The Peter Attia Drive - #56 - Jocko Willink, retired Navy SEAL, Part II of II: Sleep, fasting, raising kids, discipline, taking ownership, and the impact of war

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

In the second installment of this 2 part series, Jocko shares his sleep routine and attitude towards sleep, we talk about his meals (and occasional indulgences), his experience with fasting, and touch briefly on his workout routine. Jocko explains his approach to leading a family, instilling values in his kids, and working with others who may not share your same principles. We also find out what prompted Jocko to make discipline the underpinning principle of his life, when it might make sense to quit, and the philosophical topics such as free will, mindset, and whether or not you can change someone. We also discuss 9/11 and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the future of warfare, and perhaps more importantly, how Jocko’s experience in combat has shaped and impacted his life to this day. We discuss: Where was Jocko when the 9/11 attack occurred? What did he think? [5:45]; How SEAL teams are structured, and which teams Jocko was on [10:45]; War in Afghanistan: Unique challenges, how it differs from Iraq, and the lessons learned [13:00]; Iraq War: Differing public opinions on war, Jocko’s experiences in Iraq, strategic mistake of ISIS, and the Saddam regime [19:15]; The future of warfare: machine technology in war and medicine [27:30]; Raising kids, instilling values, and leading a family [33:45]; Sleep: Jocko’s habits, routine, and attitude towards sleep [40:15]; When it makes sense to quit [53:30]; What makes Jocko different, the existence of free will, and whether or not you can change people [1:01:45]; How to work with people with a bad attitude and opposing mindset [1:07:45]; Does Jocko ever indulge? Favorite foods and treats [1:11:00]; Fasting and meal timing [1:16:30]; Olivia (Peter’s daughter) interviews Jocko [1:21:45]; What prompted Jocko to start prioritizing discipline in his life? [1:22:15]; What does Jocko do in his workouts? [1:23:30]; Where did the nickname, Jocko, come from? [1:24:20]; Jocko’s favorite book, his best advice, and secret to getting up early [1:25:50]; The impact that war had on Jocko [1:28:00]; and More. Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia. The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peteratia-md.com.

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast and why instead we've chosen to rely entirely on listener support. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things I care most about, professionally, are how to live longer and how to live better. I have a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally and I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people

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and would already talk about for free, and have them pass savings on to you. Again the podcast will remain free to all, but my hope is that many of you will find enough value in one, the podcast itself, and two, the additional content exclusive for members to support us at a level that makes sense for you. I want to thank you for taking a moment to listen to this. If you learn from and find value in the content I produce, please consider supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription. I guess this week is Jaco, like Madonna, Sting

or Cher. He's one of those rare individuals that only needs to go by one name. For those not familiar with Jaco, he spent 20 years in the SEAL teams where he was a commander of SEAL team, Threes, TASC unit, Bruiser, I believe, which led the battle of Ramadi becoming one of the most decorated special operations units of the Iraq War. Chaka returned from the Iraq War, served as an officer in charge of training SEALs on the West Coast, and ultimately when he stepped down from that role, he co-founded Eshlan Front, a leadership consulting company. Along the way, he's become a New York Times best-selling author on leadership and has also written a number of, frankly, fantastic kids books, which my kids adore. He hosts the Jocco podcast, which is an amazing podcast

and of all the podcasts I've ever been on, that episode that I did with Jocco is certainly one of my favorites. He's a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu and the co-founder of Victory MMA in San Diego. I met Jaco maybe four years ago through another mutual friend Kirk Parsley himself, a seal. This podcast was a ton of fun. It also took a while. We sort of lost track of time and before you knew it, I realized this was going to have to be released over two weeks and not just one. In this second installment, Jaco and I discuss 9-11 and the war in Iraq,

the future of machines in war, as well as medicine, raising kids. We talk about one thing that I get pinged about constantly to talk about with Jocco, which is sleep. We talk about giving up. We talk about free will, mindset. We talk about his indulgences, fasting,

and we end up with a quick guest Q&A with my daughter, Olivia, who was waiting all day to meet Jaco and couldn't wait to poke her head in when she got home from school. So without further delay, please enjoy the second installment of my discussion with Jaco. Where were you on 9-11? Physically, like the moment you heard. So I was in college at the time. So I was in the Navy. I had got my commission in order to have your commission

in the military. You have to go to college. I hadn't been to college yet. Meaning because you were enlisted, you couldn't get above a certain level. No, I literally had to go. They told me I had to go because I tried to not go. OK.

They said, you've got to go to college. And I said, I'll just stay in. I don't need to go to college. Don't worry about me. You don't have to pay for it. We're all good. And they said, no, idiot. You have to go to college. I said, you're fine You don't have to pay for it. We're all good. And they said, no, idiot.

You have to go to college. That's fine. So I was going to college at the University of San Diego. I think I was waiting in my car for class and heard about it in the morning like when I woke up, meaning you heard a plan. I had a plane hit the tower. Oh, okay. Cool.

I figured it was a prop. Yeah. I think it says no, whatever. And some idiot was trying to sightseeing or whatever. So that would have been like 6am your time. Yeah. So now it's 7.30am, your time, 10.30 or whatever time on these coasts.

And yeah, the second plane hits. And I go, oh, okay, we're under attack. You knew at that moment, exactly. So the other one hit, I was like, oh, yeah, this is an attack. I didn't even think I knew that it was a passenger plane yet, because it wasn't like I woke up, saw that something happened, and said, okay, I I'm gonna sit down and watch the news now, because every day something happens

that could be the first indicating signs of a major problem, right? I mean, you just can't track everything. A shooting happens somewhere. Generally, the shooting happens and then they rest someone or someone gets killed and then that's not the beginning of a massive terrorist attack.

So when the first plane hit, I didn't think about it. I was like, oh, wow, that sucks. But as soon as the second one hit, I realized, yeah, we were under attack. And how long until you could actually see the images on TV? I would say by 11 o'clock. I mean, by the time I saw it on TV, the towers were still up. I wonder how long did it take for them to fall? I do it in East Coast time.

But the towers were still up when I saw it on TV. Yeah, yeah. Which still kind of mitigated the tragedy, right? It was much less visually striking, right? The towers were hit, they're on fire. Okay, we're going to put out the fire. Horrible that these people were killed in the plane. Oh my gosh, I bet some of those people on the towers were killed as well. That's horrible. Still the intensity when the towers collapsed was really intensifying. It was an intensifying thing. It's interesting that you immediately understood what was happening. I have another friend who

was a Marine, and he just happened to be an Australia for some training gig on 9-11. His reaction was, I mean, I'm amazed at the insight, right, which was he realized, oh, it's never going to be the same. He understood that to be a Pearl Harbor-like moment, which you did as well. I mean, that's, yeah. I can honestly say, I couldn't even think, I just didn't know what to think.

I was deer and headlights. Like, I was just, you know, I was thinking much more about, I remember, because I was in the hospital, I was like, oh my God, are we gonna need to open up a bigger burn unit? Like, I was just thinking about my God, are we gonna need to open up a bigger burn unit? Like I was just thinking about a bunch of dumb blocking and tackling stuff purely tactical, right? Fiery tactical, not a strategic thought in my body.

And yet now in retrospect, it seems so obvious. Yeah, I thought I was pretty cool because at the time, there's a guy called a detailer, which is someone that's in charge of your actual Billet in the military. So you're gonna get assigned a job and the person that assigns you your job at a seal team or at a forward Base or whatever is gonna be the guy called a detailer. The officer detailer at the time was a guy that I had worked for Who is a friend of mine who is just a fantastic guy, great guy, a great relationship with him. And I called him up and said, hey, sir, it's Jocco, get me out of college.

I'll go to college later, I'll do online college. Don't worry about any of that, please, please, please, get me back to a sealed team right now, please. You're having this call the evening of September 11th. Within a day or two, I was making the call and begging him to please get me out of college and send me to a sealed team where I can go into play. And he told me, hey, finished college, this war is going to last a long time. And so here's a guy that was more mature than me and smarter than me, and I still didn't believe him.

But the reason I started off by saying, I thought I was cool, because I saw him and his wife the other day and I was talking to him and I was talking to both of them and saying, Hey, I remember on September 11th, I called and asked you, please, to send me to a seal team. And this is where I thought I was cool. And he said, you know, many people call me that day. Everyone called him. So again, when you talk about like the attitude, that right there is another great example of like every seal officer that was anywhere, but at a seal team called up and said, please send me to a seal team right now.

So did you finish college? Yep. Yep. So you returned to the seal team what year? Spring of 2003. So six months after the Iraqi invasion. Right after the Iraqi invasion. I showed up at the seal team. Explain for people listening who aren't familiar

with the Nomenclature. So people have heard, obviously SEAL team six got a lot of discussion. What do the numbers mean? How big is a team? So I would say the biggest misconception is people think of that as SEAL team. What you think of a SEAL team,

people think of a SEAL platoon or a SEAL task unit, which is like, oh, you think you're a team? 12 guys. 12 guys. An actual seal team is a bunch of platoons. And all the platoons generally don't work together. So you'll work maybe in one, two, or three platoons. Sometimes occasionally you might do something bigger than that. Seal teams have done some operations that were bigger than that coordinated, but generally, you're just going to be one, two, or three seal platoons operating. So that's what it is. The seal team, the odd numbered seal teams are on the West Coast, the even number seal teams are on the East Coast. And are they numbered in the order of like the first one was just

seal team? And then the second one became two and then three. Seal team one and seal team two were commissioned at the same time, meaning back in the 60s, back in the 60s. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what it is. As we grew, they've made more seal teams. And there are how many today? Four per coast. So there's up to eight. Yeah. You were on more than one, weren't you?

