people don't even remember doing it. Yeah. And there's times where people do things like in a combat situation that they don't remember. Right. Like they don't remember that that happened. Yeah. They were just in full survival mode. Yeah. Animal mode. So it doesn't go into the part. Like the brain that has memory, the hippocampus that creates the memory, like kind of bad. It just shunted all the energy and nutrients to the other part of the body and it wasn't working for that moment. That's what I'm saying. Dang. Yeah. And by the way, you can see this a lot with your kids. because your kids, you know, it doesn't take much to just shut down the thought and just become a little animal. Back to the doc. As a successful business consultant and CEO, David Rock explains in the book, Your Brain Works, the degree of activation of the limbic system is the degree of deactivation of the prefrontal cortex. Brain research has shown that there are many more neural connections that flow from the amygdala directly to the prefrontal cortex, then vice versa. Therefore, it's easy for our emotions to guide or suppress our rational thoughts. Hello, everybody. This is our problem. This is a crucial fact because military leaders must preserve cognitive functions when leading in combat. And by the way, guess what? Combat has all these things going on. Fear, anxiety, pressure, stress, not to mention physical stress. You're tired. Not to mention you haven't slept in a day and a half or two days. The limbic system in combat. The limbic system is evolutionarily older than the prefrontal cortex. Primitively old, in fact. It developed to help man survive the ancient battlefield of predator versus prey. The limbic system has the chemical authority to initiate rapid responses to threats and is good at doing so. The amygdala ignites. Adrenaline flows to the blood. The pulse races. the eyes focus and rapidly scan for threading movement. We halt unnecessary digestion, intense major muscle groups in preparation for a clash. Then the brain, teeming with blood vessels, redirects the available supply of oxygen and glucose-rich blood to the limbic and motor areas so that we can react quickly in the impending fight. At this point, the mind is in its most basic survival mode. It has no spare energy to devote to solving geometry problems or pondering philosophical dilemmas. This biological decision to focus resources toward limbic areas during dangerous situations is what keeps us alive at a time when the cerebral problem-solving approach would be fatally slow. But today's military leaders do not face the same world that our ancestors did. And by the way, you don't face the same world that our ancestors did when you roll into a department meeting that's going to be tense. And yeah, you'll roll in there and just shut down half of your prefrontal cortex. or you've got a decision to make on buying a car and you're all emotional, excited about it and you just shut down your pre-override, your prefrontal cortex, walking out of there with a $1,200 a month payment on a, what is it, a 72-month loan. Hell yeah. But it's all relative though, right? You know how you're like, oh yeah, our ancestors and their environment is so extreme. But there's an element of certain extreme levels of things that you kind of get used to. So it's like, you know, how, you know, Theo Vaughn has the joke, right? Like, oh, we all have our Vietnam, right, or whatever, where it's like it's relative to the person. So if you start to get used to stuff, then, yeah, you're going to be less sensitive. But so if the environment is extreme, there's a general, like, you're used to it on a certain level. Yeah. So you'll still have all these fight or flight stuff, you know, all the stuff, but it just takes a little bit more. Now, nowadays, it's not like that. We're just more sensitive. See what I'm saying? So the board meeting kind of seems like a little bit of a final box of battle. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Exactly. Or not to mention when someone bumps into you in the Vons shopping line. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Vons, hell yeah. And then maybe mouths off to you. Yeah. Now all of a sudden we got a situation. Animal comes out. While there are still many threats that require rapid reflexive action, leaders also have to manage countless streams of information, communicate over multiple technological systems, balance political, military, and civilian considerations, and lead hundreds of men and women in the process. Combat requires a coherent, rational mind. And it ain't just combat that requires that. Combat is full of stressful moments. Initial contact with the enemy, rushing to secure enemy terrain or responding to an unexpected event. That tests emotional resolve. Those involved experience intense sensory input and encounter debilitating explosions, grotesque scenes, and threatening enemy movements. As the limbic system attempts to keep pace with the environment, it starves the soldier's ability to maintain a clear mental framework. Coupled with the typically exhausting physical exertion of combat, soldiers are constantly or consistently at risk of degraded cognitive processing. I got a quote in here from JFC Fuller he said in an attack half of the men on a firing line are in terror the other half are unnerved going into the leader in combat each duty position on the battlefield contains some balance of reflexive and cognitive tasks some can be trained repeatedly and developed into muscle memory like loading and firing a weapon others are more cognitive in nature like calling for indirect fire coordinating a synchronized attack while each soldier has his own personal tactical situation to react to. Typical front line riflemen operate in a reflexive region while the cognitive component of the battle increases with the rank and responsibility. In this article, the term leader refers to any individual who is responsible for leading several groups of soldiers in maneuver against the enemy and must manage multiple battlefield systems. This leader spends most of his time on the battlefield outside of his weapon sights. You've heard me talk about this 10,000 times. High port your weapon, look around. While the team and squad leaders are unquestionably leaders, they use battle drills and reflexive training to guide most of their actions and will not have to rely on their abstract cognitive abilities during combat unless they are operating as an autonomous element. The platoon leader and the platoon sergeant are the first leaders that engage in more complex problem-solving than direct fire battle. The company-level commander is squarely in the cognitive region with occasional moments that require reflexive action. The battalion level commander will rarely perform actions that are not based on premeditated cognition. What can these leaders do to mitigate physical reactions to stress that will inevitably occur? What methods are available to regain cognitive control and place the leader in a position to maximally benefit the unit? First, actively decrease the effects of stress. Second, infuse emotional stability into the organization. Finally, create an environment that facilitates effective decision-making. So he's going into the things that you can do. There's three of them. Control the effect of emotional energy. As combat will readily reveal the body and mind, undergo rapid changes when reacting to stress. While moderate levels of stress improve functions like motor skills, stress can easily impair performance in cognitive areas where today's tactical leaders typically need to operate. heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing will all increase. Digestion will slow and nausea may occur. Speech may falter and auditory and visual cues may diminish. All of these effects are natural as the body emotionally reacts to the fight. However, leaders have a responsibility to control the effect of emotional energy and remain calm in the face of danger. One proven combat used by law enforcement and military professionals is tactical breathing as one of only two automatic nervous systems actions that we can control. The other is blinking. Breath rate is the first reaction of stress that leaders can rein in. So you can actually go send it in the other direction. This is why people say take a deep breath, right? Immediately after a significant stressor occurs or just prior to entering a high-stress environment, simply take several successive deep breaths and hold each one for three to five seconds. As you breathe, visualize your body relaxing and remaining calm during the event. Although time may not allow leaders to take a long tactical pause, simply diagnosing a rapid breathing pattern and forcing a couple of slow breaths will help decrease the body's agitated state. And again, this is something that I didn't learn but I stumbled upon. Because when I would talk on the radio, I didn't want to sound like a panicked freak. So I would take a breath. And when I took a breath, guess what? Calm down. another method of controlling stress is a concept called labeling and reappraisal which is the act of naming the emotional state you are experiencing and actively reassigning a new emotion that is more productive for the situation verbally identifying the emotions or reassuring yourself that loud activates the prefrontal cortex and begins to reclaim some of the power from the limbic system. Simple cue words like steady, stay focused, and relax are active reminders that can elicit a controlled behavior. And this is something I've been teaching lately. We have something called a ditty. And we used to use the ditty for like pistol work, right? You'd have a little thing that you would say to make sure you hit all these points of performance. You know, fast to the holster, thumb on the index, turn point, slack off the trigger, easy squeeze, front sight focus. And you do that every single time. You'd say that diddy to you. Was that yours or was that everybody's? No, people have different ones. I just made it up right now. And it probably wasn't a great one. No, man, it sounded good. But lately I've been saying, hey, if you start feeling excited, say to yourself a little diddy, calm, cool, and relaxed, calm, cool, and collected, whatever, something like that. You say, slow, smooth, smooth, as fast. Slow, smooth, smooth, as fast. calm down, calm down, like whatever, say something to yourself is a good way to get yourself to calm down. A unit's motto can be another steadying phrase. Repeating these words can trigger confidence and strength in the face of trying circumstances. More important, such statements not only have effect on leaders, but also filter through an organization to reinforce its members. The key is to talk to oneself into a mental framework that is capable of handling the highly cognitive experience of modern combat. Any military leader will readily support the practice of unit rehearsals before the operations. Of course, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Do individuals not also have the responsibility to rehearse how they will react in combat? That professional golfers, divers, and other elites who rely on precise skills use a technique called visualization to reinforce desired behavior. Likewise, a tactical leader can benefit by visualizing himself performing with an emotional, calm, and cognitive clarity. A leader