Jocko Podcast 22 – with Echo Charles | Mind Control

this is Joo podcast number 22 with Eko Charles and me Joo willink good evening Eko good evening and I would say that it is a good evening sure because we are free we are free and I talk about that all the time you hear me say discipline equals freedom and you hear me say free your mind and here in America and in places around the world that have the ability to be listening to this podcast a lot of times we take freedom for granted and we all want free freom we want the ab ability the capability to move around and go where we want to go but more importantly we want freedom of the mind and freedom of the heart and those things sound abstract they seem like things that cannot be taken away we don’t even know what that means to have them taken away because of the way we live and how we were raised to think what you want to think and believe what you want to [Music] believe to be who you want to be to have and to exercise the freedom to question and to question everything that’s freedom and there are parts of the world where none of those freedoms exist in worse there’s parts of the world where any chance of free thought is exterminated from childhood will Broken Dreams extinguished thoughts controlled so let’s go to a place where that is the reality and again I’m going to point this out this is not a dystopian movie or some postapocalyptic novel this is real real life with real people red is reserved for the lettering of the propaganda signs the Korean language uses a unique alphabet made up of circles and lines the red letters leap out of the gray landscape with urgency they march across the fields preside over the Granite Cliffs of the mountains punctuate the main roads like mileage markers and dance on top of railroad stations and other public buildings they say things like this we have nothing to Envy in the world if the party decides we do Long Live Kim ills let’s live our own way we will do as the party tells us we will do as the party tells us and like I said this isn’t a book this is real this is North Korea and this is a story of Horror and of slavery and of brainwashing and it’s also a story of choices story of freedom and it’s also a story of the strength of the human will this is a book that is called nothing to Envy ordinary lives in North Korea it’s by by Barbara deck or demic it traces a bunch of people that defected who Barbara deac was able to interview once they left North Korea but it traces their lives and what their lives were like and one of the characters and again I don’t want to call the character one of the people that’s in the book is named Miran and going to the book here miran’s father was a p and it talks about that miran’s father never talked about being a p but there’s another fellow P who wrote A Memoir and in his Memoir and I’m going to the book here he said that men were housed in squalled camps where they were not permitted to bathe or brush their teeth their hair became infested with lice untreated wounds swarmed with maggots they were fed one meal of rice and salt water a day under the name construction unit of the Interior Department New P camps had been built near the mines coal mining in North Korea was not only dirty but exceedingly dangerous since the mines frequently collapsed or caught fire and that same former P wrote the life of a p was worth less than a fly every day we walked into the mines I shuddered with fear like a cow walking to the slaughterhouse I never knew if I would emerge alive so if you don’t know anything about anything the leader in North Korea at this time postwar is Kim ilung and you still hear his his grandson now is in charge of North Korea but at this time I’m going to the book after the war Kim ilung made it his first order of business to weed out out foe from friend he started at the top with potential Rivals for leadership he disposed of many of his comrades in arms who had led the struggle from Manchuria to unseat the Japanese Japanese occupiers he ordered the arrest of the founding members of the Communist Party in South Korea they had been invaluable during the war now that they’d served their purpose they could be discarded throughout the 1950s many more were purged and what was increasingly coming to resemble an ancient Chinese Empire with Kim ilung the unchallenged master of the realm Kim ilung then turned his attention to Ordinary People in 1958 he ordered up an elaborate project to classify all North Koreans by their political reliability ambitiously seeking to reorganize an entire human population the north am Koreans were methodical to a fault each person was put through eight background checks your song bun as the rating was called took into account the backgrounds of your parents grandparents and even second cousins the Loyalty surveys were carried out in various phases with inspiring names intensive guidance by the central party was the first announced phase the classifications became more find in subsequent phases such as the understanding people project between 1972 and 1974 so those things to me they all sound like just bad movie plots right the in in intensive guidance by the central party that’s something you don’t want to mess with and here’s how they would be here’s what life was like a little bit of life people would be closely watched by their neighbors North Koreans are organized into what are called in minban literally people’s groups cooperatives of 20 or so families whose job it is to keep tabs on one another and run the neighborhood the Inman Bond have an elected leader usually a middle-aged woman who reports anything suspicious to higher ranking authorities it was almost impossible for a North Korean of low rank to improve his status now we talked about this character or sorry the person Miran that’s being talked about and she talks about her father and here’s what she says about her father Miran often found her father’s paity maddening only later did she understand this was a survival mechanism it was as though he had hammered down his own personality to avoid drawing undue attention to himself among the thousands of former South Korean soldiers who tried to assimilate into North Korean Society many slipped up miran’s mother later her later told her that four of her father’s buddies in the Minds fellow South Koreans had been executed for minor infractions their bodies dumped in Mass Graves being a member of the Hostile class meant you would never get the benefit of a doubt a sarcastic inflection when referring to Kim ilung or a nostalgic remark about South Korea could get you in serious trouble it was especially taboo to talk about the Korean War and who started it in the official history histories and there was nothing but official history in North Korea it was the South Korean army that invaded acting on orders from the Americans not the North Korean army storming across the 38th parallel anybody who remembered what really happened on June 25th 1950 knew it was wise to keep one’s mouth shut so even history even facts that you learn that the country learned were just lies Miran didn’t have any particular artistic or athletic talent but like her older sisters did but she was a good student and she was beautiful when she was 15 years old her school was visited by a team of seriousl looking men and women in somber suits these were Aqua members of the fifth division of the central Workers Party recruiter recruiters who scoured the country looking for young women to serve on the personal staff of Kim ilung and k Kim Jong ill if selected the girls would be sent off to military style training camp before being assigned to one of the leadership’s many residences around the country North Korean girls her age didn’t know what a concubine was only that whatever you might do to serve the leadership would be a tremendous honor only the smartest and prettiest girls would be selected I think we can all imagine what that looks like Twisted men in seats of power praying on the entire nations full of young girls disturbing now another character in the book and again I keep using that term character you hear that even me I’m sitting here trying to tell everyone hey remember these are people but I’m calling them characters these aren’t characters in a book these are people and this person was named Mrs song and Mrs song what’s interesting about Mrs song is she’s a True Believer she’s a True Believer and you’re going to hear some of this but these folks that are raised in North Korea they just believe that that they believe the propaganda they believe that North Korea is the best place on Earth and that everywhere else is suffering and that because of their great leader their lives are better than anyone else in the world and she truly believes that and here’s kind of what her attitude here’s what her life was like and her attitude was like Miss Mrs song usually went to work with one baby strapped to her back and one or two daughters dragging along behind her her children basically grew up at the daycare center she was supposed to work eight hours with a lunch break and a nap in the middle of her shift after work she had to spend several more hours in ideological training in the Factory’s Auditorium one day the lecture might be about the struggle against us imperialism another time it might be about Kim ung’s exploits actual or exaggerating fighting the Japanese during World War II she had to write essays on the latest pronouncements of the Workers Party by the time she got home it would be 10:30 p m she would do her housework and cooking then get up before Dawn to prepare herself and her family for the day ahead before leaving home around 7: a m she seldom slept more than 5 hours some days were harder than others on Wednesday mornings she had to report to work early for mandatory meetings of the the Socialist women’s Federation Friday night she stayed especially late for self-criticism in these sessions members of her work unit the department to which she was assigned would stand up and reveal to the group anything they had done wrong Mrs song would usually say in all sincerity sincerity that she feared she wasn’t working hard enough Mrs song believed what she said all those years of sleep deprivation all those lectures and self-criticisms the very same tools used in brainwashing or interrogations had wiped out any possibility of resistance she had been molded into Kim ill song’s improved human beings Kim lung’s goal wasn’t merely to build a new country he wanted to build better people to reshape Human Nature once in power Kim ilung retooled the ideas developed during his time as an anti-japanese gorilla