I was at seal team one, seal team two, seal team seven, and seal team three. In that order. Yep. So you finished the three, okay? So when you're coming out of college in 03, you are going into seal team. I went to seal team seven.

Yeah. And I showed up with seal team seven, the seal team at the time. So you do a workup to prepare to go on deployment. And these guys were just about done with their workup. So what happened was the commander of seal team seven was another guy that I had worked for and was pretty close with. And I showed up at his SEAL Team without a SEAL POTUTE. So I was just a guy who was going to go on deployment, do whatever I could. And I remember I was walking, we were walking across the walkway there. And he

said, you look mad, Jockel, what's wrong? He goes, what can I do for you? That's what he said. He said, what can I do for you? And I said, give me one way ticket to Iraq, which is, of course, again, this is what everyone was saying at the time. And then he said, stand by. And I was kind of interested in that reply. Fast forward a little bit. He ended up firing one of the Ptun commanders and put me in charge of Ptun.

So I took over a Ptun that was getting ready to deploy. And again, I'm the luckiest guy in the world because to show up at a sealed team and get a sealed Ptun that's getting ready to do pulling to Iraq it doesn't get much better than that. Really doesn't. Did you spend any time in Afghanistan? I went to Afghanistan but I didn't fight there at all. I flew through there to do some visits with some senior personnel but I never did anything there. And when you talk to guys that saw combat in both, how did they compare it? The funny thing was guys that were with me and tasking a bruiser that then went over to Afghanistan,

the principles of combat don't change. One of the big things was one of my buddies described it as in Ramadi was like, oh, you got streets and you got buildings. That's your low ground and then your high ground. In Afghanistan, you had valleys and peaks and don't want to dominate the high ground, just like you did in the city.

Want to get good angles. I mean, the geometry is the same, but the distances are further. So, and then one of my other guys that went directly from pretty close to there after went from Ramadi, he said that in the urban combat, the rapidity with which things unfold is a lot tighter. So, you don't have much time to make decisions. There's a building right there. There's a guy in it. Things don't unfold for very long. Whereas in Afghanistan, unless you're in the urban part of an Afghanistan or you're in a small village, then it's the same thing. At distances, you have a little bit more time to think. But they both have incredible challenges

and both situations were brutal in many ways. How many troops are still in Afghanistan? American troops? I don't know what the number is right now. As low as it's been, presumably since the invasion. Yeah, low. What are the differences and similarities between the American experience in Afghanistan and the Russian one a decade earlier? Slash Soviet, I guess, to be more precise. Because the Soviets in Afghanistan struck me a lot like Vietnam.

Yeah, it was harsh, very harsh. The tough thing is that the differences between the US military and the Soviet military is pretty immense. One of the books that I covered on my podcast is written by a Russian soldier that fought in Cheshnia. And it's a crazy book. And this guy, his name is Arcadia Bebchenko, I think is his name. And the reason

that it's interesting is, do you remember not too long ago, maybe a year ago, there was a journalist that was assassinated in Ukraine? I don't think I remember this. Yeah. So this journalist was assassinated in Ukraine. And it was this guy, Bebchenko, who had written this book, which is just an incredible book, and he was assassinated by Russians. And it turns out that he faked his own assassination so that he could like prove something, and he's this crazy like Russian guy. So he's in hiding right now?

Yeah, he's in hiding right now. But anyways, he wrote this incredible book. What was really crazy about this book is these soldiers in the Russian army, you're out fighting this brutal enemy, which was the insurgency in Cheshnia, their sawing heads off of people, it's as bad as you can make it. And then they come back at night and their sergeants beat them, and their captains beat them, and they're just abused, and they're drinking vodka. It's a horrible situation. Books called One Soldiers War.

And it's just a book that really shows you the difference between the American military and the Russian military. And you know what? The Russians are hard people. I think everyone knows that. You know, there's a part where he rattles off, you know, the sergeant's beat, the corporals, the staff sergeant's beat, the sergeant's,

the lieutenants beat, the,, the lieutenants beat the, and he just goes right down the chain of command. Everyone is getting beaten. Like really, they're gonna beat the shit out of you. Why? Because they're bored. Why? Because you didn't get water for them

when they wanted you to. You're gonna get beaten. And that's what they're living through. So you have that going into Afghanistan. So the point too is that you're saying the morale is morale is freaking horrible. Yeah. The morale is absolutely freaking horrible. The other thing is like who ends up in fighting units in the Russian military? It's the downtrodden people. It's the misconception that people think in America. People think it's only the poor people that go in the

military. It's like no, there's all kinds of people in the military. And it's voluntary. So you can go, you can not go. In Russia, it's like, oh, if you got money, you're not going in there. If you're a prominent person, your kids aren't going in the military. It's only the people that didn't have any other choice

that are gonna end up there. So yeah, the morale was really bad and then fighting against the Afghans who are hardened fighters and kind of like the Russians used their terrain and their Environment as their defense. So the Afghans do the same thing, which is hey, we have mountains We have hills and then they got the Stinger missiles from us and it's like The movie Charlie Wilson's word does a pretty good job of actually showing some of that stuff. Yeah, it's sort of hard to believe

I remember hearing a story, I don't know if it's correct, that sometimes the stingers would miss fire and blow up. So I shouldn't say, it would fire. So you would get the shot off, but the device would actually blow up. So the guy who fires it dies. So he hits his target, but dies. And the story was initially the, how did you even thought that that was actually a feature of it. Like, that's how willing they were to die, right?

It was like, wait, I get to blow up a Russian airplane and die at the same time. Yeah, yeah. Bonus, bonus program. And they're like, no, no, no, no, sorry, that's in this one. We have to fix the issue there. That's not the way it's supposed to be. It's another classic case of insertions. And you find out that this big organization can't maneuver like you can. That's how you beat them, right? That's how you beat

them. I was talking with a company about that the other day, like, okay, here's what you're up against. You're up against Titans. And you will not beat them in a war of attrition. They can outspend you. They can outhire you, they can outwork you, they can outproduce you, literally. So the only way you're going to beat them is you have to be more maneuverable than them. You have to find out what their weaknesses are because they do have weaknesses because when you're that big, guess what, you're not mobile anymore. So how are you going to attack their weaknesses? That's what you have to figure out because you can't beat them in a war of attrition. So it's the same thing, right? That's the same thing with what we ran into in Vietnam.

We cannot beat them in a war of attrition, because they don't care. And what do they do? They find our weaknesses. What do they realize we do care? And once we realize we do care, cool. You can kill 200 of us and we'll kill one of you. And eventually, you're gonna grow tired of it.

That's the reality. Why do you think that vets who came back from Vietnam had such a horrible experience compared to vets coming back from Iraq? So you could argue you saw similar things that upset the public, right? So the public saw, oh, of course it's always these things are blown out of proportion, right? Because you're seeing a snapshot of something you don't necessarily know that that represents the person that's in front of you now, let alone the majority of the people that were fighting. But you had these people coming back from Vietnam that were pariah. And fortunately, it doesn't seem like the Vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan

were treated that way. The Vets coming back nowadays have been treated great. What do you think is the transition? Is that a transition in simply the American psyche? A little bit of the American psyche the wars for sure, but why were the Vietnam vets treated so poorly? People hated the war most people hate Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well, right? And I don't think people have made that connection of hey just because a guy went to fight doesn't mean that the war is on his shoulders Now some people say oh that's crap and I'd hear that all the time like if to fight doesn't mean that the war is on his shoulders. Now, some people say, oh, that's crap.

And I hear that all the time. Like, if, oh, if you didn't believe in the war, then why did you go fight? Right? And some people make the distinction of like, hey, listen, this is a soldier out there doing his job. So don't get mad at him. You want to get mad at someone? Get mad at the politicians.

So I think we, people made that distinction. And there's some people that still make the distinction like, oh, if you went and fought, then you supported the war and you deserve hatred from me because I don't agree with the war. But I think less people believe that now or less people act that way now than did during Vietnam. I had one seal on my podcast. There's a Vietnam guy that was just a legendary Vietnam guy named Roger Hayden who was one

of the guys that I looked up to and when I was a young seal, he came home and talked about Vietnam. And I said, what was it like when you came home? He's like, no, no one protested him. No one never saw anything. And again, you're living in San Diego. He's a seal. You're kind of in a nice little environment. But I covered another book on my podcast where the guy lost his arm came home to Vietnam. He's going to college and like literally get spit on. And so it definitely was a thing, but that generally doesn't happen anymore. You see it a little bit more, you know, see some of the radical, extremist, left-wing people that still might hold the grudge against the front line soldier.

But I think people realize that that's not a good target for your anger. It's an ineffective target for your anger, right? And I'm guessing that when you guys were there when you were deployed You didn't spend a lot of time talking about your own political views because obviously you guys are pretty well informed In fact, you're seeing things in person that you can tell people are missing back home, right? Scenarios like actual interactions. You know what the insurgents look like. And we know what the insurgents are doing

to this civilian populace, which will change your mindset on what we should be doing. So when you know that the insurgents have decapitated the head of the household in a neighborhood with five families, that starts to leave, where you know that they skin the guy alive. When you hear that, you go, okay,

we should be doing something about this. We have some kind of an obligation to help these people that are under the oppressive insurgency that's here, and you see a little kid, you see these little families just trying to live their normal lives, and you think, we can help them. They don't want these insurgeons there.