with clear vision of how he wants to perform will, as survival author Lawrence Gonzalez put it, create a kind of memory of the future. It's an interesting concept. that the brain can access during combat. Like muscle memory, proper mental processes can become reflexive. You've got to rehearse, man. I recently relearned this lesson. I was in a movie. Hell yeah. And in this particular movie, it's kind of a long scene. And I don't say anything until the end of the scene. I have two lines. But here's the funny thing. So, you know, I'm trying to be a professional, right? You think I'm trying to be a professional? Sure. Yes, I'm trying to be a professional. It's a big deal when you're in something like this Hollywood scenario because they have to do it a bunch of times. And everyone's on the clock and everything's getting all set up and the lights and the cameras and all this stuff. And, like, if you screw it up, bro, everyone kind of. They don't like that. And no one says anything because they don't want to put more pressure on anybody. You know, because then people freak out, right? So everyone just, but it's like a, it's the heaviest, like, unspoken, like, weight of, like, dang. Like, I think I screwed up. And it's funny, when someone screws something up, you know, the director, when I was on Billions, the TV show. Hell yeah. There was three of us standing in this scene, and we were doing it. they would do in the scene. And like the, the, the director was downstairs. We were upstairs. He was downstairs. Like all the cameras were upstairs, but he was watching it from downstairs. And like, somebody wasn't doing something to what, the way the director kind of wanted it. And he like, he goes, okay, uh, you know, whatever cut. And then there's like a pause while the director walks up the stairs. And then he like says something to one of the actors. like hey you know maybe just you know a little bit more like that gives him a little direction he's a director gives him direction and then you know okay cool and then he walks back downstairs we do it again and then he's like do a couple cut and now the director's coming again and you know and each time i was like i hope he's not coming to talk to me because everyone is watching and everyone's going doing this actor freaking not nailing it so you feel kind of bad so yeah i'm I'm filming this thing and I'm just, I have one, two sentences, one line, right? Two sentences. And I haven't said them yet. We're recording for like an hour. It's all the other individual talking, just delivering these lines, delivering, doing a great job, just all great and everything. And then they have to stop and reset all the cameras for a different angle because now it's Jocko's turn. And believe me, bro, I'm a professional. And guess what I did? I memorized those lines in my head. I went through them in my head. I was like, boom, boom, boom. I went through them in my head like hundreds of times. Yeah, yeah. Just want to be ready, bro. I'm a pro. Don't want to. From filming Warrior Kid, I know what it's like when someone, you know, when you mess something up and McG's got to roll in and say, hey, okay, let's do it. Okay, we'll do it again. You know, everyone feels it. The cameraman's lugging that thing around and he's kind of like, bro, what is wrong with you? You had one job. Yeah, it's true. So anyways, this is now three, four hours into this. And it's finally, now we go the other angle, and finally it's now my turn to deliver my line. And the first time I say it, I had not, even though I memorized it, I hadn't spoken it. I hadn't actually said the words. And they were kind of like a little bit awkward. And I said it, bro, but I got it done. I powered through it. But I was like, but it wasn't smooth. It wasn't the performance that you hoped for. It wasn't the performance that I don't think anyone was hoping for, right? But I got it done. But I was like, oh, you didn't say the words. You didn't actually let the words come out of your mouth. And that's a bad move. So it's like when you partially rehearse something. And that's why what's interesting here is like you might have the idea of like, oh, I'm going to, if we get to here, I'm going to give this command. but if you've never actually said it bro it might jam you up a little bit and I got jammed up now look like I said I just had to go into team guy mode and just get them words out because I didn't want to have to just throw away the take so I got the words out super awkward I think they were thinking maybe Jock was trying to put a little stank on it but I was like I wasn't trying to put anything I was just trying to get the words out of my mouth but I learned that lesson you gotta actually say the words you can't just practice them in your head because that's another thing I was alone there was no one to practice those lines with yeah what do you do in the mirror or something no I just was literally looking at it and just going over it like sitting in a chair just thinking the words how long did you have to from the moment you got the lines the script how long did you have to prepare I probably had weeks to prepare but I only prepared for one day I understand. I didn't need it. I mean, it's literally two sentences. It didn't take me long to memorize it, but I didn't say them. Bro, I think even you preparing jammed you up, and this is why. So I have you know how, like, you ever been in a situation where you're like, I'm going to let you continue? You're wrong, but I'm going to let you continue. Okay. Okay, because I believe I'm right right now, but I'd be interested to see if I'm wrong. So you ever I don't know. You don't seem like the type that would have this problem, but I've run into a situation where I'm like, shoot, I got to bring this up. It's not even a big deal, but I just, I feel like it's the right thing to bring it up and like sort it out, right? To whoever, whether it be to your friend or your wife or whoever, right? I got to bring this up. And then I'm like, all right, well, I don't want to bring it up in a way that makes it seem like it's a big deal than it really is. You ever heard me say, and I know this, I say this all the time. It's like, I consciously say that. I say, even me bringing it up is making it seem like a bigger deal than it really is. I always say that if it's like a small time like that before. And then you make a big deal out of it. Yeah, I know, because I go deep into it. But only because in the spirit of understanding, you know, but then I got to be like, hey, but the more I explain, the bigger deal it seems. So now I got to explain how it's not a bigger deal, and it becomes a whole thing. You see what I'm saying? So that, and that's part of my point where if I'm like, okay, I already made the decision to bring this XYZ thing up, right? I already made that decision. So how do I deliver it in a way that makes it not a big deal? I was like, well, but there, and there is a way to do that. Right. But if you're going to deliver something in a specific, specific way, it has to be natural. Otherwise, it looks contrived. And then now you bring you introduce another element of the whole conversation. Are you even are you being authentic? Are you a little bit? And it becomes a big deal. Right. Which isn't a big deal. So you jam up your whole process. OK, I said you were going to be wrong, but I think you're actually right in many cases. So just to finish what I jam myself up from time to time is I'll be like, okay, let me just practice in my mind how I want it to sound. And I'll go over it and over it. But that whole process of me going over it in my mind makes it a big deal to me. But also in your mind. Yeah. Maybe if you would have rehearsed out loud saying the words, there's one more element that comes into play. I feel like that is true. But yeah, so besides that part of it, the point is if you don't actually go through it, because that's what being natural is. When you're actually natural doing something, you're really used to doing it, so it's just natural. But if it's your first time ever doing it, no matter how simple or complex it is, your first time actually doing it ever, and you've been thinking about it, it's impossible to be natural. Well, this is kind of the similar thing. when we record stuff at echelon front yeah and like someone will be one of the instructors will be like oh hey you know talk about cover and move and they'll be like oh you want me just to say blah blah blah and they rattled off and you go yeah that's perfect yeah and then the red record light comes on boom it's game over freaking disaster.com bro this is stuff that they've explained thousands of times they know in and out better than anybody and boom you hit that they see that red light brain lock bro brain lock all day so i think that has something to do with it i also think that if you really i think that you you reach a point in memorization where it does become it will sound natural because you've memorized it and it's now it's coming out of your brain just like it was uh uh what is it thought you know it's like oh i just thought of this so i think if you partially memorize something, it's probably going to jam you up. But if you memorize it to the core, it's probably going to be beneficial. I'm not saying that you won't be a bad actor. I'm not saying you won't be like saying the line, any military leader will readily support the practice of unit rehearsals before an operation. Like you might say it like a dork or like in a very unnatural way and not know. there's a reason that actors there's a reason that some actors are good actors. Because they can do it and it's convincing. This is my little theory. Everybody thinks they could be a good actor but it is more tricky than a lot of people think. So that and I feel like at the end of the day it comes, it kind of goes along with what I'm saying. So like think about this idea of doing the thing. Snowboarding for example I watch all these tutorials. Okay. you put your way before I went, you know? And that one's obvious because it takes a lot of physical balance that you can't just learn on a video. You've got to actually do it. It's just the nature. So that's like an extreme example. But just this idea of doing the thing, X, Y, Z. So your thing that you had to do was say the lines and how you did it was kind of up to you, right? But you had to do the thing, right? And in this case, doing the thing is saying lines. That's what you're doing. You never did it. So you can't make it look natural and you can't make it look authentic you can't make it look however you're quote unquote trying to make it look because it can't be contrived that's it because technically I'm sure like these lines there's probably a handful of ways you could easily set them and they would have been right on for a bunch of different ways as long as it came out natural right that's really what good quote unquote good acting is but what's interesting is because of the role that I was playing it wasn't actually me you know what I mean? I've done plenty of things where I'm just straight up Just being Jocko or some other named of a guy named Jocko who's just Jocko with a different name. Way easier, right? Yeah. Because you've done that many, many times. But I'll tell you what. Proud said that that's – he's like, oh, that shit's hard. Yeah. And he was like, dude, you're – I think people, they start to act