fighter as instruments into instruments of social control he instructed North Koreans that their power as human beings came from subsuming their individual will to that of the collective the collective couldn’t go off willy-nilly doing whatever the people chose through some democratic process the people had to follow an absolute supreme leader without question that leader of course was Kim ilung himself so they’re being told through multiple channels through every instrument available newspapers radio television all controlled by the state and through all these they’re being told that they have to submit their individual will and perform at the will of the collective and you know you you will hear me refer to for me the most important piece of humanity is the individual individual freedom and obviously this attitude is the opposite of individual freedom and also you got to remember from a leadership perspective the way you maximize A team’s effort isn’t through a supreme authority trying to control everything it doesn’t work that’s why we have a little something called decentralized command I want my Frontline leaders to think I want my Frontline troops to understand what they’re trying to make happen and use their free will to make it happen use their own brain to make it happen so if you’re in a leadership position and you realize that you’re trying to control everything yourself you’re not getting the most effective performance from your team MH and we’re going to see this on on a grand scale and you know we do see it on a grand scale when governments try to control humans it doesn’t work now it might seem crazy that you would buy into this propaganda and here’s a here’s a paragraph and a statement about that back to the book we laugh at the excesses of propaganda and the gullibility of the people but consider that their indoctrination began in their infancy during 14-hour day spent in Factory daycare centers that for the subsequent 50 years every song film newspaper article and billboard was helped was designed to deify Kim ilung that the country was hermetically sealed to keep out anything that might might cast doubt on Kim s’s Divinity who could possibly resist so you’re not just being told that this guy is the leader you’re being told he’s God in 1972 on the occasion of his 60th birthday a traditional milestone in Korean culture the Workers Party began Distributing lapel pins of kimil s before long the entire population was required to wear them on the the left breast over the heart in Mrs song’s home as in every other a framed portrait of Kim ills hung on an otherwise bare wall people were not permitted to put anything else on that wall not even pictures of their blood relatives the children were never to forget that they owed everything to the National leadership North Korean children they didn’t celebrate their own birthdays but those of Kim ilong on April 15th and Kim Jong ill on February 16th when the time came the children lined up in front of the portraits to express their gratitude in unison they would bend from the waist bowing deeply with feeling thank you dear father Kim ill song The Children repeated as their mother looked on with sad satisfaction televisions and radios in North Korea are preset so they can receive only official government channels still the programming was relatively entertaining besides the usual speeches of Kim ill song on a typical week night you might have sports concerts television dramas and movies produced by Kim Kim Jong ‘s Film Studio on weekends you might get a Russian movie as a special treat the newspapers would occasionally run feature stories about heroic children who ratted out their parents to be denounced by a neighbor for bow mouthing the regime was nothing extraordinary starting to get a little feeling for what we’ve got going on here now what happens when the government tries to control everything and you take the the freedom of the people away communism obviously and things are not as productive as they could be that’s what happens when there’s no individual drive to succeed because if you’re a farmer once you plant your food it’s just going to get taken away by the government and redistributed so what’s your what’s your drive to grow the right amount of food or more food there is no CU it’s all just going to be taken away anyways right it’s like they well they avoid punishment so they do the minimum you know rather than the opposite when they strive for the maximum that means they’re focused on what can be you know rather than avoiding what can be yes and so now this is again I’m I’m breezing through chunks of this book to get to some of the highlights so now we’re into the 80s and we’re starting to run out of food Kim Jong ill who by the 1980s was increasingly assuming his father’s duties offered on the spot guidance to to address the country’s woes Father and Son were experts in absolutely everything be it geology or farming Kim Jong ‘s on-site instructions and his warm Bev are bringing out bringing about a great advance in Goat breeding and output of dairy products the Korean Central news agency opined after Kim Jong-il visited a goat farm near Chong gin so that’s the kind of that’s the kind of headlines in the news one day he would decree that the country should switch from rice to potatoes for its staple food the next he would decide that raising ostriches was the cure for North Korea’s food Sur shortage the country lurched from one hairbrain scheme to another so the fact of the matter is that even if this guy was a brilliant was a brilliant farmer he’s not taking into account the various terrain and the different climates that are in the area and who can get what done whereas if you let the free market decide what can be grown and let individuals decide and Let Freedom died people things work things find a way the control does not work and you’ll see that here back to the book soon the country was sucked into a vicious death spiral without cheap fuel oil and raw material it couldn’t keep the factories running which meant it had nothing to export with no exports there was no hard currency and without hard currency fuel Imports fell even further and the electricity stopped the coal mines couldn’t operate without electricity because they required electric pumps to siphon water the shortage of coal worsened the electricity shortage the electricity shortage further lowered agricultural output even the collective Farms couldn’t operate properly without electricity it had never been easy to eek out enough Harvest from North Korea’s Hard Scrabble terrain for a population of 23 million and the agricultural techniques developed to boost the output relied on electrically powered artificial irrigation systems and on chemical fertilizers and pesticides produced at factories that were now closed for lack of fuel and raw materials North Korea started running out of food and as people went hungry they didn’t have the energy to work and so output plunged further the economy was in a freef fall North Korea was the last place on place on Earth where virtually all Staples are grown on Collective Farms the state confiscates the entire Harvest and then gives a portion back to the farmer but as harvest withered in the early 1990s the farmers themselves were going hungry and began stashing some of the harvests away there were stories from the countryside of roofs that collapsed under the weight of grain hidden away in Eaves the farmers also neglected the collective fields for their private kitchen Gardens next to their houses or small steep plots carved out of the side of uncultivated mountain slopes driving through the countryside You Could See Clearly the contrast between private Gardens bursting with vegetables bean poles soaring Skyward Vines drooping with pumpkins next to the collective Fields with their stuned stunted halfhazard rows of corn that had been planted by so-called volunteers doing their patriotic duty case in point Koreans like to think to themselves as tough and so they are the propaganda machine launched a new campaign playing up Korean Pride by recalling a fable from 1938 to 1939 in which Kim msung commanded a small band of anti-japanese gorillas fighting against thousands of enemies in 20° below zero braving through a heavy snowfall and starvation the red flag fluttering in front of the rank the arduous March as they called it would later become a metaphor for the famine and here’s uh one of the statements that they would make no force on Earth can bar the Korean people from making an onward March for victory in the Revolutionary Spirit of the arduous March and the DP dprk will always remain a powerful Nation Democratic People’s Republic of Korea so people are starving and the government is saying yeah we’re going to drive on it’s a tough road but we’re going to make it enduring hunger became part of one’s patriotic Duty Billboards went up in pyong pyang touting the new slogan let’s eat two meals a day North Korean television ran a documentary about a man whose stomach burst it was claimed from eating too much right in any case the food shortage was temporary agric agricultural officials quoted in the newspapers reported that bumper crops of rice were expected in the next Harvest when the Foreign Press reported on food shortages in north in the North in 1992 the North Korean news service was indignant and here’s what the new North Korean news service had to say the state supplies the people with food at a cheap price so that the people do not know how much rice costs this is the reality of the northern half of Korea all people live a happy life without any worries about food in our land people are starving and the government is lying if North Koreans pause to contemplate the obvious inconsistencies and lies in what they were told they would find themselves in a dangerous place place they didn’t have a choice they couldn’t flee their country depose of their leadership speak out or protest in order to fit in the average citizen had to discipline himself not to think too much then there was the natural human survival Instinct to be optimistic like German Jews in the early 1930s who told themselves it couldn’t get any worse the North Koreans deceived themselves they thought it was temporary things would get better a hungry stomach shouldn’t believe a lie but somehow it did along with the new propaganda campaign the regime stepped up its extensive network of domestic surveillance the more there was to complain about the more important it was to ensure that nobody did now at this point further in the book Miran has gone off to college to become a teacher and she shows up there and