Jocko Podcast 78 w/ Echo Charles: “A Man’s Search For Meaning” Viktor Frankl

this is Jocko podcast number 78 with echo Charles and me Jocko willing good evening echo good evening nightmare now that’s a word that I use often times to describe the most horrible things or the most wretched things and in my hierarchy of adjectives nightmare is right alongside of Hell I’m not sure which one is worse in my mind that’s why I say they’re right alongside each other because hell is beyond the worst thing your mind can imagine and that’s basically what a nightmare is when you’re asleep and your mind delves into the most horrific things beyond what you can consciously and wilfully imagine in your own head that’s what a nightmare is now what if there was a place that was worse than a nightmare and it was a real place who could create such a place and the answer to that is we can I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner who threw himself about in his sleep obviously having a horrible nightmare since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffer from fearful dreams or deliria I wanted to wake the poor man suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him frightened at the thing I was about to do at that moment I became intensest intensely conscious of the fact that no dream no matter how horrible could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us and to which I was about to recall him and that’s a quote from the book man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl which will be appearing in two today and it’s a book about the Nazi concentration camps which are really as he pointed out they’re worse than any nightmare we can imagine here’s a holocaust survivor eddie weinstein on the death and the atrocities in Treblinka by now the transports were coming every day one was much like the next the same incidence recurred again and again once as I swept out the interior of a car an SS man suddenly struck me with his whip and ordered me to help a woman who was unable to stand and climb out of the car the idea was to show his victims how well the ill were being treated then he ordered one of the workers to take the women take the woman through the field the field hospital for care the newcomers really believed that the alien woman would be taken to an infirmary none of them realized that the field hospital was in fact just a giant pit about 30 yards in diameter which was always ablaze they would place those who were sick or disabled on the ground at the edge of the pit facing in the SS man and the in-charge circulated among them and shot them in the back of the neck then the workers cast them into the pit some of the victims were still breathing when they were tossed in with the other bodies the pit was separated from the spacious field by a barrier of fresh pine branches which will replace from time to time to conceal the infirmary from the newcomers until the last moment 20 minutes after I helped the woman climb out of the railroad car I was told that some infants were sitting by the pit and no one else was there because the SS soldier had taken his lunch break I gathered some trash and went over there I saw the woman who I had removed from the car still breathing sitting at the edge of the pit and staring and fright into the burning Inferno and its contents the half cremated bodies of old people and children mixed with smoldering trash she tried to stand up but her legs would not hold her she looked at the workers who stirred the embers remnants of human beings so they would burn better nearby were about a dozen infants too young to have learned how to walk they were not crying they certainly did not understand what was happening they looked about almost certainly in hopes of finding their mother or father later I heard that right after he returned from his lunch break the SS man shot them all and ordered the workers to throw the tiny bodies into the flames of all my memories of that accursed place the vision of these babies is undoubtedly the worst I see their faces whenever I remember Treblinka as I write these lines more than 50 years after that day I still cannot overcome the horror in another report here Martin’s pet of tar now Poland describes the massacre of torn out Jews in an interview we heard the columns of Jews under German escort at night it was going constantly they were passing our house because this was already on the outskirts of the city the cemetery and they were marching them to the woods behind the city as we found out later they were all shot over there during the day I looked out through the shingles my father said I shouldn’t look but anyway I was a kid I was curious and the roof was overlooking a cemetery and wagons with bodies dead bodies were coming in groups they were bringing in groups of Jewish people that had to dig trenches they had to dig ditches and the bodies dumped in and after those Jews that dug the ditches they were shot also and pushed in by another group that came in after them into those ditches and lime was poured over the bodies and the next group covered up those ditches and dug other ditches they brought in pregnant women and they didn’t use any bullets they used bayonets the screams of the mothers that their children they tore their children out of their arms and the screams of the children I still hear and Solomon radowski who is the only survivor from the 78 people in his family described the concentration camp they throw the people in the crematoriums the children I will never forget alive they throw them in the crematoriums they grabbed by an arm by a leg by the head and throw them into the ovens there it was so tragic the cries and people when crying there you know it was so terrible I can feel it now I can even see the people the other people were crying the children were hollering mama daddy help me mama daddy help me it was terrible and one more report on Treblinka from Henry gold and the worst thing that happens to a person in that instance he loses self-respect and that’s exactly what happened to the majority of the people some of them even lost their minds they couldn’t take it they couldn’t take the hunger they couldn’t take the beatings they couldn’t take the cold no clothing and the uncertainty and the uncertainty I think that was the worst thing that can happen to a person you didn’t know from one moment to the next what was going to happen life was very cheap a person was alive one minute the next minute he was shot killed beaten up beaten to death torn apart apart by dogs and so on life was very very cheap and that’s the way the Germans liked it that particular camp was governed by the Jewish Jewish police and so on the Germans did not stay in the camp they were on the outside but the life inside of the camp was just as bad without the Germans being right there than if they would be the Jewish police was I don’t know you take a person in that situation and you give them a little power and he becomes the same as the oppressor himself there were some policemen that were not bad but there were a lot of them that were ruthless there were others that would beat people and do all kinds of things that would degrade them and so on especially women they cut their hair off and they look like men they look like scarecrows and they would get beaten up by the Jewish police just as bad as the man for no reason at all if