the way they think they are in their own head. So that jams them up. Oh, yeah. Big time. Okay. So Sam Harris talked about this a long time ago where it's like, okay, you use a certain part of your brain. Like, you know, your habitual, I don't know, you know all the parts of the brain here. But there's like this part that does the habitual stuff, walking, talking, you know, whatever. Just habitual stuff. You don't have to like, okay, let me take this step or that. Okay. So that, and then there's the other part, which can still make you do the same action, but it'll be way more clunky. So like, you ever hear, this is where I really notice it. Okay. I walked up and down the stairs in my house a million trillion times. but if I'm carrying like a big TV or something, I'm like, bro, I can literally walk up and down these stairs with my eyes closed, but I'm like, bro, if I take one wrong step, I'm dead. So now this other part of my brain is engaged. Trying to micromanage your movement. It gets all jammed up. Exactly right, and it makes it worse. I'm literally worse at walking downstairs now that this other part of my brain is all engaged. That's what happens when the red light comes on, when they're videotaping the echelon front, if you're jamming up your lines. That's what happens when they're saying, action, all this stuff. Even if you're, quote, unquote, just being another version of Jocko, which you've been for however many years, you know, now this other part of your brain is trying to be Jocko. That's not the part of the brain that's used to being Jocko. You see what I'm saying? So a good actor, this is what it seems like anyway. And I've heard people say this where if you can just, they say it's not even acting. You just be you. So it's essentially you've got to, like, actively disengage, bro. He's getting deep, bro. You've got to disengage that guy. Damn, okay. All right. I see how it is. We're going there, huh? Yes, I've heard. In fact, okay, you know who David Fincher is, right? He did like seven fight club. He's a director, right? So he's known for doing an ungodly amount of takes. And in his philosophy is like, he makes people do the lines on set, in the moment, cameras running so many times that after a while, it's just like, all right, bro, I'll do whatever. The lines coming out, the physical doing of the lines is just, that's natural already. Because you did it. That's kind of what I said. If you memorize it to a point and you've done it over and over and over again, now it's part. You're not thinking about it. You stop thinking about it and just start doing it. Exactly right. Now, but in show business or whatever, how often do you get the opportunity to do it in the actual moment over and over and over and over again with everybody watching, with the camera guy, with the, you know. I heard, like, Clint Eastwood will be like, all right, like, first take. He's like, all right, that was good. And they'll be like, hey, can we dig? No. You did fine. like we're moving on. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's so many different philosophies as far as approaching that goes, but to me it made sense and it has a lot to do with, I think anyway, of what you ran into because you literally had zero reps. Yeah. I had a million mind reps. Yeah. But not one single actual rep. Actual rep, bro. And I got jammed up in that moment and like pushed, just team guided out. It's like literally like me watching a snowboarding tutorial a million times. Never been on the slopes a million times. And I'm like, I know exactly what to do. I know when to do it. I know, bro, I got this down. I go on there and, of course, I'm going to fall down a little bit. See what I'm saying? I might have some good technique in principle, but it's a little bit. There's that experience part, that nuanced experience that needs to be there. Yeah. So what's that? So did they call you back? No, no, no. We did. I mean, the next one, I was good to go. And then it was just, hey, what do you want to, what stank do you want on it? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Were you kind of surprised? Were you like, dang, I sucked more than I thought I would. No, I knew exactly what happened. I was like, oh, you didn't move your lips and get the words out. You just thought you could do it because you do it all the time. And now you try to do it. And it took, let's say if the line was, any military leader will readily support practice of unit rehearsals before an operation. It'd be like this. My time to send the line is now. Any military leader will readily support the practice of unit rehearsals before an operation. It was just clunky. I understand. It wasn't like a throwaway. I didn't lock up where they're like, okay, hey, did you... Because you don't want to be that guy, dude. You know what I'm saying? You don't want to be that guy that just doesn't know what you're supposed to do. You didn't prepare, bro. It's unprofessional. Right. It's not going to be professional offense. So it wasn't a total drop of the ball. But I kind of fumbled it for a second, grabbed it, and went down immediately. I still caught it, but it didn't look great. You know? So that's why we rehearse, is what I'm saying. The role play comes to mind. You guys are like, hey, do a role play or whatever. Just how beneficial that is. So beneficial. And what they're saying is rehearse mentally. Hey, if stuff starts getting stressful, oh, I'm in a high port. I'm going to relax. I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to look around. Like that right there. Say that out loud and then relax, look around, make a call. Relax. This is what I wrote on Seth Stone's window of his Humvee in 2005 in the desert. Relax, look around, make a call. Follow these instructions, dude. Okay, got it. Back to the doc. Infuse emotional stability and control into the organization. Leaders must discover ways to control their application of emotional energy. Their behavior is a compass for the unit, an indicator of what stress is allowable and appropriate for the situation. Okay, so they're looking at you as the leader. The first actions after a significant event, like an attack with an improvised explosive device, set the unit's tone for the engagement. As General George S. Patton counsels, leaders are always on parade. An uncontrolled yell, a high-pitched radio call, or even a worrisome look can transmit stress and doubt to the unit. Conversely, leaders with composure and confidence, despite stressful circumstances, will infuse those traits into the unit. Commanders should be deliberate and concise. Leaders should objectively verify emerging information to avoid overreacting or acting too hastily. Again, these are great This is stuff I've been saying for years And it's just a great angle on it Do you mind repeating that part where he said Somebody's always on parade George S. Patton said leaders are always on parade Yeah Great one So kind of like everyone's always kind of watching you Yeah, they're watching you Looking to you for demeanor, the whole deal And if you freak out, everyone's going to freak out Yeah, you're right That one kind of goes deep because like you know how like i think it might have been you i don't know it doesn't matter who but it was like yeah once you kind of let your uniform slack or a certain thing slack just for your own personal self people will like start to be like oh i guess we can kind of do that you know that's true but this is an even more acute moment which is if you see me panicking yeah yeah you're gonna panic so if you see me acting calm you're like oh okay we're calm right that's the way it is That's what we're doing. It works with your family, too. When your kid falls down and scrapes his knee, if you go, oh, my gosh, are you okay? The kid's not going to be okay. But if you go, dude, that was awesome. Try it again. The kid's going to be fine. Always on parade. Yeah, always on parade. Neuroscience research reveals that there are methods leaders can use to do this. Noted author Malcolm Gladwell describes deliberate emotion in Blink. We take it as a given that first we experience an emotion and then we may or may not express that emotion in our face. We think of the face as the residue of the emotion. The process works in the opposite direction as well. So you can force your emotions through your facial expression. Emotion can also start in the face. It is an equal partner in the emotional process. A German psychology experiment revealed that people who were physically made to smile by holding a pen clenched in their teeth rated cartoons as funnier than people who watched the same cartoons while holding the pen in their lips, which prevented smiling. Facial expressions are not just a representation of emotions They can direct emotions Leaders can physically incite a more positive relaxed emotional response in their bodies by intentionally forming a relaxed facial expression during combat events This demeanor will also cue similar responses in the soldiers around them. There you go. You have to impose your emotions on yourself. That blinking thing is funny. This is freaking for 10 years. You and I have been talking about a little something called normal face. Yeah. You know, I used to play this game with my own children to get them to not give away their emotions in stressful situations. If you make a face, if you break, you get smacked in the head with the cardboard roller from inside the Christmas wrapping paper. Yeah. And it'd be funny. You know, the kids would be trying not to laugh. But that translates to everything that you're doing. Because, man, if you give away your emotions, your boss sees that you're mad, your teen sees that you're frustrated, bro, it's going to spread. It's going to cause problems. Normal face all day. Brother, you know, I noticed this in, back to acting for a little bit. Like, if you watch certain movies, if the actor's not his experience and they're trying to deliver some, like, deep, like, dope, like, freaking line. And then, but then they're blinking a little bit too much. just like it doesn't land as much versus like, you know, all these real intense actors like, you know, Daniel Day-Lewis, like Tom Cruise or something like this. And they're like going hard on some like monologue to somebody, but they don't blink at all. And then Brad lands super hard. Or on the other side, if they want to imply like stress or worry, they won't put stress and worry all over their theatrics. They'll just like start blinking a little bit more. And I'll be like, bro, that freaking sells it. Like you feel it, you know, with the close up. Just from the blinking or no blinking. No blinking. There you go. Next section. Create an effective decision-making environment. Regardless of rank, even in the midst of intense combat, leaders must create an environment that is conducive to making cognitive, not emotional decisions. They can start creating this environment by physically and emotionally disengaging from the immediate fight. You heard me say this a thousand times. Come off. Go to high port. Come off the skirmish line. this may mean finding sufficient cover for a local command post a company commander seldom belongs in the hatch of his vehicle or exposed on the street scanning for targets like a rifleman of course desperate times will call for every gun to be in the fight but only a handful of commanders will ever face