this is what she deals with the food in the cafeteria was even worse North Korea was starting its let’s eat two meals a day campaign but the school took it a step further and offered only one meal a thin soup made of salt water and dried turnup leaves the cafeteria would sometimes add a spoon of rice and corn that had been cooked for hours to plump up the grains the girls in college began getting sick one of miran’s Roommates was so malnourished that the skin was flaking off of her face she dropped out of school and others followed now during the during the middle of this kimil song dies and you know it’s um it’s crazy to hear how the people react Ed and so I’m going to start off with this announcement that was made and I this is long a little bit of a long announcement but just to get the tone of it is worth it here we go the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea the central military Commission of the party the National Defense commission the central people’s committee and the administration Council of the democratic People’s Republic of Korea report to the entire people people of the country with deepest grief that the great leader comrade Kim ilung General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea and president of the democratic People’s Republic of Korea passed away from a sudden attack of illness at 2 a m our respected fatherly leader who has devoted his whole life to the popular masses cause of independ and engaged himself in tireless and energetic activities for the prosperity of the motherland and the happiness of the people for the reunification of the country and Independence of the world till the last moments of his life departed from us to our greatest sorrow very disturbing and what’s crazy is you hear all these bureaucratic names that’s what’s crazy about it all these government organizations picking away at the people and here’s some of the reactions the mourning that went through and and people like Mrs song who is a True Believer this is how they felt the old women wailed how could you leave us so suddenly the men screamed those waiting in line would jump up and down pound their heads collapse into theatrical swoons rip their clothes and pound their fists at the air in futile rage the men wept copiously as the women the hisonic of grief took on a competitive quality who could Weep the loudest who was most distraught the MERS were egged on by the TV news which broadcast hours and hours of people wailing grown men with tears rolling down their cheeks banging their heads on trees Sailors banging their heads against the mass of their ships Pilots weeping in the cockpit and so on these scenes were interspersed with footage of lightning and pouring rain it looked like Armageddon our country is enveloped in the deepest sorrow in the 5 000 year history of the Korean nation in toned an announcer on television and they had these little Mists that they’d throw out there like this one here’s a here’s an official release when the Great Marshall died thousands of cranes descended from Heaven to fetch him the birds couldn’t take him because they saw that North Koreans cried and scream screamed and pummeled their chests pulled their hair and pounded the ground they couldn’t let him go but nonetheless despite the heroic efforts of the Grand Marshall the famine continued and here we go to another person in the book whose name is Dr Kim a woman doctor in North Korea in the Pediatric W Dr Kim noticed that her patients were exhibiting peculiar symptoms the children she treated born in the late 1980s and early 1990s were surprisingly smaller even smaller than she’d been as the tiniest kid in her Elementary School class now their upper arms were so skinny she could encircle them with her thumb and forefingers their muscle tone was weak it was a syndrome known as wasting where the starved body eats away at its own muscle tissue children came in for constipation that was so acute they were doubled over in pain screaming the problem was with the food Housewives had started to pick weeds and wild grasses to add to their soups to create an illusion of vegetables corn was increasingly the staple again instead of rice but people were adding leaves husks stems and cobs to make it go further that was okay for adults but it couldn’t be digested by the tendered stomachs of children the babies were in the worst shapes their mothers themselves under Nur didn’t produce enough breast milk for them baby formula was non-existent and milk was rare in the past mothers who couldn’t produce enough breast milk would feed their babies a watered down Ki made of made from cooked rice but now most of them couldn’t afford rice either and here’s Dr Kim talking about the Todd ERS they would look at me with accusing eyes even four-year-olds knew they were dying and that I wasn’t doing anything to help them Dr Kim told me years later all I was capable of doing was to cry with their mothers and their bodies afterwards Dr Kim hadn’t been a doctor long enough to have erected the protective wall that would insulate her from the suffering around her the children’s pain was her pain years later when I asked her if she remembered any of the children who had died on her watch she answered sharply I remember all of them now Miran has graduated from college and she’s an actual school teacher and at actually requirement of school teachers was that they know need to know how to play the accordion which is like a transportable instrument so therefore was consider to be a good thing because you could carry it on a March so all School teachers had to play the accordion and they they sang songs like this and they would sing it with the class Our Father we have nothing to Envy in the world our house is within the Embrace of the Workers Party we are all brothers and sisters even if a sea of fire comes towards us sweet children do not need to be afraid our father is here we have nothing to Envy in this world another one of the songs that they’d sing Where have we gone we’ve gone to the forest where are we going we’re going over the hills what are we going to do we are going going to kill Japanese soldiers and another classic that was taught in the music classes called Shoot the Yankee bastards our enemies are the American bastards who are trying to take over our beautiful Fatherland with guns that I make with my own hands I will shoot them bang bang bang that idea of nothing to Envy in the world and and again you know as you read through this book you hear the people saying that they believed wholeheartedly that they had nothing to Envy in the world that this dismal life of starvation or near starvation was As Good As It Gets and here’s what the hunger would look like in school according to Miran each child was supposed to bring from home a bundle of firewood for the furnace in the school basement but many had trouble carrying it their big heads lolled on top of scrawny necks their delicate rib cages protruded over their waist so small that she could encircle them with her hands some of them were starting to swell in the stomach it was all becoming clear to her Miran remembered seeing a photograph of a famine victim in Somalia with a protruding stomach although she didn’t know the medical terminology she remembered from her teachers teachers College course on nutrition that was caused by severe protein deficiency Miran also noticed that the children’s black hair was getting lighter more copper toned it was always the same progression first the family wouldn’t be able to send the quot of firewood then the lunch bag would disappear then the child would stop participating in class and would sleep through recess then without explanation the child would stop coming to school over three years enrollment in the kindergarten dropped from 50 students to 15 what happened to all those children Miran didn’t pry too deeply for fear the answer she didn’t want to hear a decade later when Miran was a mother herself trying to lose her PR pregnancy weight through aerobics this period of her life weighted like a stone on her conscience she often felt sick over what she did and didn’t do to help the young students how could she have eaten so well herself when they were starving it is axiomatic that one death is a tragedy a thousand a statistic so it was for mean what she didn’t realize is that in her is that her indifference was an acquired survival skill in order to get through the 1990s alive one had to suppress any impulse to share food to avoid going insane one how to learn to stop caring in time Miran would learn how to walk around a dead body on the street without paying much attention she could pass a 5-year-old on the verge of death without feeling a feeling obliged to help if she wasn’t going to share food with her favorite pupil she certainly wasn’t going to help a perfect stranger and here’s some I guess I would say thoughts on a famine or realities of a famine in a famine people don’t necessarily starve to death often some other ailment gets them first chronic malnutrition impairs the body’s ability to battle infection and the hungry become increasingly susceptible to tuberculo tuberculosis and typhoid the starved body is too weak to metabolize antibiotics even if they’re available and normal normally curable dis illnesses suddenly become fatal wild fluctuations of body chemistry can trigger strokes and heart attacks people die from eating substitute foods that their bodies can’t digest starvation can can be a sneaky killer that disguises itself under Bland statistics of increased child mortality or decreased life expectancy it leaves behind only circumstantial evidence of excess morality as excess mortality statistics that show a higher than normal deaths during a certain period yet another gratuitous cruelty the killer f famine targets the most innocent the people who would never steal food lie cheat break the law or betray a friend it was a phenomenon that the Italian writer Primo Levi identified after emerging from aitz when he wrote that he and his fellow survivors never wanted to see another one again one another again after the war because they had all done something of which they were ashamed as Mrs song Would observe of a decade later when she thought back on all the people she knew who died during those years it was the simple and kind-hearted people who did what they were told they were the first to die by 1998 an estimated 600 000 to 2 million North Koreans had died as a result of the famine as much as 10% of the population by the end of 1998 the worst of the famine was over not necessarily because anything had improved but as Mrs song later surmised