They hated the insurgeons, but they couldn't do anything about it. And so we can. So that does leave an impression on you. Did you generally feel welcome where you were? Yes. In Baghdad, because most of my first deployment I spent in and around Baghdad, and my second deployment, I spent the entire deployment in Ramadi, and the civilian populace wanted us there without question. In fact, there was a great

piece on vice, you know, vice news. They did this piece when ISIS was coming to Ramadi and there was a guy in there and I thought, oh, this is going to be an interesting thing because, you know, vice is kind of a left leaning organization. And I still watch them to hear what their perspective is. Sometimes they have a good perspective on things and they did this great piece of this guy who was in Ramadi as ISIS was approaching and he was showing all the towns people and he was showing like the mayor or the governor of the city of Ramadi. He's on the phone, placing phone calls trying to get America to come back. Please, please come back. The guys in the streets

were saying we hope America comes. And you know what, America didn't come. And ISIS came into Ramadi and completely annihilated it. We got reports from people that we knew that were there, that when ISIS got there, they went out and had retribution on families that had worked with coalition forces and they ended up murdering about 500 families, men, women, and children. What is the presence of ISIS in Iraq today? NIL. Are they mostly in Syria? No, they're dead. Really?

Yes. Because I had read something quite recently that said, no, there's a real pocket of them and they're sort of hiding somewhere, but... They were killing thousands and thousands of ISIS fighters. It was a beautiful situation because the ISIS fighters became a conventional army for the most part, right? They got vehicles, they had flags, they had uniforms. So that was their strategic error? Instead of it being in an asymmetrical situation, we were fighting against another army.

So it was like fighting a nation state. Yes. That was inferior. Yes. Yes. And so we killed, I would say, somewhere around 50,000 of them. These are black uniform ISIS flag carrying. Took back the city of Ramadi, took back Mizzoul. So that's what it was.

If you went back to Iraq today, let's say you went with your family. Where would you want to go? What would you want to see again? A Ramadi. I'd go to Ramadi. Then I'd go to Baghdad. Have you been there before?

I've never been to Iraq. What was surprising about Baghdad is Baghdad was a very westernized city. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Iraq was very secular. You're from California where you live in California. You would be driving down a highway around Baghdad. And if it was nighttime, you'd think I could easily be on the I-5 here in California. I got in my residency program was from Baghdad.

And also, I just, my parents being from Egypt, they would say, look, Iraq is by far the most secular, wonderful place in the Middle East. Like such a stark contrast to Iran, such a stark contrast. For sure. In the 70s, even more so. So what your parents probably remember is like kind of Iraq and its heyday when it was kind of open and it was doing business with other countries and

everything. That's, you know, I remember even after the first Gulf War, my parents saying, look, Saddam Hussein is a horrible creature, but surprisingly, he is not religiously, like, he doesn't kill Christians, he sort of just lets people be sort of religiously what they want. Maybe that wasn't entirely correct, but their view was he was not as horrible as we thought, which again, maybe he was. I just remember my parents placing such a premium on the fact that he was religiously more tolerant than other leaders in the Middle East.

Now, again, I think that's always colored through your lens, right? That's colored through the lens of your experience and religious prosecution, but it does beg the question, which I think most people agree now, he was sort of bluffing with his weapons of mass destruction, right? I mean, this was sort of his way of showing strength to his people and potentially to his enemies. Who he had used them on. Yeah. Right. So it's like as much as you, again, this is going back to hindsight 2020, well, if he's

saying that he has weapons of mass destruction, and he's certainly used chemical weapons. And he has used them before. And he's saying that he has them. Well, then it's like, okay, I guess he has them. And there you go. But again, it just playing these stupid thought experiments, it's like, if he could have seen how it was going to end, wouldn't he have just come up with some sort of solution

that's like, you know what? Absolutely. Yeah, let the UN inspectors in. Of course he would have. Well, at least you'd like to think it was because he'd managed to maintain power in that country for a long time. He made some good decisions along the way, and he just screwed that one up.

Because he held the line of saying, look, I have these in their mind, and you can't come in here and inspect. And it was a bad call. God, God. So what does the future of warfare look like? I mean, when you think about the fact that we are still at war, most people, most of us as civilians, we're just so separated from it, we don't remember it. We just don't think about it.

But the lessons of the past 20 years, how have they shaped what could be the potential for future conflicts? In other words, are there people in the military that are spending a lot of time thinking very strategically about what military conflict is going to look like for the United States in the next 25 years? Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's really hard to predict exactly what it's going to look like, but let's face it. We're going to have technology. We already have drones that are running around,

can shoot weapons, and that's the way it's going to be, right? And will we have robots? Yes, we will. What's a robot versus a drone? I mean, it seems like the drones are going to be the more powerful in the air, air control. So yeah, you're going to end up with drones killing each other, and hopefully the drones will all fight the wars and the drones versus the robots. Will you eventually have all your drones destroyed, possibly? Will all your robots be defeated, possibly? And then what do you do? You're gonna be a human being on the ground. The drones really came into their maturity, maybe the line of the wrong word, but the drones really made a big step forward in this past decade, murder of the past 15 years.

For sure. What has been the net impact of that? Has it been more positive or more negative? Because you certainly hear extreme stories on both sides, right? Well, less people at risk directly, but oh, less discernment in the field. Definitely less people in danger, right?

For the good guys, quote, good guys. What scares people isn't the fact that the drone just is less discriminant than a human. I think it's just the fact that it's a drone because that's what scares people. Hey, a machine can come and kill me with no thought, no guilt, no remorse can just do it. Yeah, that's scary to a lot of people. I think it's the way that the future wars are going to be fought. Yeah. It's interesting because even when you take a step back and ask a broader question, which is, who will the United States be fighting in 25 years?

Let me ask you this. So a human being could do a surgery, right? And a robot could do a surgery. The robot can only do it through a surgeon's hands. So the surgeon is still sitting there at a console operating, which is presumably the same thing a drone is, a drone is not autonomous, right? Yeah, yeah. True. I guess where I was going with this is, it's kind of like with handmade cars versus cars that are made by a machine, and everyone thinks that the handmade things are better, and the reality is? They're not. Yeah.

And so I've seen some things, who's I talking to talking to someone that said if you don't have this type of technology If you have a human being doing this procedure on you you're in the wrong place Maybe it was you that was telling me that well you know it comes down to it comes down to you have to ask yourself the question What problem is being solved by the introduction of this technology? So we love technology right? So, when robotic surgery devices came along, the initial thought, I think, was this is going to completely replace surgery, but you have to take a step back and say, well, wait a minute, there are certain operations for which the robot makes so much sense, because there are certain things that the robot can do so much better. And you have to pair those things with it. So the best example I can think of is probably the

radical prostatectomy. And a man has prostate cancer and you want to remove it, but remove it not by going from the outside of him, like not by taking the shortest path to the prostate, but by going sort of through the retropeinium and the abdomen. That is such a hard operation to do with your hands, which is the way it has always been done. And to this day, some people still do it that way because it's so hard to see what the hell is going on. It's like operating in a deep, dark hole that's bloody. It's just miserable, right?

Well, what does the robot do? The robot allows you to have much finer motor control and much better visibility. Well, that operation is tailor-made for that. But there are some operations like breast augmentation. Visibility and tactile ability to do the operation are not remotely problematic. Right? It's a surface operation. So, could you for giggles and self-promotion or whatever say we're doing, you know, robot-assisted breast augmentation? Sure. Is it an advantage?

No. It's a drawback. I guess where I was trying to go with that, and I think I might have failed, but... I mean, I think your point is there are probably applications where drones and robots make way more sense, but there are probably places where the opposite is true, right? The point I was trying to make was we inherently trust another human being more than we trust a robot. Even though the robot might be able to do a better job, right? I mean, if a robot kills someone on the operating table, then it's like, oh my god, how could that happen? But we know that surgeons

kill people on the operating table as well, and you think, oh, well, it must have been an accident or whatever. So we inherently trust that the human being is going to do a better job than the robots going to do. But when robots do things in combat that get people harmed, is the mistake usually the human mistake on the other end or is at this juncture? Yes, just like in most cases with a robot surgery, it's okay, those surgeon put in the wrong input, right? But in the future it may be that you're actually having this drone make a little bit more of the decision and

That really can scare some people. I think people inherently don't trust robots to make decisions that are life and death. Yeah, I know like this is not something I know anything about, but I love driverless cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's just do that one, right? Driverless cars. Okay, which one? I'll take driverless cars all day long. There you go. No questions asked. And yet, when a driverless car gets in an accident, it's on the front page, right? It's on the front page because, oh my god, this thing let this happen. What? 50,000 people die every year? No, it's more than that. Okay. So whatever the number is the crazy number I think it's about a little over a million people die a year in the world in car accidents and yet It's like 1.2 million one Tesla It's a wall somewhere because the program failed or whatever happened happened and it's on the front page and we don't trust that

But we trust a 16 year old. Oh, yeah That's the most agreed to the best example of a lot. Yeah, so we trust a 16-year-old. Oh, yeah. That's the most agreed to, the best example of a lot. So we can't predict what the world's going to look like in 25 years, let alone who our quote unquote, enemies are going to be or what the tools and technologies of warfare are going to be. How much time do you spend thinking about the fact that one day you're not going to be around for your kids? Hopefully, right?

Hopefully, your kids outlive you. You don't know what the world's going to look like, but you want to prepare them to be successful in whatever way that means to you, right? Could be being happy, can mean being safe, it can mean being productive, having it since purpose. How do you think about instilling that into your kids today? And so much of what we think of the work you do is with the world's best teams, right? Military, business, et cetera. But in many ways, probably your greatest lessons probably come around a kitchen table. Well, this is why I wrote the kids' books that I've written. It's because the things that I think kids need to know in order to become good humans,

I put them in those books and they are very clear, very simple lessons that are very easy to understand, they're timeless and that's why I did it. That makes it, I had a guy ask me the other day who was at a speaking company and a guy said, you know, these things that you talk about, they're so powerful and they're so meaningful and these theories and these principles that you live by are

just so important. What are you doing to transfer these to kids? And I was like, well, luckily you don't know this, but I've written four kids books. And that's exactly what they are, these principles. So way the warrior kid, that's what it is. What do your kids think about? Because you're their dad, right? You're not Jacko, you're dad.