the situation the goal is for every leader to mentally zoom out from his personal tactical situation and take a more macro level view of the battle preparing his brain to handle the impending cognitive challenges this is what you need to do and again it's not just in combat during that meeting everyone starts getting wild just ease your chair back push away from the table shut your mouth and listen to what's going on don't get involved and don't get on your gun which is your mouth don't start firing your mouth off no, listen, assess the commander should use his space from the battle to focus on what he is trained to do assess and analyze what has occurred recognize friendly forces vulnerabilities abilities, predict what the enemy will do next, decide on feasible course of action, communicate the plan to the unit, and apply the appropriate leadership skills to inspire the unit to accomplish the mission. The specifics of these steps can include conducting rapid terrain analysis and land navigation using complex digital systems, calling for mortar artillery or aircraft fires, establishing hasty, and it gives a whole list of things that you've got to do. These are highly cognitive and require a steady mind. A leader needs to find a suitable environment where he can generate new ideas, new insights for each unique tactical situation encountered. Battle drills are, of course, an effective method units used to survive the first moments of event. But the leaders must think beyond the battle drill and formulate innovative ways to beat the enemy. If you hear me talking at the monster, I'm like, oh, what's the first thing I did? Get on, you know, take cover, return fire. And then immediately, get off the gun, look around. You've got a whole team that's shooting. You need to look around. Make a call. As neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer explains in How We Decide, this is where prefrontal cortex really demonstrates its unique strengths. It is the only brain region able to take an abstract principle and apply it in an unfamiliar context to come up with something entirely original for a solution. It's very powerful. And then we got a model for cognitive battle. In Your Brain at Work, David Rock explains that the mental processes relevant to performing work are understanding, recalling, deciding, memorizing, and inhibiting. These are the things that are, you know, what you're doing. Understanding, following the initial shock of an attack, understanding involves how a leader creates maps in the prefrontal cortex that represent new incoming information and connects these maps to existing maps in the rest of his brain. That's what we're doing. You're looking at terrain. You're looking at the enemy that initiated the attack. You've got pertinent data. You've got the population considerations. You've got maneuverability requirements. You've got restrictions and friendly force disposition. These are all the things that you're mapping out. And then recalling. In battle, recalling is the process of comparing existing situation with the database of stored knowledge in the long-term memory of networks. These are the lessons that you've learned. These are the instructions that you've received. These are the experiences that you've had. These are doctrines that you've looked at. These are lessons learned that you've gone through. This is where perhaps a little phrase or a piece of advice comes into play, like cover and move, or take the high ground, or keep it simple. Next up is deciding. A combat leader's brain engages in the deciding process when it chooses which recalled information will be most useful and applies it to real time in the world to build a new mental map. that's the one we're making the decision and then memorizing this was one that I didn't really expect the other ones make sense right David Rock describes memorizing as holding maps in attention in the prefrontal cortex long enough to embed them in long term memory research shows that it is impossible for our brains to simultaneously hold multiple complex concepts in working memory without degrading accuracy for leaders in battle memorizing is also in the internalization of a plan. Focusing on the concept of an operation, planned or hasty, creates familiarity that allows execution without redundant analysis or reference to written notes. Yeah, and what that boils down to, it was kind of cool. My first deployment to Iraq, we were always going to a different, like, AO, like, area of operations. We were Baghdad, but Baghdad's huge. I think, I want to say Baghdad was, like, nine times bigger than Ramadi. And so you'd be going to a neighborhood you'd never seen it before and i would do a decent job of getting familiar with the battle map going in there but not as good as we like once you're in ramadi for four months you're just like i know where this is and it just makes you better at it i think if i went back in time i would do a little bit more memorization of the battle maps but what i would memorize would be like phase lines or this the approach to the building or follow on targets like I would have chunks of it. So then I understand it makes sense. You don't want to have to be like, hey, we're moving to phase line, bravo, and be like, hold on, let me pull up my map and figure out exactly where it is. Oh, no, there's the building with the fence by it. That's phase line, bravo, cool. So that makes sense. What's phase line? It's an area of an operation that you designate. For instance, hey, when we reach this, when we've got all our forces assembled, we're at this phase line, at this location, we're at phase line alpha. Now we've pushed through the target, the target secure, we're at phase line bravo. It's just a way of describing kind of the flow of an operation chronologically, but it's also physical. Yeah, yeah. So, okay. So it's like a little designation of an understood area. Exactly. Yeah, okay. The next one, the last one is inhibiting. Inhibiting is the practice of selective focus when one actively tries not to engage certain mental maps because they're irrelevant or counterproductive. We call that prioritize and execute. That's the red light when they press record on a camera. Yep. You've got to suppress that. You've got to suppress that thing. But it's also prioritized. Actually, like these things don't matter right now. Right, right. These nine things don't matter. What matters is these two things right here. Yeah. So inhibiting is practice of selective focus. This is prioritize and execute all day. The leader must, and he talks about some of the things that we've got to suppress, must suppress his learned tendencies, realign his mental perspective, and develop new neural connections that will help him properly frame and respond to it. And then this author adds personalizing. To these, I add personalizing, which can apply to every moment of a leader's day. This is the application of leadership principles and personality attributes that will guide the organization to accomplish the mission effectively. Personalizing is the leader's conscious effort to prevent external influences from altering the foundation of character and leadership that he has consistently developed and that his subordinates have learned to expect. And then it talks about training for the emotionally stable fight. Training for combat is about changing the brain. Decades of neuroscience. And by the way, what's cool is I've got to see this over and over again. I've got to see young SEAL leaders, when they're going through training, get caught up in the emotions and learn how to detach and start to be able to make really good decisions. So this is something that you can do. You can change your brain. Decades of neuroscience research have firmly shown that the brain is highly adaptable and that repeated activities designed to create specific behaviors, like combat training, literally change the cellular structure and strength of connections between neurons. So you can actually change these things. You can start to get some control over how much time you spend in the gray slop. At the rifleman level, training teaches soldiers to respond reflexively to situations that demand spontaneous conditioned response, such as engaging an enemy fighter at close range, and like mag changes, and ready-up drills. It is the same behavioral process that professional athletes apply to develop the fine-tuned motor skills needed in competition. This learning process also applies to activities that demand higher cognitive abilities, such as detailed planning for a combat operation or reacting to a complex attack. A way to train this capability would be construct an exercise that requires leaders to undergo physical or fear-induced stress and then perform deliberate time-constrained planning for an ambiguous situation. So you get better at these things. And again, I just said that you see this, and you've heard me talk about this before. In the military, they want to get you used to being afraid. So what do you do to get used to being afraid? Well, guess what I did? The first thing I did was climb over the low wall. You climb over the low wall, it's only like 12 feet. You climb over it, you kind of dangle, and you... The next obstacle, two obstacles away, the cargo net. The cargo net is like 50 feet up. You've got to climb to the top of it. when you get to the top of it, you've got to climb over it. And at a certain point, you've got to kind of like just let go and get to the other side. If you're scared of heights, you're not going to be able to do it. And even if you're not scared of heights, you've got to overcome them. Well, it doesn't matter. You've got to go do it, right? You've got to suppress that feeling. And then, by the way, a little further on the obstacle course is the slide for life. Now you're up three stories. You're going to dangle off the edge and slide down a rope. If you're afraid, it's going to be a problem. The slide for life, you said you've got to dangle on a rope. You slide down a rope? You slide down a rope. Like a zip line? It's at an angle. It's like a zip line, but you're using your hands as the zip. And you pull yourself down, like hand over hand. Oh, okay. So you're kind of maneuvering. And then eventually do a commando stop style. Once you get to a certain point in Buds, they let you slide down on your stomach. But when they first make you do it, you're hanging underneath the rope. Like your legs are wrapped around the rope and you're pulling yourself. How do you slide down on your stomach? if you're in a... Just go look up commando style slide for life and you'll see somebody doing it. I'm gonna... Or I think they even call it Australian style. Hell yeah. Okay. All right. Cool. But eventually, you get done with that, guess what you're doing? Rappelling off the tower and then you're rappelling out of a helicopter and then you're fast roping out of a helicopter and then you're parachuting and you're first parachuting a static line and then eventually you're free falling and then you're free falling from high altitude with an oxygen and a rucksack. Each one of those things levels up the amount of fear induced situation. And then they do the same thing with shooting. Like the first time you're shooting on a static range and then the next thing you're shooting, you know, on a static range with a little bit of movement. And then eventually you're doing live