because there were fewer mouths to feed everybody who was going to die was already dead now that’s how the famine wrapped up but to go a little bit in depth of what it was like once the famine was raging people became homeless which was strange because in North Korea they never had a problem with homelessness because if you wanted food you needed to live in your home because the government would allegedly bring you food well once they weren’t bringing food anymore there was no reason to stay at home so now you had people going out trying to survive right and this talks a little bit about that especially for the children it was a dangerous life the children couldn’t sleep without worrying that somebody perhaps another gang member would steal what little they had there were strange stories going around about adults who prayed on children not just for sex but for food Hayak was told about people who would drug children kill them and butcher them for meat behind the station near the railroad tracks were vendors who cooked up soup and noodles over small burners and it was said that the gray chunks of meat floating in the broth were human flesh the stories got more and more horrific supposedly one father went so insane with Hunger that he ate his own baby a market woman was said to have been arrested for selling soup made from human bones from my interviews with the defectors it does appear that there were cases in which people were arrested and executed for cannibalism what did our wonderful uh leaders do during this here’s how they handled the people as the people started black markets and started growing these Gardens and selling what they could to get you know people started to try and survive through exercising their personal freedoms and here’s one of the ways that or here’s their comments about this this is coming from Kim Jong-il as well as any of the world’s strong men he understood perfectly the cliche that an absolutist regime needs absolute power everything good in life was to be bequeathed by the government he couldn’t tolerate people going off to gather their own food or buying rice with their own money telling people to solve the food problem on their own only increases the number of farmers markets and pedlers in addition this creates egoism among the people and the base of the party’s class may come to collapse so he’s trying to stop people from solving the problems themselves which they have the capability to do and I don’t talk about it too deeply in here but they go into the the massive black market that was started and there was people that were surviving were people that were doing that that were figuring out a way to make money and Kim Jong-il retaliated against that free market excessively to try and stop it it was better that people die of starvation than they have the freedom to try and let their get their family to survive and here’s an example of what they did with one man that was trying to get money so his family could survive back to the book the man was accused of climbing electric poles and cutting copper wire to sell the theft caused extensive damage to the nation’s property and was done with the intention to Dam damage our social system it was an act of treason that aided the enemies of the Socialist State the prosecutor read his voice bellowing through the scratchy speakers then a man acting as a sort of lawyer for the accused spoke although he offered no defense I have determined that what the prosecutor says is true the accused is the hereby sentenced to death and the sentence will be carried out immediately DEC fre to Third Man The Condemned man was bound to a wooden stake at the eyes the chest and the legs the firing squad would aim to sever the ropes in order three bullets in each location nine in total top to bottom first the lifeless head would slump over so that the body would crumple in an orderly Heap at the foot of the Stak neat and efficient it would look like The Condemned man was Bowing in death as if to apologize a murmur went through the crowd who thought the execution was excessive punishment for a minor theft the electric lines weren’t working anyways the few meters of copper wiring the man had stolen probably had gotten him no more than a few bags of rice a Pity he has a younger sister somebody said two sisters said another the Man’s parents must be dead clearly he knew nobody with influence to intervene on his behalf he probably had a poor class background as well maybe he was the son of a minor the shots rang out head chest legs the head burst open like a water balloon blood spurted out over the dirt almost spilling onto the feet of the crowd now what do people do to stop this you know and you have rebellion in the world you have people turned against the government in the world but in North Korea that did not happen and here’s why the level of repression in North Korea was so great that no organized resistance could take root any anti- regime activity would have would have terrible consequences for the protester his immediate family and all other known relatives under a system that sought to Stamp Out tainted blood for three generations the punishment would extend to parents grandparents brothers sisters nieces nephews and cousins a lot of people felt if you had to give one life you would give it to get rid of this terrible regime but here you are not the only one getting punished your whole family would go through hell so with the fact that they’re going to if you protest they’re going to kill everybody so there was no protest so now the only thing you can possibly think of doing is escaping and it goes through the various people in the book and how they escaped but I thought what was interesting in fact the most interesting sort of mental transition to make was for Mrs song and again she was referred to as the True Believer and her daughter had escaped and made it actually to South Korea and her daughter arranged to have Mrs song visit China but she visited China sort of against the rules thinking that she was going to go back to North Korea because she truly believed that North Korea was the better place she believed that South Korea was the enemy and it was evil and so she spent but she does go to China and she spends some time in China and when she’s in China she’s staying in a house that you know her daughter’s set up for her to stay in and they have TV and they have microwave oven and they have dishwasher and they have a rice cooker which which like is miraculous to her I mean she’s talking about it she’s saying at a certain time the light would come on and it would make it chirp and that means the rice was now being cooked and by the way at this time they didn’t have rice in North Korea so there’s this thing that just automatically Cooks up your rice in the morning and it was that combination of things that broke her because when she first saw that stuff she said oh this is imperialistic you know this is capitalism it’s evil they’re trying to buy us and enslave us with their capitalism that’s what she’d been convinced her whole life and then she has the realization and I’m going close with this because after this it goes through the stories of how they escaped and whatnot but this realization this moment in time when her mind becomes free and here’s here’s how it goes how much they all how much had they all missed herself her daughters locked away in North Korea working themselves to death for what we will do what the party tells us we will die for the general we have nothing to Envy she had believed it all and wasted her life or maybe not was it really over she was 57 years old still in good health this was her wakeup call she was ready to go so I ask what is your wakeup call what is in slaving you what is controlling your thoughts is it the television set feeding your mind images of what life should be is it the internet drawing you in and controlling your time is it drugs or alcohol numbing your brain and diminishing your desires or is it weakness a lack of discipline that prevents you from accomplishing what you want to accomplish and I’m not saying that you have to Rebel I’m not saying that there aren’t things in life that we just have to do there are but what I am saying is ask questions and don’t believe everything that you’re told and don’t follow the path just because it’s there don’t get in line just because other people are get up and wake up and be conscious of what is creeping into your mind what’s getting in there what are you letting in there what is forcing itself in there and what does it want you to do you have only one life so don’t waste it being controlled by someone else that’s one of those things that’s um it’s everywhere like you can easily be controlled by stuff like um a big one is I hate to I hate to harp on parents but like your parents so nobody’s perfect right so all your imperfection or a lot of your imperfections will be passed on to your kids just because you don’t know any better like that Mrs song Lady like she just believed it she didn’t know any better and so you can end up passing these things down like certain Traditions or um you know just methodologies of raising kids that you might hear otherwise but that’s your thing you know that you believed it it crept in your mind because your parents their parents you know and you don’t like how you say ask questions you don’t ask question you’re just like hey that’s how I was raised you pass it on meanwhile you’re doing the wrong thing the whole time mhm that’s what happens when you don’t ask questions that’s what happens when you don’t ask questions y that’s what happens when you believe Authority all the time yeah and hey this might come across as some people are sitting there saying wait a second Joo weren’t you in the military for 20 years you’re damn right I was yeah and there was a definitely I was a rebellious kid and when I was in the military I was always I questioned everything that we did and why we did it so and I think that’s one of the things that helped me get to a leadership position and become a decent leader was the fact that I didn’t just take everyone’s word for it and say oh yeah that’s what we’re going to do okay right no you know what we’re actually going to change the strategy we’re going to change the tactics what I was taught isn’t working right now we’re going to do it differently yeah we did that all the time yeah but this is a broader scale this is a broader scale this is life not just in the book but life in general mhm life in general like what are you doing where are you getting your direction from yeah who is who’s got a hold of your steering wheel yeah yeah and