That's really different. And that means that they get pissed off at you. And that means that they think you're being unfair at times. And that means. You notice the hesitation of my voice when I said they get pissed off at me. They don't really get pissed off at me. They don't really get pissed off at me. I don't impose things that don't make sense on them.

And the things that I steer them towards, they know that they're correct. And so you can't get mad at someone for telling you something that's going to help you. And I think they've all grown up enough, and one thing I was careful as they got older is to make sure that they developed their own interpretation of what I was saying. I didn't want to impose things because I did that too much when they were little.

When they were little, I forced Gigi to on them too hard. And not only that, but I made them train, I made them compete. I made them train all the time. I made them compete against people that were older than them, bigger than them, heavier weight classes more advanced. And so it wasn't fun, because they would get beat. And that's not fun.

And so as they got a little bit older, as I started to try and actually incorporate the values and the principles that I kind of attempt to live my life by, I was careful not to make the same mistake of imposing these things so hard, but instead allowing them to discover the principles truths for themselves. So, do they see in you vulnerability? I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they do see too much vulnerability in me. I think they know that my best friend died last year and they definitely saw that my heart was crushed. And so I think that And so I think that was probably the time where they really realized Dad's hurt. He's hurt bad. And that's the way it is.

Is that vulnerable? Perhaps, I guess. Is that me being a human being? I guess. One of the things my wife talks about with me a lot and reminds me of the importance of is being really good at telling them when I make mistakes and apologizing when I make mistakes, which I make a lot of, right? I mean, I make mistakes all the time,

come home and sort of a shitty mood and take it out on them a little bit. And again, it's not like extreme, right? It's not like, you know, walk him across the head, but it's just like, walk him across the arm. We're just like, you know, like, saying, hey, how many times have I told you

to turn the light off in your room? Okay, well, 50. So make this the 50 first, but was that tone necessary? Is there another way I could have said it right? Well, the reality was I'm pissed off about something totally different. And like being able to sort of apologize for that. And that's something that's very new to me. Like it's something I've never really had much practice in.

I mean, do you think about stuff like that? Do you feel like to be a good dad? I've got to be able to show them all the times I make mistakes and not be afraid of it and let them see that I'm human and that I screw up every day. And, or do you feel that that just comes naturally to you? I mean, I guess that's pretty easy for you.

Yeah, I'm not high to any mistakes when I screw something up. I laugh at it and say, well, that was an idiot. Look at that. To me, that's no factor. I have no ego when it comes to that kind of thing. The big joke in my family is that I don't really like technology. I don't get along well with printers and things like that. So they don't work. My family laughs at me because I get mad at them.

And that's the only time I allow myself to be mad because it's an inanimate object. So I can be mad at something that has no feelings, right? So I have fun with it. So you like that scene in office space? I play a game. I kind of play it up a little bit. That technology bothers me. Let's my kids see me get mad and yell at my computer and call it names and just have fun with it. But no, it's no factor to me. One thing I think is that people probably have the impression

that I'm some kind of tyrannical, authoritarian father and I'm not. It's funny. I wouldn't get that impression, actually. Okay. Well, I should rephrase that. You might not think that. But from the surface, when people see me because I look like a serial killer and I was in a military for a long time and all that, people think, oh, this guy must be a tyrannical dad. And I'm actually very much similar to, well, not even very much similar, leading a family and leading your

kids is the same way you lead an organization. The same way you lead a team. And if you bark orders at your team, your team doesn't like you. They don't respect you and they're not going to carry out those orders with any sort of commitment. Whereas if you allow them to come up with what the plan is, you let them know what the goal is and you allow them to forge what their idea is and what their plan is going to be, they're going to commit to that plan and they're going to go execute it because it's their plan.

And so that's the way you should lead your family. That's the way you should lead your team. That's decentralized command. It's one of the major lessons that I learned in my military career and now working with civilians. In the minute you decide you're going to bark orders at people and impose your discipline upon them, they're going to reject it. And so you've got to be careful about that. So let's turn our discussion to a topic that I get asked about more than anything else whenever your name comes up. Gee, can you guess what this is going to be? Yeah, I was following your Twitter and your Instagram when you were asking, hey, what do you want to talk about? And what, 50% of the people said ask them about sleep or tell them to listen to the doctor Walker.

Matt Walker did. Talk to Dr. Walker and he should listen to the doctor walker. Matt Walker. Yeah. To talk to Dr. Walker and he should listen to that, which I got that because he was on Joe Rogan as well. And so I got a million tweets about that. And I responded that one of the fun ones I had was you need to listen to Walker on Joe Rogan when it first came out. And I said, I listened to it. And if what that guy was saying was applicable to me,

I would be 120 pounds, I would be disease-ridden, I would be weak, depressed, and have bad skin. That's what he was saying, and that's where I should be. So, Well, let's talk actually practical. So tell me a typical, let's not get into jet lag or different time zones or stuff, but when you're in San Diego,

what time are you typically going to bed? Go to bed 11, wake up at 4.30. Okay, you go to bed at 11 and talk to me about the routine before bed. What are you doing? When do you stop looking at electronics? When are you eating your last meal? Like, let's just get home from GJT around 7.30 or 8. I eat sometime after that.

Usually that's my biggest meal. So there's another big jaco faux pas. Not necessarily, but we're not passing judgment here. I just want to get the meal in and then I'll do a little bit of work. I'll hang around with my kids. Then I'll do some work and then when 1040, 1030 rolls around, I'll brush my teeth. So you're in bed at 11. You fall asleep pretty quickly. The fall asleep, but like almost immediately you get up at all in the middle of the night Maybe but not that big of a deal you wake up with an alarm or without I set an alarm if I don't set an alarm

But then I cannot sleep at all. Sorry. I say that again if you don't set the alarm your anxiety. Yes Okay, yeah, so you set the alarm for what time? 430 and how many times do you wake up from the alarm versus... 50% And half the time you've just woken up on your own at what time typically? Between four and 430. Okay. When you wake up without the alarm, how do you feel?

Fine. When you wake up with the alarm, do you feel any different? No. How many times a month do you wake up and feel tired? I don't know. I'm not sure. The tired that I know you're not talking about is physically tired meaning I'm sore. I'm tired. Like, I know that's not what you mean. I know you just mean like, oh, I'm tired. I want to go back to bed. Yes. I don't get a lot of that. I'm physically tired.

And this is something that when I was going to college, I was training Jiu-Jitsu two to four hours every single day and lifting and surfing, do whatever. But Jiu-Jitsu was hardcore at the time. And then at the end of one year, whatever, my exams piled up and I had like four days of exams and I had to study and I skipped Jiu-Jitsu. And I like the third day with no Jiu-Jitsu. I got up out of bed and I was like, dude, I feel like Superman. I was like, what, no, why do I feel so awesome? And it's because I fully rested. So I usually feel some a little bit sore in the morning, but I don't generally feel like, oh, I want to go back to bed right now.

Do you ever nap in the day? Yes. What time? It depends. If I'm tired of nap. I probably nap two days out of seven. Typically how long is the nap? Eight minutes. Oh, so I wouldn't even call that a nap, but okay. So it's not like a 90 minute nap.

Oh, no, no, no. If I take a 90 minute nap, I won't be able to go to sleep at night. If I take a 90 minute nap, I'm up until two o'clock in the morning. So the eight minute nap, oh, you told me about this once before. Tell us your routine.

Elevate your feet above your heart and then set an alarm for eight minutes, 10 minutes at the most, maybe 12. But if I do 12, now I feel a little bit groggy when I wake up, eight minutes, I feel like Superman, I feel like I just slept for eight hours. And you don't consume a hell of a lot of caffeine. You don't drink coffee, right?

You're a tea guy. I drink tea when I need it. I mean, you drink white tea and stuff. I mean, the Jaco tea, which I can't believe I didn't ask you to bring more Jaco tea. You're not going for it. You did? Yeah. Thanks, brother. I mean, the Jocco tea, which I can't believe I didn't ask you to bring more Jocco tea. You're not going for it. You did? Yeah.

Thanks, brother. I fucking love Jocco tea. Yeah. But you're not a caffeine junkie. Nope. In fact, caffeine has a pretty big effect on me. Stimulating. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like I feel caffeine. Feel it a lot. So if I'm doing a long drive, I'm going to be awake for more than 24 hours, and it's nighttime. I'll drink some caffeine for sure. Was this the same in high school? I don't really remember. Let me rephrase that. I slept just normal woke up in the morning did what I had to do Went to bed when I was tired Probably slept somewhat similar to the same hours

Didn't wake up as early but stayed up later. It's funny. Yeah, I've tried to remember what I was like in high school sleep wise, but I also know I wasn't sleeping a lot. I remember what I did. Like I remember what my bedtime routine was exercise wise and what my morning exercise routine was like. And just doing the math on how many hours it would have taken to do this stuff. I probably only slept six hours a night in high school,

which I think today I would caution against, of course. If I go to bed early for whatever reason, let's say I go to bed at 9.30. I'll wake up at 3.30. That's probably a better answer to your question of how often. So basically at six hours, I'm like, that's a normal sleep cycle for me. Six hours, I'm like, I'm a rock and roll. You don't have one of these rings, do you? The aura ring or any of these sleep tracking devices.

I do not. You're kind of curious to put one on you, I'd be sort of, they're very good at tracking duration of sleep and obviously not entirely accurate on staging, but pretty good. It'd be interesting to see the efficiency of your sleep because I suspect it is efficient if nothing else. My guess is it is.