fire, immediate action drills in the middle of the desert with rockets and grenades going off. Have you ever been afraid of heights? Or had a thing against heights? I think I have just a normal kind of natural like appreciation. But the weird thing is When you're parachuting It doesn't feel like heights And I feel I don't know at the end of the day But it feels like I feel like that's kind of one of the little tests I've been more aware Of the height When I was on a building Or on a rooftop Than I was ever aware Of the height When you're jumping out of an airplane Yeah I'm with you The same deal where if I climbed up there, I don't get afraid of heights at all. If I had like, you know, like a big cargo net or something like this. The only time I'm like, quote unquote, aware where I'm like, is yeah, like you're at a, let's say a hotel or something. You're on a top floor and then they just allow you out on the balcony. And I'm like, bro, this, there is a very little barrier given how far down that is. You see what I'm saying? Like someone could like fall over this balcony and just freaking fall this whole, like an airplane or something like that, it's almost like there's too much of a disconnect to understand that you're high up. You just seem like you're just sort of in a different world. I know, for sure. But I feel like that's kind of the litmus test, where if people have this panic mode when they're way up in the air, I feel like, bro, if I fell from here, I would... I don't know. I'm not in touch with it. See what I'm saying? I don't know. Interesting. Makes sense. Continuing on. units should structure training to present multiple streams of information and detectable patterns of enemy activity that will teach leaders what to look for. So that's what we're doing, right? We're putting people in situations where they're going to start going, wait a second, it doesn't really matter that this is happening. What matters is that. Like we used to tell guys, if there was no shooting, like the enemy stops shooting at you, your instinct can't be, oh cool, they left. Your instinct has to be they're maneuvering. So that's the kind of thing you can train people to pay attention to. On the individual level, leaders should develop personal cognitive battle drills that better prepare them for mental challenges of combat. They should rehearse exactly what words they will use to report initial contact and what guidance they use anticipating issuing in the opening moments of a battle. These drills create neural circuitry that is familiar to the brain when the actual event happens, thus making it easier to execute with calm and confidence. Leaders should position themselves on the battlefield to facilitate their cognitive responsibilities. Despite mission terrain or movement technique, leaders must discern what position allows them to survey all aspects of the fight. As much as possible, they should directly observe their soldiers and get information in real time without compromising their ability to keep a macro view. Conversely, soldiers expect to see their leaders at the proverbial front and cannot respect leaders who are never among them. Finding this balance is part of what makes command an art. Most importantly, all leaders have a responsibility to build a database of professional knowledge that will assist them in creating insight during stressful situations. They do this by studying doctrine, seeking instruction from mentors, being self-critical about performance, recording new ideas, participating in thought exercises, discussing related concepts with peers, and reading professional works. You've got to know history. You've got to have tactical options. You've got to have your personal experience. And if you have those things, you will be able to find creative answers on the battlefield because sometimes the answer is not in doctrine. The concept of brain-based combat leadership deserves attention to both military and professional development courses and unit-level education training programs. Teaching leaders what they will physiologically experience will better prepare them to maintain emotional stability and effectively lead others during combat. It's got a bunch of recommendations for the Army in here. And then here's the conclusion. Combat involves a wide range of events, dangers, and sensory inputs that can easily overwhelm the unprepared mind. The first job of every soldier, regardless of rank, is to maintain his composure and react reflexively to the threat as required. Leaders, however, must go beyond the conditioned response to combat that we train on the live fire range. They must zoom out, detach, and adopt a macro-level view of the battle, quickly analyze events occurring, decide on the appropriate response, coordinate complex systems, and apply the appropriate leadership skills to accomplish the mission. These brain functions are among the most sophisticated processes that we humans can perform. Leaders who do not protect their own cognitive function during combat will find themselves short of the biological resources necessary to win, meaning glucose to your brain, and place themselves and others at risk. In this sense, knowing how to think could be a combat leader's most valuable tool. So what that whole article was about was trying to get leaders, trying to teach leaders to detach from the monkey brain and use your brain to think. And not be driven by your instincts, but driven by logic and reason. now here's where I'm going to give some additional information that is slightly contrary it's not contrary but you have to think about it this is something I've always said detachment doesn't mean that you become void of emotions in fact emotions have to be part of the calculus your emotions your team's emotions, your boss's emotions. All emotions need to be taken into account. Now, this does not mean that they drive our decision-making process, but they have to play a role. They have to be in the calculus. We have to be the driver. Here's my metaphor. We heard about a chariot. We heard about this. We have to have the steering wheel. We have to have the brakes. We have to have the gas. We have to know when is it the good time to add more emotion because sometimes we need to add more emotion to the situation. Right? You ever had a situation where someone's not getting it, like cornering someone in MMA, and they're losing two rounds, and they have one more round left, and they go, I think the fight's going okay. No, that's not, no. You might need to press the gas on the emotion. You also might need to take some of that emotion away. In yourself, you might need to know when it's time to turn on the emotion, when it's time to pull some back. You might need to know what you need to control when it's time to follow your instinct and when it's time to say, hold on, I need to pay attention to the logic here. That should be our goal. Our goal should be to have the steering wheel, have the brakes, have the gas, know when we need to push, know when we need to pull back. And learn how to drive and manage and modulate your emotions and your ego and your reason and your logic and utilize all those different inputs to create decisions and solutions and create actions. And of course you can't do any of this if you can't detach. You'll never figure out anything that I'm talking about if you are in the gray slop. You won't ever see it. You won't even know what I'm talking about right now. But you can't abandon emotions and ego and passion. You need to stay in touch with them. You need to stay connected to them but you can't be controlled by them, and this is very, very difficult. And it's also very, very important. So, T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, a famous British guy, archaeologist, he's a military officer. He became famous during the Arab revolt in 1916 and 1918 against the Ottoman Empire. And he had a quote in his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Nine-tenths of tactics are certain and taught in books, but the irrational tenth is like the Kingfisher flashing across a pool, and that is a test of generals. And I saw a guy on Twitter X named Infantry Dort, which had a lot of good information. he had this quote up. But the point of this quote is this is something that is very, very difficult to teach. That you can learn nine-tenths of being a combat leader. You can learn from the books. You can learn from the schoolhouse. You can learn it on the drill field. Like there's nine-tenths of it. You can have it all dialed in, but there's a tenth of it. He calls it the irrational tenth, which is like you can't teach it to somebody. now T.E. Lawrence does say you can get better at it but it's very very difficult to teach but it's not only applicable to the military it's applicable like you hear about it in sports right in sports I think you can correct me on this you're more of a sports guy than I am you hear people describing athletes that have certain intangibles right hey they got this capability They got this much talent, but they have intangibles. Michael Jordan. Was he the tallest guy? No. But what did he have? He had something that we all have a hard time naming. And people will try and name it. Court sense. Even court sense, what's that? Is that a thing? Are we going to name that? Can I teach you court sense? Maybe I can give you some. You get familiar with the game. But there's some people that have another level of it. Tom Brady, the famous videos of Tom Brady at the Combine, looking weak, you know, slow. But what did he have? He had some intangibles. Muhammad Ali, Lionel Messi, Deion Sanders. These people had some. And MMA, we see it, right? Jon Jones. Johnny Bones Jones. What is he doing? Like, he's doing, like, okay, we all know Muay Thai. We all know wrestling. We all know jiu-jitsu. do. We all know boxing, but all of a sudden he's doing something else, right? He's taking all those things and mixing in a way that we go, wait, no one taught him that. And Coach Jackson would say, like, no, he never saw him do that before. He just did it there in the moment. Fedor Emelianenko. What is he putting together? How is he winning fights? Right? Hicks and Gracie, Marcelo Garcia, the jiu-jitsu world. There's something going on there. they have these untangibles. They have these irrational tense that it doesn't matter. You can't get them from the gym. And in Hollywood, you get the same thing, right? In Hollywood, what do they call it? They call it it. They call it the it factor or just it. Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Denzel Washington, right? Al Pacino, Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt? Bro, you hang out with Chris Pratt and you go, oh. you're like oh okay there's a reason that he's Chris Pratt there's something about him he's got something they call it it they call it the thing but you don't really know what it is like when I was first going to meet Chris Pratt I was going to a UFC fight with Jack Carr and we were flying from LA it was super cool but it was my first time meeting like a real famous like Hollywood person. I was kind of like, oh, you know. I bet this guy's going to be like, you know how they portrayed Matt Damon in America, Team America World Police? You know, they kind of portrayed Matt Damon like kind of just dumb or whatever. And so I kind of thought, you know, I don't know nothing about Hollywood. I'm like, okay, that must be the real assessment of these Hollywood people. So, but I've, you know, I've seen Chris Pratt and stuff, but I thought, you know, whatever. Like, he's going to be kind of like that caricature that they put forward in Team America World Police. And then you meet him and you spend like five minutes around him and you go, oh, okay. Okay, I get it. There's a reason that he's who he is. But no one, he didn't learn that in acting school. I don't even think he went to acting school. Right? I don't think he was in the school plays and had the drama teacher saying, no, you need to get a little bit more furrow in your brow or be a little bit quicker on your comeback. None of that. But there's something there. And then you get rock musicians, right? Ozzy, of course. Elvis. Hendrix. Prince. like you know these are people that they just have some thing and by the way not just singers but people that can play an instrument if you go down to Guitar Center and you put up hey I'm hiring a guitarist I need a guitarist that can play Led Zeppelin Black Sabbath, Tool which is hard as hell and Rush which is hard as hell proficiently call this number. I'll get, in San Diego, I'll get 10 phone calls. And they'll be able to do it too. And one of the guys is like a waiter, one of the guys will be a construction worker, one of the guys will be a whatever. Because they they're really good at their instrument, but they don't have that little thing that Kurt Cobain had, which is take four chords and turn it into like a crazy whole album. So there is this unquantifiable kind of 10th or intangible irrational 10th. And here's what I think is, especially from a leadership perspective, that thing is the connection back to the gray slop. the connection back to the gray slop which is the ability to connect with someone emotionally connect to that animal instinct communicate with that like you ever even what you're just talking about you see someone talking and they're getting people fired up they're not talking to their logical you never heard someone say I want to go over the statistics right now like they don't that's not a fired up speech the fired up speech doesn't appeal to that what it does when someone has this ability, when they have that connection back to their emotional gray slop and they can modulate it properly, they can utilize it to write a great song, to lead people, to improvise a martial arts move. When they get done, Conor McGregor gets a hold of the microphone and everyone goes nuts because he's going to connect in a way that someone else that doesn't have that ability to have problems or to not get where they want to go. And by the way, sometimes some people can tap into it but it's too much, right? And in the entertainment business, you end up with Kurt Cobain. You end up with Jim Morrison. You end up with Janis Joplin. You end up with Amy Winehouse. You end up with Sid Vicious. You end up with Jim Belushi. You end up with Heath Ledger. These people are people that would tap back in, but then it would kind of just get hold of them. It's one of these things. You've got to control it. You've got to tap into it, but if you don't have control over it, And by the way, this happens with leaders too, like leaders that lose their minds. When you have a leader that's in charge of an organization and they lose their minds, they use that tapping into their emotions and their ego to drive things and make things happen. But at a certain point, it takes over and they lose their minds. Their prefrontal cortex just shuts down and now their ego is running the show and it's a disaster.com. So that's why you got to know how to win to hit the brakes. You've got no way to hit gas. You've got to steer it in the right direction. And if you have the rationalization, you have the discipline to do that. You have the discipline to go, oh, hold on a second. This is about to be an egotistical decision. And by the way, when I stood up in front of the company, I said, we're going to go into this market. Nothing's going to stop us. And that was tapping into my ego and tapping into my emotion and connecting with other people's emotion because they all want to win and I want to win because that's going to do better for our survival in the world. and I'm going to tap into that. But then two months later, when it's like, hey, we got a decision to make on if we're going to continue to expend this money on this marketing campaign that hasn't done well. My ego might be saying, I know it's going to work, but it's not a good move. And you got to be able to, you got to be able to decipher and utilize the proper area of your brain. And you have to be the person that's controlling it. You can't let your emotions make decisions, but you can't leave them out of the decisions. And sometimes you got to press the gas on your emotions And sometimes you got to press the gas on your ego You ever seen an MMA fighter as they getting closer and closer to the fight their ego starts growing If it grows too early they stop training If it grows too late, they're not ready for the fight. They doubt themselves. They have got to figure out how to modulate these things. We have to figure out how we modulate these things. When someone can do that, that's a rare person. And that's going to be the person that rises to the top. But we, we're not counting on that over here. Draco's not over here just counting on all the doing it right. We're just trying to do better. We're just trying to do better. And in order to do better, in my opinion, we truly have to learn, first of all, to detach from that gray slop, that animal instinct, which, by the way, drives so much in our lives. By the way, the workout that you didn't do, gray slop. That's animal instincts. Telling you you're tired. Telling you don't need to do it. The donut that you ate, immediate gratification. Dopamine. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. That's all it is. The gray slop is if we're not out of it, if we're in it, we're not doing the right thing. that's what happens. Letting our stupid animal instincts make decisions about our long-term lives or without considering our long-term lives. We cannot allow this. We have to get control. We have to detach. We have to elevate above the gray slop. We have to take control of our lives. And when needed, we artfully utilize the emotion and the ego and the passion like a little fuel, little nuclear reactor. It's burning. Those things are burning. But you can't let that fire get out of control. It's like a meltdown in a nuclear facility. You've got to keep it. You've got to know when to put the carbon rods into the reactor to cool it down sometimes. You can't let it just run out of control or you can have a meltdown. Which is terms that people use about someone having a freaking meltdown. Why is that? They let their emotion, they let their ego, they let their passion get out of control. Set them on fire. But if you can control that, if you can contain that energy and utilize it properly, you're going to have a win. So think about that. And if you can do that, it is going to elevate every aspect of your life. And that's what I got. That's what I got for today. So pay attention to it. It's there. The chimpanzee mind is strong. And it is loud. You know that it factor or whatever. I feel like, and I was kind of going deep as you were explaining it. I was like, bro, that's true. You know, like the ability. And you said something actually which was spot on a little bit later. You said artfully. Artfully like, you know, take from the gray part, the gray slop. and then, you know, kind of interchange them and whatever to create this kind of thing. It feels like with five minutes of thinking, but the it factor, you know, that intangible, that what is it, the 10%, the something 10%. The irrational 10th. Yeah, the irrational 10th. I think it has to do with some kind of lack of restraint or boundary, whatever that looks like. I think in acting they call it self-consciousness. You've got to let go of the self-consciousness. And I think, and even in sports, right, where you doubt, like any competition, you have a healthy level of doubt for yourself, you know, kind of a thing. But then if you can, some people have it just naturally where they're like, I don't follow those rules. Like even all the way down to their subconscious, like they don't follow your etiquette, like that doesn't apply to me, you know, kind of a thing. So, like, okay, remember? Okay, this MMA guy. He was a black guy. He used to fight, and I want to say he would, like, he'd do weird, crazy stuff. What was his name? Ed Nine Mill. No, no, no. Yeah, no, it was a different guy. We don't, I don't think we know him personally. He was my younger brother's favorite guy. I think he had, like, silver teeth, maybe. Yeah. Yep. Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Bennett, Charles Bennett. Charles. He was wild. Exactly right. So he's in a wild. That's exactly what I'm saying. But he had this very specific thing where he wasn't like, he was the opposite. As far as his style goes, it wasn't this highly disciplined. You know, like think GSP, right? If GSP comes out to win this fight, you're like, bro, this guy's game is just tight. You know, like he's making all the right moves. Bro, you're even more right than you know you are. I've been back in the day UFC on the same card GSP fighting you could see like cutting weight you'd see him cutting weight like a like a machine machine just a machine just like you know checking weight like no big deal like no expression on his face you know just just so disciplined and professional yeah you're like okay cool like clockwork like clockwork even his fights same thing and you know which fight was really like this guy came to like 100% win. No risk, no this and that. It's almost like, hey, if you're going to increase the probability of you winning to 100%, you have to do all the right things, take zero risk and do the right things and finish the fight. This is how he would fight. It was his rematch against Matt Serra. When he lost to Matt Serra, that second one, it was like, bro, this guy's not losing. There's no way he's going to lose. So anyway, it was so calculated and so tight versus Crazy Horse Bennett. Yep. Bro, the exact opposite, bro. But that motherfucker still won sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Or a lot of times. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, he connected emotionally with so many people. He was a fan favorite. Oh, hugely. He's a fan favorite. But he didn't modulate it enough. And by the way, it didn't only apply to in the cage. It was also like, what was his lifestyle like? Was this a guy that was like on the mats training? No, he was like not on the mats. He was obviously a very gifted guy, and he trained, but that next level of discipline, there was more emotion. There was more crazy. That's why his literal nickname was Crazy Horse. So maybe his irrational 10th was like an irrational 30 or something like this. It was bigger than it maybe should have been as far as ideal, but as far as identifying that thing, he had a lot of that thing where he was like, he didn't have boundaries. He didn't have internal boundaries. Like, hey, maybe I shouldn't. Nah, he was sending it. Just full send. Like, good, good. That's what we're doing. That's what I'm doing, you know? And it wasn't like I'm going to timidly send it. Because, you know, some guys, they'll timidly send it. Jeremy Stevens, another, like, he was losing a fight, you know, and I was in his corner. And I had to go emotional with him and get him emotional. And, dude, he got emotional because he's an emotional dude, you know? And, dude, he tapped into that emotion and freaking almost murdered a guy. know what i'm saying just ko'd a brother because but it was one of those things where his he needed to tap into that at that time yeah and and that's a positive thing to have but like you're saying like gsp like there was no i don't remember maybe we could find a a fight where you had to get into some like emotional level but a lot of times gsp was just a machine it seemed like fedor amelian Anko. Yeah. Like you, did you ever see an expression on his face? It's like, no, not really. He was not fighting with any type of emotion at all. And that kind of became his, uh, made him so popular, right? Like, like, like just like a Terminator. But yes, this, this thing is being able to figure out how much of this fire you're going to let out and when you're going to let it out and how you're going to let it out. The guys who just like I said can put it together perfectly because it has to be the perfect combination and then the perfect back and forth with all the training, discipline, competitiveness self confidence all that stuff and then on top of it that lack of restraint where you can be like no I'm not going to follow the protocol I'm going to step outside of the protocol for this one so like Michael Jordan the best one I can think of at the top of my head is John Jones because you know like bro he finished fights with a spinning elbow and just like how you said uh who was it coach jackson right yeah we're like yeah i never seen him do that but he has been he's so creative like minded with everything within the confines of his discipline for sure where he'd be like oh no i can send this and make it work he doesn't have that constraint that i would have bro if i'm like bro i've never practiced that spinning elbow bro i'm not gonna try in a fight well this is an interesting thing because i was uh you know in the in the publishing world right now. There's a lot of AI being published. And one of the things about publishing or one of the things about humans is humans have an irrational 10th. Right? And I don't know that they can successfully put the irrational 10th into an AI. Can they say, by the way, I want you to throw in some random thought and process it in there? But it's that. It's random. Whereas AI is going to take AI is predictable. You put in the input, it's going off of, it's going to be, here's the story, here's the thing, because it's based on other things that have existed before. But a human is going to hopefully have this irrational 10%. The it, that's what makes a writer write. You know, I was talking to my literary agent a long time ago, and she's really smart, studied at an Ivy League college studied history and literature. And one day I was like, you know, like, why are you a literary agent and not like a writer? And she says, you know, I look at a paper and I don't really have anything to write about. And I was like, oh, okay. Which is weird because for me I have like all kinds of like ridiculous ideas that I need to figure out which one I'm going to invest in, you know. But that's a similar thing. Yeah, so that we're, I think, yeah, it was you. We just weren't recording. This was a while ago. We'll talk about, like, you know, creative people, right? There's all different kinds of creativity. I get it. But, like, you know, a lot of these people who we regard as, like, highly creative, they have this weird past, you know, where they've been through something, whether it be traumatic or just super dynamic in one way or another, that they can kind of draw upon, which, and whether they know it or not. and I think that that's the struggle I think that AI is going to have a hard time like replicating whatever with enough time who knows but it's hard to replicate like someone's actual okay so AI will say a video right I make an AI video and say hey do this make them feel this and they'll do it and they did it but I'm like bro it wouldn't really look like that it wouldn't really feel like that you see what I'm saying you're doing it too perfectly so when you really yeah predictably exactly right If you really went through it, oh, you would know. There's little details of someone. You know how, like, if someone's telling a story about, like, their friend, they'd be like, you're talking about yourself right now. You see what I'm saying? Because you know, like, there's something that kind of comes with it that is, like, so, like, inherently human that it's, like, you can't just replicate it. I can't describe it. But once you experience it, you're like, oh, okay. And it's, like, it's hard to, like, predictably recreate it out of nothing or imagination. you kind of got to do it well it's kind of like i i we before we hit record the you know we know what is in an amoeba we know all the components that are in amoeba we can put all those in a little dish and stir them together but it doesn't come to life it takes some other element and so the idea like everything that you can put all these things into the ai dish but like there's Something that, like you said, can look similar and sound similar. But at the end of the day, you're kind of like, well, it's not quite that thing. It's not quite there. So you've got to be able to tap into it appropriately. Most people don't have a problem with this, by the way. But I do think most people have a problem with they're too emotional. They're letting their ego and all these emotions and everything run the show. But I think if you can detach more, I think people that detach properly, they find a way to better recognize the power of that emotion and funnel it and get it to a right spot where it can be utilized properly. Now, look, you know, like crazy artists, right, that burn in and they better to burn out and fade away. Right. That's like these people are crazy. Yeah. And when they get enough success, they can kind of carry on. But a lot of, like, how many people, you know, I talked about Jeff Lang, the kid I grew up with, who was smarter than me. In the book Final Spin, I kind of dedicated the book Final Spin to my friend Jeff Lang, who was smarter than me, funnier than me, better athlete than me. Like, just a creative, just a spark, just like fire. And he killed himself when he was 19 years old. And you're like, it was that fire was just burning so it was too much. Right. And sometimes, you know, how many people are like that? And it doesn't necessarily mean they have to kill themselves, but, you know, they their fire wouldn't allow them to be in a band. It wouldn't allow them to even practice their instrument. It wouldn't allow them to to sit down in front of a video thing and learn how to edit the stuff. They got too much of it. And it just doesn't like it can't like what you know, Ozzy Osbourne, like Ozzy Osbourne. He was like, like, just like this intense creative energy. And luckily, like he got into Black Sabbath and became like, but if he if that wouldn't happen to him, if he wouldn't have found those guys, if he wouldn't have found Bill Ward and Tony Iommi and Gizepard, if they wouldn't have, if that wouldn't have happened, where would he be? I mean, I can guarantee you we wouldn't know who he is. He might have done a band here or there, whatever. But you've got to get in that moment and have the right ingredients. And then you've got to get a little bit of luck. And you've got to survive it. Like the fact that Ozzy lived so long. Why didn't he die when he was 23 years old, all drunk, falling to a train? That fire is going to burn bright. And occasionally people can survive with it. But a lot of times, and they can be successful with it. But a lot of times that fire ends up with people in jail, with people committing crimes, with people ODing, with people just ruining their lives. The fire in the emotion and the ego. And by the way, we can say the same thing about ego. Like what ego drives a person to achieve things? But then when it goes out of control, all of a sudden they're embezzling money and they're doing all this, you know, they're doing terrible things because their ego can't be shut down. That fire is just too much. They can't control it. They don't know how. They never learn to modulate it. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, a lot of the musical, it makes sense, too. Jim Carrey went through a version of this where. So they have this. We'll just call it for lack of a term, a fire. Right. So, there's a fire inside of him, and he goes crazy, right? Is this Jay Carey? No, we'll say Ozzy Osbourne. And then, you know, he finds music, or he gets into music early on, right? So, there's something about, like, music. And maybe I would imagine just performing for the world, you know, like, but truly performing. Not being performative, but, like, truly doing your art for the people, and they're just loving it. There's something about that. So, in music, let's face it, like, bro, I don't even really play music. and bro, I'll listen to music and be like, man, this is like, this is a banger. Yeah, you know, to a point where it affects you emotionally. You want to know, that's what I was going to say. You know why? Because they, whoever that musician was, they tapped into that emotion. They pulled it out. They put it, they recorded it. And now when you hear it, this is the same thing to you. But they had to have the discipline and the control to make that happen. Now look, occasionally you get a band that just takes, they have that one member. This is why like the lead singer dies, the whatever, the guitarist kills himself. Like, crazy stuff happens. You know, like, we've had incredible musicians that they, like Chris Cornell, like from Soundgarden. Here's this guy. He's at the top of his game, 50 years old or whatever. Iconic. But that fire caught up in them and killed himself. You see what I'm saying? Like, it's wild. So, sorry I cut you off. But, yes, the reason that you, Echo Charles, that doesn't know how to play an instrument, you know, doesn't collect records. But you will hear a song and go, dang, dude, this one hits. Yeah. There's a collection of songs that, and my kids will tease me about this, where if I find a song that I really like, I'll just play it over and over and over until I just don't like it anymore or don't like it as much. And I remember thinking to myself, I think there's something wrong with me in that way where I don't like all music. People are music lovers. I'm not a music lover, but I like certain songs just still right now kind. So I don't know, maybe there's plenty of people like that. But now consider that, right? Where I think music has a way to affect people in that way. And a lot of people, I think across the board, that's the way music works mostly. Now you're a person with all this fire in you and you get to not only consume that, but you get to harness it and create it. And that fire is just driving it. so now it's this like you're almost like this lightning rod of fire and creativity and then the medium is music that just affects and you know it's affecting themselves too is what i'm saying let's face it bro a good song comes on that you really