that’s make sure it’s you that’s got a hold of your steering wheel yeah and that’s one of those things where it’s tough cuz you got to balance it as well you know so if you’re just rolling around saying hey nothing’s true until I figure it out it’s kind of like you know you got to consider the opportunity cost where some people you got to you know you got to consider their credibility and then you got to kind of just go with it and and again this is just kind of demonstrating like there’s a balance there but just like are you’re saying if something if it’s not working and someone presents you with some alternative don’t just be like hey I’ve done it this way so you know leave me alone type of thing you know ask those questions and listen to them you know chance are you might find a little improved method and doing some stuff yeah or you might find out that you’ve been sucked into a trap yep you don’t want to be in no you got to free your mind you got to free your mind you got to get out of that box out of that cage yeah think of that you know I meet people now and it’s so bizarre because because I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve and I’ve walked with a lot of different kind of people from you know from all different walks of life and I meet people sometimes and I think to myself man this guy’s pretty awesome he’s got all this you know I wonder what this person’s goal is and sometimes I’ll ask like you know what what do you want to do or like what do you hey I’ll meet some kid or what you want to do and some people say you know well I want to do you know I I think they’re I think they’re going to come out with this giant dream and they come out with like a little mediocre idea and I and I and and I I haven’t done this yet I’ve talked to five people in the last 6 months that I thought were going to tell me about their dream and that I was going to be like in shock and I was going to be impressed and say yeah that’s what I’m talking about brother go get it and instead I had to bite my tongue because they were telling me their dream but it wasn’t big enough it wasn’t big enough it wasn’t it was too realistic you know now you meet some people sometimes and they tell me their dream and I go man you ain’t got a chance at that you need to you need to tone that down you need to get a grip right these people are like you can achieve anything you want no actually you can’t achieve anything you want if you could achieve anything you want you know everyone would be sitting on a yacht or doing whatever big badass thing that they want to do right kind of depends on what you mean by can’t though but yeah yeah it’s true I mean can’t that’s what I mean these these people that are like you can do whatever you want no actually there’s limitations to that right all people are not created equal some people are smarter than other people some people are better athletes than other people hey reality now what can you hear the question isn’t that the question is what can you do with your with what you’ve got what can you do and I’d much rather I love to hear people overshooting but don’t trap yourself in a box where you’re like well I’ll be happy if I can do this right and there’s whole the other part of this is it’s sort of like North Korea there’s people that are trapped in a paradigm in their head of the world they think that the world is this is this thing that they live in they think that the world is this small this small place that the people that they know right and the the atmosphere that they live inside mhm and it’s really really small and I think to myself man you gots to get out and I’ll tell you part of this came when I got out of the military because my whole life you know the only guys I knew were seals I mean that’s just who I knew and so when I got out and I started meeting other people and I especially started working with big business and started meeting really not just SU successful in terms of financial people but people that had really done something mhm and I started realizing that there was a whole another level not not a higher level but there’s just another world yeah like in the SEAL Teams oh well you know hey I did I did my seun I did silun Commander you know you do these certain I did task unit Commander you do these things and that’s what you do MH and it’s awesome and that’s a whole world but there’s other worlds and I remember telling one of my uh seal buddies we were out surfing and this was after i’ been out for like two years I had this exact conversation with him I said hey man like we were talk we were out there surfing for an hour and for 58 minutes we’re talking about the SEAL Teams the SEAL Teams the SEAL Teams the SEAL Teams and the SEAL Teams yeah and then I I said hey man the SEAL Teams is awesome but just so you know there’s other things in the world yeah and it’s stuff that I’m I’m saying my mind was in North Korea my mind was just Seal Team yeah and I and I’ll tell you what I’m glad it was because it made my life very simple and I still you know obviously I love the SEAL Teams more than anything but there are other worlds out there and you can do other things in the world and so now when I meet people in different environments and different jobs and and each little each little environment that I post poke my head into cuz we work in different Industries all over different you know manufacturing and gas oil and and financial and they’re all their own little worlds and sometimes people are trapped in those worlds and I just want to say man free your mind free your mind and see what else is out there yeah kind like how what you and Tim were Tim Kennedy were talking about how you guys you guys are an example of people who have seen the really really bad parts of the world and the really really good parts of the world cuz you guys travel all over and you live in San Diego which is you know arguably one of the one of the best places to live so you have that expanded view meanwhile some people they only go on vacation when they travel so they have although a real positive and and really nice view but it’s really narrow or other people who only lived in bad places just like people who grow up in a real negative household when they go out into the world just their beginning view of the world is negative like money is just so hard to come by because when they grew up their parents are complaining about the rent and bills are piling up and all this stuff so that’s their attitude when they go out and then then that’s how they kind of Take On The World man I know this and this is kind of a different thing same same content same subject but um I had a friend in in high school and there’s people I grew up on Kawai small island in Hawai so some people straight up have their whole life haven’t been off of Kawai and no less than Mainland the mainland is this fantasy world place with where Disneyland is and Hollywood and all this stuff so I I had a friend one of my good friends he moved to the mainland but it was just this small teeny tiny town just as small as Kai so I remember one time where what state was the town in uh Colorado Colorado is he moved to Pueblo it’s called so I remember we were just having a conversation later and I was like hey yeah let’s let’s go to Las Vegas a lot of Hawaii people go to Las Vegas and I was like let’s go to Las Vegas or what whatever I was like when do you do you what do you do you rent a car he was like I would never drive in Las Vegas I would never drive in Las Vegas cuz it’s too crazy you know there freeways there’s no freeway on kawhai onaho there there’s a highway but and he a grown adult so to speak um can’t even drive you know so that’s like an example that’s how narrow his his whole view was his world his whole world and um that extended to his driving skill you know this was just this so hectic on a freeway Highway Las Vegas even I don’t even know how crazy that is I mean that’s not a crazy place to drive really you know compared to like I don’t know La whatever yeah or something go to LA hit the 405 North on a Thursday afternoon uh yeah there’s no doubt there’s so much out there and if you stay comfortable in your world you can get used you can get comfortable Starving in North Korea that’s that’s what the scary is that’s the point that I think I’m trying to make is don’t be comfortable because what you think is awesome right now there could be so much more Yep if you can Envision and pay attention to what’s going on in the rest of the world MH and break out of that Paradigm that you’re inh and see that you can fly you can fly around the world you can do it yeah just don’t get trapped and free your mind yeah all right let’s get to some questions from the interwebs interwebs speaking of interwebs if you like supplements good supplements which I think we both recommend right as far as supplements go get on it supplements and and we are uh sponsored as it so happens by on it but I would say get on it supplements anyway cuz I was taking them even before we’re sponsored by on it on it com Joo and get 10% off get your krill oil supplements get your Alpha brainy yeah krill oil and kill oil is anything for your joints is critical cuz like when you even even when I was young when you lift hard when you get after it working out um so okay so if you gain strength right which of course we all kind of want to do or whatever um you don’t have to put a whatever on the end of that we just all want to period I’m going try my best not to speak for everyone but I think it’s safe to assume that yes we’re getting straight strength but when you have a higher capacity for strength a lot of times your muscles will just want to fire real hard so what that can end up with is this weird stiffness you know so you’re going to end like it’s like you got to it’s almost like you got to warm up in life it’s almost like that feeling you know so it’s like yeah you’re strong you’re about to carry like the whole load of groceries in and you can do that and maybe you know groceries you got to come up with something I’m just saying everyday stuff and you can you can get after doing that but you kind of got to warm up you know it’s kind of like kind of anyway how much groceries you have a lot man hey man get after it in the store out of the store so anyway so the point being like when you have stuff like for your joints or you don’t take care of your joints see I would have told this totally differently I like if you want to Jack big steel you want to do jiujitsu you want to jump off things you want to throw stuff around get some krill oil so you stay healthy yeah talking about groceries no but I’m saying