That is my guess. Is that when I sleep, I sleep hard. And I'll wake up. I sweat a lot. I'll have bad dreams And I'll wake up, I sweat a lot. I'll have bad dreams and I'll wake up like in a disgusting puddle of sweat sometimes. How many times a month would that happen? Oh, it happens a lot.

Yeah, it happens a lot. And yeah, and actually I got the thing that cools your bed and that helps me. Yes, I have a chili pad. Kelly sent me one and that definitely helps. And matter of fact, if I use that, I don't have those things. So, that's kind of weird. I don't know how to explain that. Yeah. I'll have a dream that something's happening,

and I'm running away, or I'm pulling myself, or I'm engaged in some kind of a combat situation. And I'm running out of bored. I'm out of bullets, like those kind of nightmares, and I'll wake up. running out of boredom, out of bullets, like those kind of nightmares, and I'll wake up. Did the exertion that I put out in the dream is reflected in my sweat would I wake up? So. How often are those dreams about scenarios that are real, like that you've seen in the past

versus totally contrived? First of all, I don't remember all of them, but I'll remember, like that split second when I wake up, I'm like, oh man, I've been running. Oh, okay, oh yeah, this is nasty. Our mutual friend the person who introduced us is Kirk Parsley. Have you and Kirk spent time talking about this stuff? You know what? We only have a joke back and forth on Twitter. He tells me to sleep more. I tell him no. One of the interesting experiments that Kirk talked about with me many years ago, and I'm

going to sort of bastardize it, but the gist of it was they basically took a bunch of guys in the military, highly sleep deprived, and then put them in an environment where they were forced to be in darkness for some period of time. I want to say it was like, I think it was like 10 hours a day or something like that. And the idea was, or maybe it was 12 hours of pure darkness, 12 hours of time, I want to say it was like, I think it was like 10 hours a day or something like that. And the idea was, or maybe it was 12 hours of pure darkness, 12 hours of light, but with no sense of time, I don't think they had access to any clock.

And within two weeks, they were all basically sleeping something like seven and a half to nine hours a night, even though they hadn't been sleeping close to that in the past. So it begs the question, right, have you done the experiment? If for no other reason than just out of pure curiosity to what would happen if you slept seven and a half hours a day instead of six,

what would be the impact on your memory, your performance? The closest thing I can say to that is like I said, sometimes I'll be really tired and go to bed early and I wake up six hours later. I'll get up and start working because even if I have nothing to do, I'll get up and be like, okay, well, I'm not gonna lay here anymore. But no, I haven't done any experiment like that. The interesting thing to think about how to do it, right?

You don't want to conduct that experiment by taking a bunch of ambient and sleeping 12 hours because that's not sleep either. You've told me before, I think at least one of your kids is similar. Yeah, and so this is when people get mad at me, which they do get mad at me about they say, you're encouraging people not to sleep and I'm absolutely not doing that. I think people should sleep as much as you need.

I believe that sleep is important. That's why I sleep almost every single day. That's a joke, but um, I got it, but I was drinking from my topo chico. I don't discourage sleep. I think sleep is important and I one thing that I've seen is I've seen I've watched people's cognitive Abilities go down when they're tired. I've seen it. I've watched it happen like a guy gets tired and all the sudden he can't make good decisions I've seen that over and over and over again So I know that people should sleep and should sleep

as much as they need, right? They totally agree with that. I think that there's a chance that people need different amounts of sleep. One of the things that has led me to believe that is that I have four kids. Each one of my kids has their own sleep pattern that they've developed on their own. I never mandated that my kids wake up when I wake up or anything. My oldest daughter, when she was in high school, I would go to bed 11 o'clock and she'd be awake studying and I'd wake up at 4.30 and she'd be awake studying. She would do that all the time and she'd go to school. No factor. She does not need sleep like a normal person. My middle daughter, she will sleep until you pull her out of bed.

She will go to sleep as early as she wants or she can and then she'll sleep until you pull her out of bed. My son is somewhere in the middle. And my youngest daughter, I don't have any judgment about right now. So there seems to be some genetic role that is in play here because my oldest daughter barely sleeps and my wife sleeps a lot and I barely sleep. So that's just maybe the way it is. Yeah, I would love to, you know, I'm going to be seeing Matt Walker soon.

And the three of us should just get together and because I'd love to propose sort of, what are things that we could check in you to make sure they're okay, right? Just that of like total curiosity, right? Like, you know, one of the things we talked about on our podcast was a single night of mist sleep would alter the brain's ability to clear amyloid

or maybe it was tau, but something that was sort of toxic to the brain. And you could document this by doing lumbar punctures on patients pre and post. And you can have a root canal and we'll follow it up with a lumbar puncture. But one of the things that you propose that can't be discounted, right? I mean, it has to be at least acknowledged as plausible is there have to be differences between people. And it's certainly entirely possible that what you need is different from what I need

because I've done the experiment, right? So I used to be the guy that only slept five or six hours a night. But when I did the experiment of sleeping seven and a half to eight and a half hours a night, the benefit was significant enough that it justified the less time. You don't feel groggy. When you sleep eight hours, you don't feel like slow. No. You don't feel like a lack of mental clarity. No. You don't feel like you're physically not at your peak when you sleep that much.

No. No. Now, again, the challenge that I have is that I travel a lot. So I don't have the luxury of being in the same time zone. Put it this way, the longest I've been in the same time zone in the past eight years is four weeks. I'm probably worse than, or at least as bad as that. So that interferes with stuff a little bit, but when I get those like two week stretches,

where I get to be in one time zone and I can dial in same time every night to go to bed, same time every morning to wake up, I mean, it definitely feels good. And also I look back at my sort of most unhealthy period of my life when I was overweight and heavily insulin resistant and all of those things. And I had historically placed a lot of that blame just on my diet. I now believe at least half of that blame

belongs on my sleep deprivation. Sometimes I'll travel and I'll go somewhere and I'll show up and the time benefit is to me and all of a sudden like, oh cool, I can sleep, I can set my alarm clock and I'm really tired right now and I'll set my alarm clock and I'll wake up in 10 hours. And so I'll do that and I'll go to bed and I'll wake up seven hours or eight hours later and I don't feel like I feel groggy. I guess that's just jet lag, I guess. Yeah, it also might be that you haven't hit an equilibrium. I mean, I think that would be

the question right. Is there an equilibrium where you got to go through a sort of reconciliation period for your body to sort of get used to it? But I mean, I appreciate you saying this stuff because there's one question I get asked, which is like the moment somebody knows I know you. It's like, when are you gonna talk him about sleep? You're right, people get upset about it, not I suspect it's because they think that are they're interpreting what you're saying

as don't sleep and I appreciate you clarifying that. Now that gets to a couple of the other questions that I've actually written down from the Instagram stuff, which was actually great. It kind of worked out as like a mini Q&A before we met. So I'm gonna just read them verbatim. Describe a time when you gave up. How did you deal with that in the end? How did you bounce back? How do you tell a difference between giving up quitting versus the smarter calling it quits? This is what

we've been talking about all day, strategy versus tactics. You sometimes in a tactical situation have to give up because you've taken the wrong path, you've got the wrong plan, you didn't suspect something was gonna unfold the way it did. And so you have to give up, you have to quit on that plan. What you don't want to give up on is your strategic goal.

And so you got to make those adaptations all the time and I can give you the countless millions of times that I've said, you know what, this plan that I had isn't really working out. I'm going to stop doing that plan. I'm going to quit on that plan. And I'm going to go from a different direction because I still want to reach my strategic goal. Now, what about quitting on the other side, which is quitting in a moment of weakness? I don't want to keep doing this even though I should keep doing this. If you want to keep doing it, why would you stop doing it? So I'll give you an example from my life. In marathon swimming,

you are disqualified the moment you touch the boat. So, and every swim has their own set of rules. So I've never been in a marathon swim, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how miserable I was, no matter how cold, scared, thought I saw sharks, or I wanted to touch the boat. However, there was one swim I did that was actually a relatively short swim. It wouldn't qualify as a marathon swim. It's called the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim.

So it's out near Maryland, and it's a four and a half mile swim from one side to the other. And you swim between a span to enormous bridge spans. And you are disqualified from the race if you can't stay within the current and you slip outside of the span. So there are boats on either side of the spans that are there and any swimmer who gets pushed out gets yanked up. Can't remember what year it was, but there was one year when I felt like

this is my year to sort of be in the top 10. Like I really felt dialed. I trained specifically for that distance, which is not really my sweet spot. And I had looked at all the times and the previous year I had done well and I was like, you know what, I'm there. I'm gonna be top 10 of a race that nobody cares about. I couldn't be a less relevant goal here.

And everyone who's ever done anything knows the feeling of 10 seconds in, you know, it's not your day. You know what I mean? Like it's just the next hour and 55 minutes are going to suck. And by the way, it's not going to be an hour 55, it's going to be two hours and 15 minutes today. So I'm a quarter mile half a mile, maybe maybe a mile into this race. And I'm feeling horrible like it's just not clicking like I don't have that groove. I can't understand why but you know I've had this experience many times before in training. So I'm taking a stroke and I'm outstretched. So right arm in front, left arm in the cat, in the high position recovery, and the swimmer in front of me, not of course on purpose, kicks down really hard. Hits my arm, I sublex my shoulder. So now my shoulder, my humerus

is out of socket. So a miserable day has gone to become now a much more miserable day. I put the shoulder back in, I do have relatively loose right shoulder from boxing, so I'm able to put it back in while treading water, but of course it hurts like hell. So I now realize you're not going to finish in the top 10, dude. You're going to just finish. And I'm just upset. Like I'm in pain, I'm upset. I'm just frankly just being a little whiny bitch. And so I just got, like put your head down and swim,

just put your head down and swim. And what I really remember struggling with as clear as day and this is like 13, 14, 15 years ago, the struggle I had that moment was I wanted to let the current push me out. You see, in that swim, the current is perpendicular to you. The reason this swim takes as long as it does for the distance it does is you're not actually

just swimming straight, you're swimming against a current, perpendicular. So it's very easy to go out and get disqualified. Like it just means you just have to stop fighting the current. And I remember this was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I just wanted to quit so badly.