know bro you're singing like if you're alone in your car or whatever bro you're singing it like you're singing it and it feels like you're actually singing it see what i'm saying now go one step further you are the person really singing it bro it's like bro that can drive you crazy i think see what i'm saying especially if It's like if it's literally coming from you, it's like, bro, it's too much power sometimes. You see what I'm saying? And then not to mention all the fame and all this other stuff discombobulating your whole freaking mind and life. You see what I'm saying? So it kind of makes sense. Yeah. That's how you end up, I think, with that fire. You're getting rewarded for that fire, right? Yeah. So then you just unleash it and boom. If you're not careful, it's going to get you. Jim Carrey said he got to the point, I'm paraphrasing, that he didn't even know who he was. because it's kind of like he started off with, I just wanted to make the people around me laugh and happy. So he starts doing this, and he likes doing it, and it's working, so he takes it to the next level. And his creative mind is doing this, and it's to this next level, and everyone just wants that Jim Carrey making them happy and laugh. Then he's like, wait a second, if I'm not doing that, who am I? He focused so hardcore on it that he said he didn't even know who he was anymore. And I was like, bro, I could see it. I totally could see it. Not only are you unleashing the fire, but everyone else is just throwing gas on it. I know, man. Totally throwing gas on it. Jack. Jack. Well, detach from that emotion. Use it, but don't let it get out of control. That's what we got. By the way, when we do that, when we impose discipline into our lives, which, by the way, You know, when we crank up the music, when we're working out, your music, your workout can legitimately go better. That can happen. That's when you're tapping into your emotion. Sometimes when you let the emotion be, hey, I feel like sleeping in today, Echo Charles, which I know happened today, actually. Sure. Right? Hey, sometimes we need a little bit more rest. I'm not trying to call you out, but I'm calling you out. No, no, no, please. You know what I'm saying? why because the emotion was i'm tired the emotion was i feel sore but and you let it win you didn't impose logic knowing that a good workout before you came in here would have been better okay all right i went for a run okay oh okay good good well hey listen if you're on the path you're training you lifted and do a jiu-jitsu you're gonna need fuel we recommend jocko fuel check out jockofuel.com we have uh we got protein by the best protein the best protein the tastiest protein we got is it sanco de mayo today yeah yeah yeah get some of that rachata rachata it's my mom's birthday today by the way happy birthday happy birthday um we got hydration we got energy we got supplementation we got time more super krill joint warfare one of our best uh products if you look at the people that subscribe like myself subscription to Joint Warfare you know why. You don't have years of subscription. Thousands and thousands of people subscribing to a product that's not GTG good to go. So we got it all. So check out JockoFuel.com and fuel yourself properly. Also check out OriginUSA.com We have Jiu Jitsu Gis, Jiu Jitsu Rash Guards, Jeans, Boots, hoodies got a new shirt coming out which they just sent me a sample of which is legit so we got everything that you need it's 100% made in America because we are not making communist clothing we are making freedom clothing American clothing 100% made in America with 100% American made materials check out originusa.com and get your wife or your significant other a pair of women's jeans because they're coming and apparently they do it right. They're all on the hype. By the way, Big H got one of the initial pairs and I'm going to say they are GTG. GTG approved. Form and function. Form and function. Yeah. And, you know, girls can be quite picky about their genes. Oh, yeah, yeah. They know what they want and don't want, by the way. So it's actually a good guideline. Like, let's face it, you're a bad guideline, bro. You're just like, oh, yeah, they function, you know, all this other stuff. I was like, bro, what about us who care about the aesthetic a little bit more than, say, Jocko. See what I'm saying? I think that's most of us. Jack. So it's good. OriginUSA.com, get some. Good to go. Also, don't forget about Jocko's store. We're representing while we're on this path, right? Discipline equals freedom. We've got some good shirts. Five versions of Discipline equals freedom shirts on Jocko's store. The idea of good, which is, let's face it, the classic. From the beginning, if something happens that's bad, there is some good that comes out of it. See what I'm saying? You want to represent? We've got three versions of good. other stuff too good stuff on there I made the shirts functional in the way so well that people say this is my favorite shirt not necessarily because of the design but how it fits on me I said my job was done well then proud of that thank you for that also Shirt Locker which is different design every month that's a subscription scenario but I am releasing one more shirt from the Shirt Locker into the main into the wild stream what is it sugar-coated lies is that that one right there? nope, this is a different one sugar-coated lies, the one that I'm releasing now be on the lookout for that if you want to be notified put your email go jockstore.com on the bottom, put your email in that I'll email you when it comes out so you can spam everybody? no, no, no, no, I don't spam anyone I've never spammed anyone ever in my whole life ever, and I never will dang, I don't mean that I like that. But I will let you know when it's live and when it's going live, even before it goes live, so you can jump on there whenever you want. See what I'm saying? You want to get it? You want to get the jump on it? You can. If you want to get back to it, you can. You do run the risk of it selling out, though, because we do tend to sell out nonetheless. It's all on jocostore.com. Check it out. Also, we got some books. Check out Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. Check out Need to Lead by Dave Burke. I've written a bunch of books about leadership with my brother, Leif Babin. I've written some other books for adults and kids. Check all those out. Warrior Kid movie coming. Movie coming November 20th. Way of the Warrior Kid movie starring Chris Pratt who has it by the way. Has it big time. Directed by Mick G. Kind of has it too. Legitimacy and authenticity. Excellence. Excellence and legitimacy. That's what Echo Charles. Oh because Echo Charles is in it too by the way. Acting. Stretch of a role. playing a jujitsu black belt up there with a gi on. Being very supportive. Dude, you did a great job. You brought a lot of excellence and legitimacy to the situation. We were all very happy. Primalbeef.com You need steak. Check out Primalbeef.com and ColoradoCraftBeef.com We have something called The Muster. We just got done with The Muster. The Muster is a two-day conference educational scenario where we teach the skills of leadership as a skill. We teach the skills of leadership. Leadership is not something you're born with. It is something that is a skill that you can learn and you can improve. If you need leadership inside your organization, it would be an outstanding opportunity if you come to the Mustard. The next one is in July, and it is in San Diego. So that is a very cool place. We did it in the summertime. We know that people like to come to San Diego. So if you want to make it into a little family scenario, Bring the fam out. You learn about leadership, and the family gets a little SeaWorld, a little San Diego Zoo, a little beach. We're here. Dago, as they say. So echelonfront.com, if you want to check that out. Also, Extreme Ownership, we have an online academy where we teach these principles and skills as well. And then, of course, 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 heroesandhorses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us, you can check out jocko.com. And then on social media, I'm at jocko. Echoes at echocharles. Just be careful because that whole thing is filled with a bunch of spam crap trying to manipulate your brain. It's what it is. People paying money to get into your brain and get control of you. And you know how they attack you, by the way? They appeal to your animal instincts. Your brain, your gray slop. Your gray slop. That's why the thumbnails are what the thumbnails are. And I apologize for the freaking dumbass thumbnails that Echo's made when he was experimenting with AI. and I'm like, bro, I asked you to stop doing those no less than, I would say, eight times. I was like, bro, this is the dumbest looking AI-looking slop. And then I'd think I'd shut it down and then the next one would come out and be me like on a stack of gold coins with a crown on or me in a business suit. I'm like, bro. And I get it because it was early in the AI. Yeah. It was early in the AI generation so you were kind of like flexing in a way. Yeah, yeah. But it didn't take long before you were not flexing anything. Yeah. So anyways, but that's what people do. They create these thumbnails. You didn't create thumbnails specifically aimed at your animal instincts. But whenever you see a thumbnail, it's got like a female that's in some skimpy outfit. Or they put some fear into you, like a fearful title. or you can win now. Like defeat anyone. Like those kind of things. The things you're missing. Yeah, yeah. If you notice that. Yeah. Those are real AI. Sorry, those are real gray slop attacks and you fall for them. We all fall for them. That's why they get so many views. So just be careful. When you're in that zone, just be careful. Try and scroll with your prefrontal cortex. And you'll spend, if you engage your prefrontal cortex, you'll shut it you'll go do something smart three three scrolls later you'll be like what is this crap but if you just let your let your your limbic brain just it'll look at that shit all day just like oh wow it's amazing oh it's incredible oh that looks like a good meal oh I'm gonna learn something new I didn't learn anything I'm gonna learn something that's gonna change my mind I didn't learn it that's what it is so just be careful that's what's happening there and finally thanks to all of our service members army Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Thank you for your service and sacrifice that allows us to live in freedom and live in security. 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 that keeps us safe here on our soil. And everyone else out there, you've got to be the one that's in control. Not your impulses, not your emotions, not your ego, but you, your enlightened self. You with plans and goals and hopes and dreams and things that can only be achieved if you are holding the steering wheel. If you force yourself to overcome the short-term, immediate gratification of the mind that satisfies you right now but robs you of your future. And I'm not saying don't have emotions. You've got to have emotions. And you should utilize those emotions, but don't let those emotions utilize you. Do not allow that. And if you do that, you will improve your lot in life. That's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.