though it’s it’s it it is it seems kind of productive because I’ve experien experienced this where I’m like yeah but then I kind of got to like do twists you know and then I’m strong you know then I’m ready or if I’m like kind of stiff it’s kind of cold out and then I go to lift I’m like dang I can lift a lot of Weights but why on this first set I can’t even lift anything cuz you need the kill oil he needs I’m just saying your joints got to be like good to go that was a long explanation right it’s absolutely true I’m telling you if if if you take if you take that to a heart well you already take CR oil so yeah you’re the man anyway yeah on it com get 10% off you’ll be happy you did and if you want to support this podcast before you shop at Amazon go to Jo podcast com or Joost store com click on the Amazon link on the top and it um it gives us a percentage and you know you don’t pay nothing um people have been a few people mention that like the the the link doesn’t work or whatever and I found out through one of the the Troopers who are in the know sometimes you have ad blockers on your browser and they’re activated which is a good thing by the way it’s it’s good to you know cuz sometimes they can malw and get it yeah because it’s it’s an actual code and it works in in in the same ways don’t talk computer stuff to me yeah anyway so deactivate it if um you know you want to get past it there it is or if you want to buy some shirts with joo’s head and or name on it go to Joost store com that’s that’s a cool way to represent anyway yeah there it is all right let’s get it first question internet questions okay first question how do you continue to train jiu jit when hurt or injured me same thing with whatever kind of injury I got and whatever I’m going to do I’m going to do what I can mhm you know now one thing you do have to do is you have to let yourself rest enough that you can heal cuz sometimes they get the sprained ankle and instead of lasting one month it lasts 18 months no kidding if you push if you just won’t let it heal the thing is not going to heal so you have to let things heal now but you can go through all kinds of positions you can work different transitions but sometimes you get an injury and if you’re a Jiu-Jitsu person you know what I’m talking about like you get a weird injury that you can’t do certain movements yeah like a guy will have a hurt back can’t get on top I can’t be on top I can’t so you just practice your guard or you have a hurt you know groin muscle so you can’t hold any guard you have to work like side control only okay cool Escape side control or be side control so you can definitely do those things you just figure out what movements you can do you figure out what training partners aren’t going to go Psychopathic on you and just hurt you even worse so that’s important you know just being in class and you’re learning some new technique you you know I find if if I cannot roll when I’m in class I’ll like pay a little bit more attention to what the instruction is being given because I know I can’t roll so I know all I’m going to get out of this is what I’m going to learn right here from Jeffy Glover or Dean list and so I will be like paying extra special attention yeah yeah that’s good and uh then I’ll tell you this is something like I wear knee pads when I roll and I think that they prevent some injuries from happening and I just made a transition in my life where I I used to wear extra large knee pads knee pads NE Neoprene knee pads like neoprene KNE sleeves braces though there nothing bracing there just like a piece of neoprene yeah yeah yeah but I recently like uh two weeks ago I went I used to wear extra large then I went to large cuz they felt a little bit snugger and I just got medium and I got some pretty big legs but I got medium and they’re like really compressing my knees and keeping it all together and they feel really good so maybe just order that exercise down so you get a little compression and the same thing like when I have a hurt elbow I’ll put an elbow pad on uh so wrap up whatever you can and just keep training and warm up a little bit yeah you know I didn’t used to I do now I’ll do like a f- minute round where I’m not trying to kill the person I’m hoping that the person’s not going to try and kill me although you and I had a little incident the other day where you got a little excited in that first round yes uh just to clarify that when you say knee pads elbow pads they’re not not like the kind of soccer you know no they’re neoprene they’re just a like a wet suit like a neoprene sleeve A6 yeah gotta or Cliff ke wrestling knee pads that’s what they are that’s what they’re called and they’re generally made of neoprene gotcha yeah so and aot a lot of this the the training partner thing that’s a big deal if you choose to train when you’re injured cuz man I I can’t sit here and say train when you’re injured and I might even say don’t train just learn like how you say if you want to show up cuz face it man yeah you know you can’t just not show up on the mats and you know the mats even if you’re not rolling it’s like it’s that’s a good place to be let’s face it for most most of us um and you sit in on a class or or just do the instruction part of it you know and do the movements cuz you’re not going full speed you’re not rolling do the movements that you can and you can pick up a lot man in fact when you especially you know how you say we’re learning from Dean Jeff and most of the instructors here they’re really good even if you learn one little detail even if you know I know this guard pass you know he added that one little detail dang I’ve been training for all these years and I just learned that one D you can always add something um the game I think that that’s that’s a that’s a big deal show up and and be there you will learn it’s like I was I was talking to Greg one time a long time ago he he was like we were talking about hey so if someone ask you how long have you been training but let’s say you TR you started training 10 years ago but then you trained for a year you took off a year and then you went back but you were only training a little bit you know so how long have you been training really how do you count it and all that anyway so he was like he we didn’t go too deep into it but he was like no man if you started 10 years ago you’ve been training for 10 years because if you start training for a year even if you take a year off when you see something you hear something you someone’s talking about something you’re picking all that up cuz it’s you have the context you know you know so your your your brain is assimilate it into your system and your mind even if you’re not training yep exactly right so if you’re injured just keep that going that’s a weird thing to do though there’s a little ego situation if you’re like well I’ve been training for 13 years meaning I started 13 years ago but I took a lot of time off right so you might catch me right yes that’s basically what they’re saying so just tell people like I’ve been training him for 13 years yeah yeah you I’m not that good or you know what let’s see how good I am yeah you know if in fact get it yeah cuz I think it’s come and get it so automatic for the person like U like if you’re if you ask me how long have you been training it’s so automatic for me to try to justify my skill with my number oh of how long you know even though the guy asking typically is just asking for conversation he’s not trying to evaluate how good you’re really when I ask people I’m sizing their up yeah but you’re different how long you’ve been training for what coool whatever BR you’re different you compete but I was I was talking to Keenan about that like how do you do it and they’re kind of psycho though they’ll be like it’s Matt hours that’s how you say it you train for 10 000 hours you that’s how long you’ve been training I don’t know if he was serious or not but that’s one way of looking at it but yeah only injury thing man I don’t feel the same way as you though I I think you know what I definitely keep training and I’ll tell you what like if I I’ve said this before if my back is tight yeah nothing better for your back than Jiu-Jitsu yeah your neck’s a little sore Jiu-Jitsu yeah shoulders a little stretch jitu no you I’m not saying go out there you going be able to kill it you’re not going to be able to go like the super hard crazy round it’s not going to work yeah yeah just be careful I would say be careful you go yeah I am not a doctor doctor and and probably if people listen to me as if I was a doctor their health would be deteriorating very quickly it’d be in question for sure from time to time don’t sleep eat meat train injured go that’s my attitude all right next question how crucial is knowing the personality type introvert extrovert of your colleagues in combat business or choosing an MOS which is an occupation yeah um how crucial is it to know the personalities of people it’s really crucial knowing and understanding people is critical in every aspect of life and that being said the most important part of knowing people is knowing that you really care can’t know people not 100% And I hear people talk about like personality types and there’s these tests and these these categories and stuff like that and honestly I’ve never been familiar with that um but you know you can put people in different categories but for me when you put a person in a category by themselves right that’s only 50% of the situation the other 50% is the other people that they’re working with mhmm so I want to know not just what type of Personality they have because that’s a that’s a like I said that’s half of the equation the other half is how do they interact with other people MH and other people’s personalities how do they handle Slackers how do they handle overachievers how do they handle loud Mouse how do they handle submissive people how do they handle aggressive people those are all different personality traits I want to know I want to see how people are going to handle other personalities and then I want to also know how they’re going to handle certain situations pressure conflict authority responsibility I mean I want to know not just what their personality is but how they’re going to react because you can get people that are a really easy example is people that are super aggressive but they fold under pressure and you can get people that are super passive that fold under pressure and vice versa you can get someone that’s super quiet and humble and Under Pressure they’re just strong so that’s what I want to know I don’t care what kind of personality you have I mean I do