I was like, look, there's no shame. No one don't even know, dude. It's a strong current. You got pushed out, your shoulder got dislocated. Like, just get it over with. Now I didn't. I don't know why. I don't think I deserve a hero cookie for not.

I was like, no, I just couldn't bring myself to let, but I wanted to so badly. And I guess that's sort of my story that would be the answer to that question, which was, that was the hardest thing I ever did. And by the way, I didn't feel good when I got to the shore. You'd think I felt great. You did it. You conquered your demon. My wife to this day still tells the story of how pissed I was when I got to that beach. She said, you got out of the water, you walked past me, you didn't even say anything to me, you grabbed a bottle of water on the thing and you said, let's get the fuck out of here. Like, I mean, it was just like, again, there was nothing beautiful or majestic about conquering my demon on that day. I mean, I mean, it was just like, again, there was nothing beautiful or majestic

about conquering my demon on that day. I mean, I just, I was miserable. I hated every second of that. And, but I still remember it. I didn't perform there. I wanted to going in. And then I was just like, it's one of these things. Like, I'm starting to blame everything.

Oh, this guy kicks my shoulder. Now I'm dislocated shoulder. And I'm in, yeah, blah, blah. And as, yeah, yeah. You know, I just got into this awful negative spiral. And then I fought this fight against myself where I wanted to quit, but I couldn't quite let myself. And I knew enough to know that if you quit now, you're going to really regret it in about

an hour. That's what I'm going to say. It's like, you might have been pissed that you got kicked and didn't place where you wanted to place. But what you knew in the back of your head is that you let yourself drift out of that thing. And that moment is gonna haunt you for a long, long time. Despite your efforts to rationalize it, despite your excuses that you're gonna make

and the blame you're gonna cast on everyone else, you're gonna know that at that moment, you quit. And that, you knew that in the back of your head, that's why he swam on, you're still pissed off, but guess what? You took the lesser of two evils because you washing out of that thing, you would've heard more. Have you had struggles like that?

Where you really, really wanted to just tap out. I was paddling out on a giant day in Ocean Beach, and that's not the San Francisco Ocean Beach. That's the Ocean Beach San Diego. I was paddling out on a big, big giant day where I was with my best friend, and we were paddling out, and it was a huge giant close out day of surfing.

And I was on a pretty big board that was hard to duck dive and I didn't have a leash on, which means that you have to hold that thing and get through the surf. And I paddled for a long, long time and I didn't make it up. So the only time. But hang on, is that just because you physically

couldn't make it happen or did you quit? Well, I mean, I didn't make it out, right? I mean, I didn't make it out. I tried for a long time and I didn't make it out. Okay, but that's like me saying, Jaco, I want you to fly. I want you to flap your arms really, really hard until you get onto my roof. Yeah. Well, whatever it was, it left me with a feeling of defeat. And I thought to myself, well, that was pretty weak. Yeah, but is that any different than not hitting a deadlift rep that you want to hit or a rep count on something?

Okay, I'm not sure. I guess the reason I bring that up is because you're, when did I walk away? Well, I could have paddled more. I guess is what I'm saying. I mean, I could have paddled more. I don't know if I would have made it or not. I don't wear a leash a lot. That was one day I was thinking, man, if I just had a leash because if you had a leash, you can just let go of your board. You can just dive into the waves and you can swim out. That's fine. But when you have to haul that board through with no rope, it's kind of a pain. Then I didn't make it. So that kind of feeds into another really interesting question, right? Which was, does Jaco understand that others may have difficulty with things that are easy for him?

Here's the problem with that statement. The problem with that statement is, and this is something that I've experienced with my kids, and I've experienced it with other people that are in my life as well, which is, well, it's different for you. It's like, oh, well, it's easy for you to get up early in the morning. It's easy for you to work out every day. It's easy for you to write a thousand words because you're different and you're you. So I don't really like that concept of putting me in some position where I'm some kind of superhero because I'm not, man, I'm not. I'm a normal human. And here's the dichotomy.

The dichotomy is, I know that I'm not normal. I know that I say that, but I also know that there's another weird thing going on because, okay, on the surface, the very initial thing you look at me and you think, oh, this guy's not normal, right? Then you get to know me a little bit and you go, yeah, you know what, this guy's pretty normal. Like, he's a pretty normal guy. The thing that is not normal is like the real, the deeper level. That's where it's not normal. That's where it's like, yeah, I will not stop, you know what I mean? Like, there's that little thing in there, but I don't overtly run around with that because it's offensive to a lot of people. And part of my but I don't overtly run around with that because it's offensive to a lot of people. And part of my job has been not being offensive to people and trying to be a part of a team and

and have a team and be a good team member. And so if you're constantly rubbing things in people's faces that doesn't help your mission. You can't bark out your attitude on people all the time because what you're supposed to be doing is being a part of a team. So as far as that question goes, I know I'm not 100% normal, but you know what, no one's 100% normal. My reading of that question is, I think that person is looking for,

and again, I don't know who wrote this, but they're looking for some acknowledgement. Have you got into the deep discussion with Sam Harris on free will? No, we've danced around it a little bit, but I'm sure one of the reasons that we haven't had that discussions because that's what he does.

He talks about free will. He wrote a damn book called free will. So we haven't really had a big discussion about it because he'd say, hey, you don't make your own choices. And I'd say, well, watch this, because I'm gonna make a choice right now. And then he'd say, well, that choice was based upon your genetic makeup the time that you spent on Earth.

And I don't know. I don't know. No, it's such an interesting topic, right? Of all the things that Sam writes about and talks about, this is the one that bends my brain the most. But here's where I am today. I still don't know if I believe in free will. I would say this.

I used to absolutely believe in free will. Today I'm a free will agnostic. Maybe I'll be a free will atheist. Actually Sam told me, we were talking about what we were gonna talk about. I think we were gonna do another podcast. We were gonna do a live podcast or something. And he said, I'd really like to talk about free will

and extreme ownership. He says, because they really align. And I was like, Hey, cool. I can talk about extreme ownership. You can talk about it. Well, because that way, I don't have to study and go deep on that subject. Because to me, it's like this, call it whatever you want. If I want to do something, I'll do it. And if I don't want to do something, I won't do it. Kind of an interesting concept. Of course. And when you come at it through that lens, which is, I bet you and I went through the same things like, I would come up with counter examples all the time. What's like, if you told me to walk into a store and pick something out, I promise you I have a choice of which

thing I'm picking out, which is an easier example than think of three movies. Tell me the first three movies that pop into your head. Well, that one's a little harder, right? To say that you picked those three movies. You know where I've shaken out on this? It has given me a little bit more understanding of people that don't share my work ethic, that don't share some of the values that I have. Because I think it used to be so hard for me to acknowledge the existence of people who didn't just want to crush it every minute of every day. It just bugged me. Yeah.

It just bothered me. And I tried to separate it from the person, but deep down I think I harbored a resentment that I think has melted away significantly as a result of it. I think that's a really good point and I never framed it that way, but I tell people all the time from a leadership perspective, people are the way they are. And so that basically is saying they don't have free will, right? So I would have to

agree with that. There's, and you can have some level of influence on it, but you've got a person on your team and they have a certain type of attitude and you can move it a little bit to the left or to the right. You can give them a little bit of course correction, but they're going to be that person. And the only thing that can change them is them. So maybe that's why I'd have to push back a little bit because when you meet someone, I'm sure you've known people, I've known people in my life

that have radically transformed their life. There's been a transformation that has taken place that they went from being one type of person to being another type of person, right? Do you know people like that? I mean, you can take a person that's an addict, this is a really obvious example, and they come clean. Okay, Cool. So they've made a radical transformation in their life. That's that's good, but you can't impose that transformation upon them. They have to come to that conclusion

that they want to change. I was having a conversation with a guy that I worked with in a company overseas, and he was saying, hey, and this guy's made some pretty radical transformations in his own life. You know, he went from kind of being, he's opened up a bunch of businesses, he's making a ton of money now, he's doing really well. And he was not doing that well before. And he said, got a new business partner in this one business that I'm doing and can I change this guy? Can I change this guy? I realized maybe I shouldn't have partnered with him, but can I change him? And I said, no.

Because these are text conversations. And I'm, you're a joke. I said, no. No. And then he replied, you changed me. And then I replied, you changed you. Sure, I illuminated the path, but he's the one that decided he was gonna change.

And that's the same thing with his business partners is you can't impose the change on him. You control the path though. And then hopefully they make the transition. Well, well, maybe that's the same thing with his business partners is you can't impose the change on them. You can show them the path though. And then hopefully they make the transition. Well, well, maybe that's the answer to this next question that actually dovetails nicely, even though it was asked by a different person, which is, how does Jocco work with people who have virtually the opposite mindset? So, for example, make excuses externalize, blame others, procrastinate, how do you work with such people and get the best out of them when you have to? The answer is you get the best out of people that you can. And when somebody makes

an excuse to me, you know what I do? If I'm working with Peter and I say, Peter, that project didn't get done. And I'm your boss and Peter says, well, you know, we didn't get the funding that we're supposed to have. And I say, okay, you know what, that's my fault. What can we do to get you the funding? Or you say, hey, I didn't have the resources that I needed. Okay, well, that's my fault, because I didn't get you the research, or you say, well, you didn't give me enough people. And I say, okay, well, then I need to get you more people.

Or I need to lower the scope of which you need to get done. Because if you're making a bunch of excuses, I'm gonna own them. And by the way, that goes up and down the chain of command. So if I'm working for you, and you're not giving me more I need, that's my fault too. And when you get people together like that, If I'm working for you and you're not giving me more I need, that's my fault too. And when you get people together like that, that's when people start taking ownership

of everything. And not everyone is going to like that. Some people do not like to take ownership. Like the person that's being used here in this example is some people will never take ownership of everything because it hurts their ego and they don't want to be blamed for everything. And so they just would rather slough it off. And what's great about those people is they won't last inside my organization.

They'll get eaten up, they'll get consumed. And maybe you're in a communist type scenario or whatever HR's not gonna let you, I mean, there's all kinds of situations where you can't get rid of the person because they don't have a good work ethic. So then what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get the best I can out of them.

It's something I'm gonna do. You can't fire. People think, oh, this is different because you're in the sealed teams. If someone's not doing their job, you can just get rid of them. No, actually, you can't. And if you I can out of them. It's one of them I do know. You can't fire. People think, oh, this is different because you know the sealed team's if someone's not doing their job, you can just get rid of them. No, actually you can't. And if you do get rid of them,

guess what you're gonna get for a replacement. No one. So do you really wanna get rid of someone? Do they have any value that they can add? So that's what we're looking to do. Get the best you can out of people, take ownership of things that they're making excuses about, and get them fixed.

I mean, the extreme ownership is so disarming that I think that's part of its power, right? And like who expects to hear that, right? For sure. And I'll tell you, we've been talking a lot about kids today. One of the best things that I figured out with my kids was when they would mess something up instead of me saying, you didn't do your homework, it was, hey,

I got a call from your teacher and she said that you didn't do your homework again. I feel like I'm not even being a good dad because here is the most important thing that you can do in your life is become smarter. And somehow I haven't made that impression on you. And now you're missing out on simple things that are going to improve your ability to contend with the world by being the smartest possible human you can be. And I haven't done a good job. What is there anything that I can do that will help you realize why it's so important that you improve your intellect at every chance possible that you get you become smarter because you're going to be out there in the world one day. And I'm not going to be there. You're going to be on

your own. And the only way you're going to be able to survive is because of your brain. And right right now I haven't done a good job of explaining to you that that's the most important weapon that you have So when you flip that on them they realize that is that it going you do homework? What's wrong with you? Guess what they're doing. They're blaming their teacher. They're blaming you. They're blaming everyone else But if you take ownership they'll take ownership Okay, here's an actually an awesome question. I would have never thought to have asked you this I'll read it in its entirety and let you answer. I really want to know if he indulges. Ever, specifically, does he drink alcohol?

And if he does, how often, what kind? It's always overlooked in all of the interviews done by Tim, you and others. I'm surprised. No, I don't drink alcohol. Okay. I don't think I knew that actually. I've never been with you drinking, so I, but I didn't know that, is that a decided policy? Like did you decide at some point in life, I'm not. No, I don't drink alcohol. Okay. I don't think I knew that actually. I've never been with you drinking so I but I didn't know that is that a decided policy like did you decide at some point in life?

I'm not drinking at all when I retired from the Navy. I stopped drinking. I didn't even think about it. I retired from the Navy. Obviously, I wasn't hanging around with a bunch of my friends anymore. All of a sudden we weren't in random cities out there out for dinner and hanging out and doing that. And then I looked up in a month, and I looked up in two months, and I looked up in three months, and I'd had a beer here and there, and that was that. So now I just don't drink at all.

So now as policy, like if you're a dinner, and there's a glass of wine being poured, you're not gonna have a glass of wine. What is your biggest indulgence then? Let's start with food. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's a big list. Like I really like it. Good, let's hear it.

Chocolate, dark chocolate. What percentage is the sweet spot for you? Well, when you say sweet spot, That's a big list. Like I really like it. Good. Let's hear it. Chocolate, dark chocolate. What percentage is the sweet spot for you? Well, when you say sweet spot, which is optimum for nutrition and health? No, no, no, no. Optumum for intelligence. 72%. Okay.

72%. And I lie to myself and like, you know, that's still dark chocolate. We know it's not. And the way you can take the way I can tell, when something is the right level of darkness is when it tastes good, but you don't want more. When you get a good, for me, 82 squares of 80 to 85 percent, and I'm satisfied. And I don't even want any more. 72 percent.

I want that whole bar and the box that the bar came in. Dude, that is a perfect metric for life. I completely agree with you, by the way. You throw me a box of milk chocolate. I can eat all of it. A hundred, it's just too dark. There's no pleasure in it, right? But sort of that 85 to 90.

For me, it's four squares, but four squares of that with like a decaf espresso within it is like, yeah, you don't need to eat the whole thing. You could nurse that bar for a week. Yeah. Yeah. Besides chocolate, what's a true indulgence? Meaning something that is just patently not great for you in large quantities. Oh, just name foods.

Come on, it's weird because I really love steak a lot. And that's by far my favorite food and steak and chicken and pork. So that's fine. But yeah, I mean, I love freaking normal stuff that people love. Mint chocolate chip milkshakes used to be real like I would be stoked, and I would earn them. I would do something crazy, and I'd be like,

you deserve it. And then I ended up making a supplement that's equivalent, right, it's equivalent to a mint chocolate chip milkshake. It's, I made that. And then once I made that, now there's no reason to, which is a crazy thought. But yeah. The supplements like a sports powder?

Yeah, yeah. It's called m, o with an umlaut, lk. And the reason it's called mulk, I made up that word. Because when I tasted it, when I got it right, I was like, this is, this needs its own word. You mix it with milk or water. Mix it with milk. Yeah, I mix it with milk.

I'm gonna order some. With water, I describe it like this. With water, it kind of tastes like a ham sandwich. Like it's good, but it's not enough to like really get excited about. It's fine, but you could do it with like, I love cashew milk as my favorite type of milk. Yeah, because it's fatty enough.

Yes, cashew milk, coconut milk, regular milk. What's the sweetener you use in it? Monk root. Oh, great. Big fan of the monk root. No, it's, that's the game changer. As far as I can tell, that's the game changer. And the other important thing is don't overlook alulose for next editions. Okay. So alulose actually just approved by the FDA two days ago in its citizen petition to have the FDA correctly acknowledge it for what it is. So, alulose is an enantomer of fructose, meaning it is something that has the same chemical nomenclature as fructose, but it has one different position of a bond. It's about 70% the sweetness

of fructose, which is still to say it's sweet, but most importantly are two things. One, it has the exact same flavor, ask, and mouth feel as sugar, but here's the best part. It's not absorbed. It's excreted by the kidneys. So for every four grams you ingest only for every gram, I'm sorry, you're only getting like one tenth of the absorption. So if that's not good enough, the other property is, it seems to drag glucose out with it. So when you consume alulose, like for example, I have a bunch of it here. Let's say how to tea or a coffee and you put alulose in it,

it would lower your blood sugar. That's impressive. Because it's dragging glucose out with it. And doing so, not into your gut, where you get gastrointestinal distress, but actually into your kidney. So yeah, so it's really interesting. And for up until two days ago, the FDA was basically calling it basically an added sugar.

So you weren't getting the quote unquote credit for it. So manufacturers weren't using it much because it showed up looking like sugar. So Quest, I think, was one of the first companies to work with this. It has a couple of quirks to it. For example, it gets colored easily. It browns quite easily. So if you're making like a white bar couple of quirks to it. For example, it gets colored easily. It browns quite easily. So if you're making like a white bar, you couldn't use it. And then I think no foods is using it. So anyway, I just saw this two days ago. So that's something to consider. But monk fruit,

yeah, is probably one of my favorite of the alcohol sugars. It's the one that tastes ridiculously good. Yeah. Metabolically quite inert. But I'm not a monk. I mean, we're talking about monk fruit, but for that person, you know, I'm not a monk, I'm a human, I'm a normal person. I like to eat crap sometimes. What? You eat typically how many meals a day? Between zero and two. You're not a breakfast guy.

No. So you're a lunch dinner or a dinner? Yeah. Mostly. Yeah. What was the longest you ever went without food in combat or in training? I don't know, probably a few days. And then what about these days now? How often do you fast? Probably once or twice a week. And then you mean you'll just skip a day once or twice a week. Yeah. Yeah. And then once a quarter, I'll do 72. And I know I owe more than 72 at some point in the near future. So I'll be getting some of that It's really not that big of a deal. I feel fine. I feel totally normal. I feel better

You know everyone says they feel better. You do feel better. You do feel better I don't always feel better. You know my last fast. I did not feel good for the first three days really Yeah, I really didn't I've gone back and looked and tried to figure out what did I do different? Was there something else going on? I can't come up with what it was, but I definitely did not feel good for three days. And then by the fourth day, I did turn the corner. It was a bit humbling because I at this point in the game, I feel like I'm kind of a fasting jock. Like it should always be, it should always be easy and stuff. I still slept really well. So I feel fortunate that I using Kirk supplement plus phosphatidyl serine, I have the deepest, richest,

most intense, beautiful sleep imaginable when I'm fasting. And for that, I feel grateful, because I know for a lot of people, it's really hard. Meditation feels so much better. Like a lot of things do get better, but the hunger was unusual in this sort of sluggishness. Not in my workouts.

My workouts actually feel good, but it was just like the kind of ass dragging throughout the rest of the day that was frustrating. I really don't know what it was though. So I'll be back through it again in a few months. How often are you doing them right now? I do quarterly. Quarterly five days?