to an extent but I want to know how it interoperates with the with the world with the people and with the situations that you’re going to face and how do you do that you do that by observing them while they’re dealing with other people and while they’re dealing with pressure situations that’s just a reality yeah and you can’t you can have idea you know I won’t say that you won’t be able to predict it but you’ll get surprised sometimes you get surprised on a person that you think is all tough and they fold or PE person that you think is weak and they’re strong so you will get fooled sometimes a lot times you’re you know you’re probably right 60% of the time 70% of the time yeah yeah big one is also how how they react when stuff goes bad like when stuff doesn’t go their way you know and that’s a spectrum too but some you can meet someone and or things are going good you’re hiring new people with growth or whatever whatever your situation and it’s like dang this guy’s I’m so glad I hired this guy but when something goes wrong they self-destruct or something like that man yeah that’s I think a critical component and so I you know the simple answer is that there’s there’s so many different variables so many different nuances that what you want to do is you want to know your people yeah you want to build relationships with your people people so you know them so you understand them that’s what you want to do y the RW relationships yeah that’s what you need that’s how you get to know your people and that’s how you lead them correctly next question in regards to subordinate leadership how do you begin to change the culture SL school of thought of an industry or a company you know I’m not sure if they mean in regards to how do you change your subordinate leaderships or if you are subordinate I’m not sure what which one of those it is but regardless it doesn’t matter cuz guess what I’m going to do I’m going to lead that’s what I’m going to do whether I’m on whether I’m the subordinate guy or the superior guy I’m going to lead MH oh we’re going to I want to change things and make them a certain way cool I’m going to do those things I’m going to make those things happen that’s how you do it and if you’re doing the right things for the right reasons your message is going to spread yeah you know how many bad seagull platoons I was in how many zero you know why cuz me and my buddies we always had a good attitude we always had the right attitude and that spread to the other people that were with us now there’s a red flag that you can get for your self and this is frustration when you start saying yourself which I’m not saying this necessarily but this kind of question is coming from somebody that wants change to happen but it’s not happening so they’re getting frustrated and they’re thinking they aren’t on board or they don’t care and they aren’t professional they’re not motivated like me they don’t have a good attitude so there’s a lot of blame going on right there yeah so this isn’t about them though it’s about you and it’s about leading from any level in the chain of command if you’re leading if you’re doing the right things for the right reasons that’s going to spread so when I the classic example I talk about it all the time is if you’re exercising extreme ownership if you’re saying you know what I got this it was a mistake made it was my fault that spread yeah if you’re humble that spreads if you have an open mind that spreads if you’re being aggressive not again not aggressive towards other people but if you’re being aggressive in pursuit of your goal that spreads you know what doesn’t spread is when you’re aggressive at people oh oh actually it does spread but it’s negative yeah you don’t want that you know what doesn’t spread it doesn’t spread when you’re trying trying to get people to do things because it’s going to make you look good yeah that doesn’t spread mhm you can’t get people to behave better because you want to look good it doesn’t work yeah people see right through that oh he wants to look good you know what I’m going to do sabotage now the other thing I’ve been saying lately because people are surprised or whatever or not surprised but they’re concerned eared they don’t see how it’s going to work so fast and I say you know what it’s not going to work fast it’s got to be and here’s the word it’s got to be a campaign it’s got to be a campaign it’s not like World War II was not one battle right World War one was not one battle it’s a campaign to win in Europe it’s a campaign to win in the Pacific it takes battle after battle after battle and guess what you don’t win them all yeah you lose some of them and so you’re you’re going to on this campaign you’re going to win and you’re going to lose but you got to have the persistence and the patience and the persuasiveness to continue and another piece of this is you you are best off if you go indirect and not be like hey you need to act like me no people don’t like that you need to just act how you’re acting and if you’re doing it like I said the right things for the right reasons people are going to see you and they’re going to follow so that’s how you begin to change the school of thought yeah that genuiness like tends to show itself or that like if you’re not genuine it tends to show itself you know just because of the Dynamics of any Tas never mind tends to it just straight shows itself yeah so when you’re doing it for the right reasons like you you can’t help but expose that you know that will be exposed so yeah people will sign sign right on and then you end up gaining like how you say it’s a campaign it’s like you’ll gain a little bit of ground you might win this guy over like hey wait that’s a you know that’s a cool way of doing it or you know whatever the group is and you make these small little steps and you kind of hold that ground and yeah before you know it it’s kind of dang the whole culture of this I don’t know office or whatever MH it’s kind of changing you know just it happens it’s true I’ve seen it happen next question Joo eeko how do you work with people who overthink things the classic overthinker what does that mean the overthink it means they won’t pick up this pen right here because they look at and say hm I wonder what the weight of that pen is and if I should pick it up right now because I’m also thinking about saying something and what if I drop the pen while I’m trying to say something that makes a noise on the desk that disrupts the flow of my sentence and then the whole flow of my sentence is disrupted which means my train of thought will be disrupted now I can’t finish what I was going to say that’s an overthinker so that’s the person we’re trying now you can just imagine applying that thought pattern to an actual project that you’re working on right right not a good scenario or you’re trying to apply it to a combat situation that you’re in or you’re trying to apply it to a relationship that you’re in you start overthinking well if I say this then she might think that what they mean by that right there that little they mean by that yes yes dang yeah that’s true okay that’s an overthinker so quit thinking so much you’re overthinking it so here’s what I do when someone’s overthinking when I got someone that’s like a like a chronic overthinker I’m gonna I’m GNA funnel them into the right mindset with questions and I’ll give you some real easy questions to ask that’ll make this happen things like hey what do you what do you mean by that or like can you explain that again and you’re getting them to explain it in a simpler way or you say you know hey so hold on so what’s the actual goal what are we trying to get done here because again they’re putting layers upon layers of complexity on top of things that don’t deserve it so what exactly are we trying to do mhm and again you’re just kind of playing dumb a little bit mhm and asking questions and then if you can’t get to them if you can’t quite get them to simplify it then you say oh oh okay so we’re trying to do this right very simple statement so so that way they start subconsciously being coached and being taught to simplify things as much as they can in their head and you know another thing I’ve been saying lately when I’m out working with people is I used to not really understand why people are drawn to this complexity but I actually think I understand now and I think it has something to do with the fact that if I come up with a plan and it’s super complex and super crazy and you don’t understand it then I must be smarter than you right yeah right I came up with something that’s so genius and so complicated that you don’t even understand it right I understand it I understand yeah the doing it right right and by the way you know the only way you’re going to understand it if I is if I break it down for you cuz you don’t get it yeah so it’s an ego trip and it’s completely wrong because the fact of the matter is if I’m trying to get you to do something and you don’t understand it I’m a loser I’m failing as a leader so you you you got to try and get people to understand that Simplicity beats complexity every single time and overthinking things is a failure in ability to simplify so another thing and this is more kind of about planning and this is something I used to talk about in the SEAL Teams and I called it 6% advantage over the enemy MH and what this was was let’s say you have a Target building that you’re going off of or going after you’re going to go take down a Target building in the middle of wherever the middle of the desert and you basically come up with a plan that you’re gonna use your standard operating procedures you’re all going to get online or you’re going to at least set up a base and a maneuver element it’s very simple two elements one element’s going to hold cover and the other one’s going to move through the target cover and move it’s as simple as it gets that’s great so you come up with the plan that’s your plan and then as you’re looking at the imagery or you’re looking at the the map you notice that there is an ouse MH 150 meters away from the house so now what you do is you go you know what because there’s that ouse there you know what I’m going to do is I’m going to take another team of our guys we’re going to break them off from the main assault Force we’re going to put them over there and that’s what they’re going to be in case the gu’s in the ouse blah blah blah so what you’ve done is you’ve separated your units you’ve increased your communication problems you’ve sacrificed your fields of fire You’ disaggregated your Firepower you’ve diminished your unity of command you’ve broke from your standard operating procedures you’ve given up your real tactical advantage that you have for the chance the chance that this guy at 2:00 in the morning when you hit the target is in the ouse and not in his home is it worth that no so don’t overthink it we’re hitting this target you know what cool we’ll keep eyes on that thing no big deal but don’t give up your Tactical Advantage because you overthought the situation go with what you know and another piece of that is a lot of times when people get super detailed like that and planning they’re actually planning things planning on things that that can’t be known so why would we make a plan for something that can’t be known I got a better idea instead of making a plan for something that can’t be known make a plan that’s adaptable mhm you want your plan to be adaptable able and you know how you have the best adaptability for instance on the battlefield that you have the most control over your guys so that you can move them maneuver them quickly and how do you do that by having good unity of command and how do you do that by keeping your guys for the most part together the minute you start spreading them out all over the place and something changes something unknown that unexpected happens now you got to reel everyone back in and try and get them to change the formation of their assault it becomes very very complex so if you set up your plan so that it’s adaptable to changing situations then you’re going to be good to go same thing in business do you know what the Market’s going to do no we have predictors yes do do we know them no do you know what your competitor is going to do no MH do you know what your consumers are going to do no do we have intelligence of course we do do we have metrics of course we do but we don’t know things so keep your plans adaptable so you can make adjustments when you need to as opposed to overthinking things and creating specific Branch plans for a possibility of something that might occur in the future or might not don’t overthink it people you know sometimes people who underthink things sometimes they tend to say hey why do you overthink things when you’re when you’re just normally thinking about something like you’re thinking about from noral standpoint yeah so there’s obviously you have to think about things right and yes you should be cauti of someone cautious of someone that’s just constantly saying man you’re overthinking this I spent three minutes planning yeah yeah watch out for that guy yeah that’s why he asked when the word o when overthinking comes up I got to understand what that means but I feel like your example is sound Joo what do you think of Greg Jackson the MMA famous MMA coach criticizing Jon Jones on his recent powerlifting and muscle gain yeah so if you didn’t see this if you’re into MMA at all they caught Greg Jackson on the mic after uh Jon Jones’s recent fight saying you know basically hey I told you so he’s too big he’s all that powerlifting right and I’ve talked about Greg Jackson before and nothing but respect for Greg Jackson uh not only is he a outstanding coach and a great tactician he’s also just super humble guy who has built a really cool gym and built a lot of Champions so his record speeds for itself so I’m not going to second guess you know what he’s saying about a fighter that he’s worked with since day one and I think really it boils down to this sort of definition of perfection if you’ve ever heard this definition of the definition of perfection is when you have nothing more to add and nothing nothing more to take away you’ve got it where it needs to be and they use this with design you know design of whatever Furniture of iPhones of you know anything buildings when you’ve when you’ve got everything that needs to be there and you can’t take anything away that’s the that’s Perfection they say this about writing too when you look at someone that writes really well every sentence you look at that sentence you can’t take away a word and you can’t add a word right and that’s Perfection and I think that is what Greg Jackson is trying to do with Johnny Bones Jones get him in that physical status where you don’t want to add anything and you don’t want to take anything away so what they may have done according to Greg Jackson is they may have added a little too much muscle because of course you got to have some muscle because it gives you strength it’s and explosiveness but at the same time muscle requires oxygen MH and so you can actually get too big to where it’s affecting your cardio mhm so I think that’s all Greg Jackson was talking about and I think that’s the balance that that’s the balance I’m always looking for you know I want to be big and strong enough but I want to have endurance that’s what I’m trying to do yeah you know and I try and find that balance by doing both strength work and endurance work that’s and when I say endurance I mean muscular endurance I don’t mean Marathon running cuz I don’t run marathons metcon metcons baby so that’s what I think he’s talking about and you know like I said respect for Greg Jackson and I’m sure that he had a he’s got a good handle on why he’s saying that yeah fully and when you I do know a little about about a little bit about this where um so if you gain some a bunch of muscle mhm fast like over a short period period of time you’re going to have a way harder time dealing with you know the drawbacks of that muscle and that is endurance that’s the main thing um and at the same time this doesn’t have much to do with this particular situation but if you gain muscle real fast you can lose it you have the potential to lose it real fast but at the same time you vice versa if you cultivate this you know muscular body build whatever um over time like let’s say you started lifting at 15 years old and you’re you know 35 years old now and you’ve always been muscular your body will have a easier time holding on to that muscle if you stop like lifting for even a year or if you stop Lifting for a long time and then you get back to lifting it’ll it’ll it’ll jump right back up as far as your muscular uh muscular muscularity so in regards to endurance no matter what bigger muscles require more oxygen more more fuel so it’s harder to get that um endurance up when you have big muscles just in general but you’re going to have the potential to gain that endurance way more if you’ve had muscle for a long time so you do these big jumps in muscle gain man that endurance is going to suffer it’s going to be really hard to build up that endurance really hard I’m not saying impossible but it’s just really really hard going take time yeah so yeah that is a dangerous thing not dangerous but it’s it’s a it’s risky thing to do when you know I’m going to jump back into the fighting situation and I’m huge now you it’s like ah that endurance might suffer on that one and yeah you know obviously or apparently it uh it did there think we uh maybe do one more here okay Joo do you ever feel like sopus pushing a rock up a hill only to watch it roll back down again and have to do it again how do you overcome that do I ever feel like Copus yeah of course I do I mean I I do and I’ll tell you I’ve I’ve thought about this and I’ve been waiting for people to start saying like oh you put another picture of the sweat and of a squat rack really but I don’t know if they understand understand I’ve been getting on that squat rack and grinding it out for 25 years and I’m not bored with it yet and it it might seem like that’s an unwinable battle but really to me it’s not about winning it’s the battle itself it’s the struggle it’s the daily test that’s what life’s about not just physically but mentally getting that rock to the top of the mountain that’s not what my goal is my goal actually is pushing the Rock because pushing the rock that pushes me that makes me tougher that makes me harder mentally and physically it gives me much more than I give it I want to struggle I want to grind and Claw and scratch and I want to dig in and I want to push and I don’t want it to end if I ever got the rock to the top of the mountain and it stayed there I’d push it back down myself I don’t want to rest and I don’t want to coast and I don’t want to reach a point in my life where I say that’s it I’ve done enough I’m not going to give anymore I’m not going to push anymore no no that Relentless cycle of daytoday challenges they aren’t maddening to me they don’t frustrate me they inspire me inspire me to drive and push more and to push push harder that’s what that rock does to me so I say dig in and get to pushing and I think that’s all I’ve got for tonight so to all you Troopers out there thank you for joining us thanks for inspiring us thanks for listening to us listening to the podcast or watching the podcast on YouTube I had somebody hit me up the other day on Twitter and said man I didn’t know you guys were on YouTube yeah we’re on YouTube got the YouTube channel y Joo podcast sure and thanks for giving us feedback and for spreading the word and if you want to connect with us on the interwebs on Twitter Echo is eoch Charles on Instagram Echo is at eoch Charles on Facebook what are you SL Echo Charles yes sir and on those three I’m the same I am atjo willink and to everyone out there in uniform military police firemen EMS thanks for what you all do and gratitude for your service second that and for keeping us free and safe and if you want to support the podcast once again how can you do it Echo Charles um support the podcast at the same time get supported too by on it on it com you get they give you 10% off boom support your endeavors to get better supplement 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have my own head on them or if they just had Victory MMA Fitness on them then you yeah that’s right but anyway yeah at Joost store com or you can get a coffee mug they’re kind of cool I think I think they’re kind of cool and if you want if you if you kind of liked what uh what we’re talking about here leadership life lessons you can check out a little book that myself and my brother Leif Babin wrote It’s called Extreme ownership you can get it on hard cover you can get it on Kindle you can get it on audio and the audio is read by myself and by Leif as well so you can check that out and thanks for supporting that and finally to everybody out there in the world living in Freedom take advantage of it take advantage of your freedom and your life by driving hard and by pushing that rock up that hill with everything you’ve got and also and of course Drive hard by getting out there and getting after it and so until next time this is Joo and Eko out