Five to seven, just depending on how long I'm in New York for the given week. I don't fast here if I don't want to do it around the kids and stuff. So yeah, I aim for seven. I usually try to do this Sunday to the following Saturday. If the trip is accommodates, but five at a minimum, I think there's benefit at three. I really do. I think three is a real tipping point in terms of glycogen release.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm hearing is that three is like kind of the starting point for the real benefits. So I've been slacking. Yeah, but if you can get to three and feel good, you're really gonna have an easy time getting to five. At the end of three, I'm not, well, I can't wait, no, just sort of whatever. In fact, the first time I did, I remember I was at Jiu Jitsu

and I'd squatted that day. I did my complete normal workout. Showed up at Jiu Jitsu and I was like, oh, this is gonna hit me and I was training with one of my main training partners. And I was like, I'm gonna tell you something we're done training. And so we trained.

And this is a guy that I usually do better than, I've been training longer than him, so I'm just a little bit better than him. And that's the way the role went. We trained and I was a little bit better than him, like normal. And we got done and he was like, what were you gonna tell me?

I was like that I haven't eaten for three days because I didn't want him to get the mental advantage thinking like, oh, if he is neat and he's gonna be drained. I didn't want him to have that. So I didn't give it to him. Or could a back fired, which is a minute in, he feels like he doesn't have anything over you. He's totally demoralized.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. That seemed like a bigger risk to take psychologically than him thinking, oh, he's not eating. So I like a bigger risk to take psychologically than him thinking, oh, he's not eating. So I'm feeling good and I'm going to smash him. I'm going to go extra. Because when people just like in combat, just like in life, if someone thinks they have an upper hand and they get a little bit confident and then they can kind of dictate the situation a little bit more than they normally would. And this is the type of individual that when I train with him, if he tries to dictate

that, then it can be a little bit problematic for me. Again, I've been training longer, so it's not a total game changer, but it'll make things more difficult than they should be. So I would rather have him thinking he's on some new supplement, or he's got a new move that he's going to try on me, or something like that. I want him to be in that mindset where he's mentally defensive. And then when it was over, I told him, you know, said no factor. I love when my patients fast

because I love how empowering it is to them. I think the first time somebody gets through a fast, whether it's a modified fast or a outright water fast, it's like, even if it's tough, which for many people that first one is actually quite tough, they realized like, they did it, they did it, they did this thing, man, they're a little more in touch with our ancestors.

Like you did something that you were genetically equipped to do. You know, my kids wrestle and my daughter my son went to high school right now and this last season, but I remember my daughter was cutting some weight and you were talking about how to my kids, I'm not jocke, I'm just dad. Well, occasionally they'll let it slip out that they're either listening to my podcast or they're reading my books or something like that. And so one of the things that my daughter told me was she had to cut a decent amount of weight and she's like, I haven't eaten in 36 hours.

And I was like, how do you feel? She's like, I feel fine. And then she says, she's like, you know, you said in your book, human beings can go 30 days without food. Like you can make it 36 hours. Do not worry. You're not going to die. It's totally ridiculous.

And so she had the attitude, like, hey, oh my God, a three day faster, a two day, 24 hours. It's a joke. You're going to be fine. It's really no factor. Well, speaking of daughters, I see mine walking around out there, hovering, hovering. Well, I lost her now. I saw her like two minutes ago, so she can't be that far.

So I'm going to go and get her because of all the questions on her list we have got through all of them but two and I can think of nothing better than bringing her in. Let's do it. Ask him. Alright I'll be right back. You need to say who you are first. I am. What are you doing on this podcast? Okay. My name is Olivia Atia and I'm Peter. She is daughter. Awesome. What made you want to start being more disciplined? What made me start to want to be more disciplined? One of the main things was when I first got to the SEAL teams,

I noticed that the people that were really good at their job, the people that were seals that I looked at and said, wow, I want to be like that guy. I realized that what they were doing is they were getting to work early. They were taking care of their gear. They were putting forth effort that other people weren't putting forth. They had discipline and that was making them better. And the more discipline they were and the better they did their job, the more latitude they had to do what they wanted to do. So that was kind of the first connection that I made with discipline

making you better and being better, giving you more freedom and everything that you did. Because when I was a kid, I was kind of a crazy kid and I wasn't always the best behaved kid and Sometimes the things that I would do they would backfire on me and so when I got older I realized wait a second instead of doing things that are gonna backfire on me I'm actually gonna try and do a good job and have more discipline and that's kind of where it stemmed from No, describe what you do during your workouts and what kind of healthy food you eat. I do a whole bunch of different things when I workout, but I think they're all kind of the common exercises that everyone does. Push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and then I use weights. I use kettlebells.

I do dead lifts. I do obviously I do squats because everyone does squats because squats are beautiful. Obviously, I do squats because everyone does squats because squats are beautiful. And overhead squats, front squats, back squats, I do all those different kinds of squats. I like to sprint, I have a rowing machine, I have an air cycle, I do a lot of burpees. It's kind of like there's no secret exercise that I do that's different than what normal people that work out do. Oh, so how did you get the nickname Jocco? Okay, so my real name is John and my dad's name is John. And so I was named after my dad.

So when you have multiple people in the household with the same name, that can be confusing. Because, well, when every time someone says John, then you've got two people turning their head. So when that happens, it's pretty common for the son to get a nickname. And so my dad wanted me to be a jock. Do you know what a jock is? Yes, like athlete. Yes, someone that's all into sports.

Yes. So my dad was very into sports, and he wanted me to be a jock. Have you heard of a magazine called Sports Illustrated? Yes. So my dad, when they found out I was gonna be a boy, he covered my whole room with the cover of Sports Illustrated because he wanted me to be a jock.

Now, on top of that, my dad is named after his uncle and his uncle's name is John and his last name was Ogle Forpe, but everyone called his uncle, they called him John O. John O. So when my dad was born, my dad was named John and they called him John O. That's what they called him. And then when I was born or actually was just before I was born my dad said to my mom. I hope he's a jock and My mom said jock oh and that's how they came up with my nickname and it stuck That's smart Hmm about face about face is a book. It's a note that your dad wrote down. It's my favorite book. Yeah, what's your favorite book?

Way of the warrior kid. Yeah Did I pay you to say that? No, I just read that last night. Did you read it for the first time last night? No, probably the 10th. Really? The first one, the second one? I've read the first one. Do you have the second one? No.

I can't believe I didn't bring that. I can't believe that. And the third one is coming out soon. I'll get you that one as well. I need to get my hands on some of these. What did you learn from where the warrior kid? What I learned is that the kid, Mark, he wasn't very disciplined in the beginning, but then he got the training and he learned to eating right and he learned how to be disciplined and then he had more sex in school and he was better at all of these things. Yeah, it's a big key to life. Yeah. People do this day say what they want to know what the secret is and I always kind of say that the best advice I can give someone is have discipline because then you'll end up

with more freedom. Mm-hmm. I saw that video where it was like a joke and you said if you had trouble sticking to your morning routine, get out! Oh yeah, when I was doing my fake yoga meditation thing. That was pretty funny. When that happened, I was in the studio with these people from CNBC. And I'm in there and they're asking me a bunch of questions that I want me to do stuff.

And finally this one girl says, Hey, how do you wake up at 4.30 in the morning? And I said, Oh, when I wake up, the alarm goes off and I get out of bed. And she says, no, but, and then she kind of like, tuts like that. You know what a toe it is? Like, yeah. She goes, you know, my editor really wants to hear more detail about that.

And then I decided to have some fun with it. Because the reality is, what do you do? If you want to get up early, set your alarm going to the alarm goes off, get out of bed. That's the way a lot of things are. Your dad and I were just talking, and your dad says something along the lines of, well, you know, what about if there's something

that you want to do, but you know, you don't really want to do it. And I was like, well, if you want to do it, then do it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the best policy. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for the good questions. Well, my friend, thank you so much. This was so much fun. It's amazing how quickly time can go by and yet there's so many things that we didn't get to talk about that I know we'll continue to talk about, but I appreciate what you're doing. I really, I really do and it's so fun to watch you interact with Olivia. I know that half of the interactions, the really fun interactions actually have just taken place off. You know, it's, you are kind of like a superhero to these kids, I think, and with great

power comes great responsibility. It's my favorite line from the whole Spider-Man movie, right? I think you've seen things that most of us will never see, fortunately. And again, I don't want to get into the, whether it's free will or not free will or how much of this you can take credit for or not, but the point is A lot of people come back from what you've been through and They're worse for it. And I think not only are you better for it, but more importantly You've sort of figured out a way to share it with a lot of people and I feel grateful to be one of them

Well, I appreciate it. I can definitely tell you for what you just said There's a lot of people that are scared of what war does to people. And they think that war has a massively negative impact on people. And I can tell you without a doubt, I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to serve. I'm grateful and unbelievably humbled that I had the opportunity to serve with the guys that I served with and fight alongside them on the battlefield. And I know that it's made me better being around people like that, seeing what real sacrifice is. And it's an honor to be sitting here. And quite frankly, when I hear a little girl like Olivia, who is, she's on the path.

And just the fact that conversation right there means so much to me and it feels so good. And I'll be thinking about that for a long time. And it's awesome. And I'm super happy and stoked that I get to do this. And again, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for other guys that put down their life, gave their life to give someone like me a knucklehead, this gift and the opportunity to be here. So I'm happy to be here. I'm thankful that I'm here and I appreciate you having me on and thanks for doing what

you do, man. You can find all of this information and more at pterotiamd.com forward slash podcast. There you'll find the show notes, readings and links related to this episode. You can also find my blog at peteratiamd.com. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for my subjectively non-lame once a week email where I'll update you on what I've been up to, the most interesting papers I've read, and all things related to longevity, science, performance, sleep, etc. On social, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, all with the ID, Peter, ATF, MD. But usually Twitter is the best way to reach me to share

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