they wanted a little more soup where they were distributing soup and there was some left and they were going to give everybody a little bit and the Jewish police with their sticks and rubber hoses would beat them half cents senseless and that’s what happens when the conditions are the way they were then when a person becomes an animal and loses self-respect that is willing to get a beating and get beaten half senseless just to get a little bit of soup either you died or if you didn’t die the Germans would come and take you away the filth was just terrible in the camp in the barracks you had cops I mean bunks where everybody slept on straw there were no covers was no pillows nothing you slept in your clothes in the winters in the winter because you’re afraid to get cold the only heating was a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the barrack when somebody stole some wood in the factory or something then we had a fire otherwise it was freezing and the only warmth they had if you huddled together and they kept warm that way but nobody would get undressed the lice were eating you up alive once a month you allowed to take a shower and we had to walk to camp a to go to the showers and that means a 10-mile walk 10 miles there and 10 miles back a lot of people were too weak to walk and those people hardly ever took a shower there was no hot water in the washroom there was only cold and in the winter you were afraid to wash up because there was nothing to wipe yourself with therefore you would walk out in the cold winter and freeze to death and Henry gold brothers and both of his parents were all killed in the gas chambers and from the Buchenwald report which was translated and edited with an introduction by David a Hackett I will now describe the crematoriums in the transports at the station two thousand people got off the trains they had to throw away all their luggage afterward the men and women were divided into two groups at which the larger boys were assigned to the group with the men then that great devourer of Jews Mengele drove buying a car seeking out the strongest from each transport they numbered around thirty out of two thousand the remainder were led away by SS technical sergeant mole the officer of the crematorium the elderly were loaded onto dump trucks and then dumped into burning trenches while still alive the remainder were led to the gas chambers meanwhile new transports were arriving in front of the gas chamber was a dressing room on its walls was written in all languages put shoes into the cubbyholes and tie them together so you will not lose them after the showers you will receive hot coffee here poor victims undress themselves and went into the chamber there were three columns for the ventilators through which the gas poured in a special work detail with dungeons drove the people into the chamber when the room was full small children were thrown in through a window sergeant mole grabbed infants by their legs and smashed their skulls against the wall then the gas was led into the chamber the lungs of the victim slowly burst and after three minutes a loud clamoring could be heard then the chamber was open and those who still showed signs of life were beaten to death the prisoners of the special work details then cold corpses out took their rings off and cut their hair which was gathered up put in sacks and shipped to factories then they arranged the corpses in piles of ten each after sergeant mole had counted them they were taken to the ovens or if the crematoriums crematoriums were insufficient thrown into fire trenches once it happened that a victim crawled out of a burning trench he was beaten to death with truncheon ‘he’s on sergeant mole pull put a naked woman in the trench and shot her in the genitals another time mold found a ring on a member of the special work detail he ordered nat naphtha poured over him and had it lighted he hanged a man by his hands and shot him until his arms were torn through then he hanged him up by the feet and repeated the process once sergeant mole took a family of six first and shot the youngest in the presence of the rest then he shot the older ones and finally their father and mother and that’s the testimony of john de weiss who was 15 years old at Birkenau so I think it’s safe to say that this is a situation that is definitely worse than a nightmare and what possibly can we take away from that I think the best thing we can do is try and learn and I think one of the best places to learn and take lessons away from the Holocaust is from the book that I started out with today called man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl let’s go to the book let us take the case of a transport which was officially announced to transfer a certain number of prisoners to another camp but it was fairly safe to guess that its final destination would be the gas chambers a selection of sick or feeble prisoners incapable of work would be sent to one of the big central camps which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums the selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners or of group against group all that mattered was that one’s own name and that of one’s friends were crossed off the list of victims though everyone knew that for each man saved another victim had to be found a definite number of prisoners had to go with each transport it did not really matter which since each of them was nothing but a number on their admission to the camp all their documents had been taken from them together with other possessions each prisoner therefore had an opportunity to claim a fictitious name a profession and for various reasons many did this the authorities were interested only in the captain’s numbers these numbers were often tattooed on their skin and also had to be sewn to a certain spot on their trousers jacket or coat any guard who wanted to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his number and how he dreaded those glances he never asked for his name to return to the convoy about the depart there was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues every man was controlled by one thought only to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home and to save his friends with no hesitation therefore he would arrange for another prisoner another number to take his place in the transport as I have already mentioned the process of selecting Kapos was a negative one only the most brutal of the prisoners were chosen for this job so Kappos or prisoners Jewish prisoners that got selected to help run the prison camp and and capo I tried to find the etymology of where that came from and the best or the closest or the thing that made the most sense to me from what I read was was they had two words combined together comrade police then the in German does got shortened to capital so some of these and you already heard one of those earlier testimonies talking about the Jewish police inside the prisons and how they were just as bad as in many cases as the Germans themselves back to the book but apart from the selection of Kapos which is undertaken by the SS there was a sort of self-selecting process going on the whole time among all the prisoners on the average only those prisoners could keep alive who after years of trekking from Camp to camp had lost all scruples in their fight for existence they were prepared to use every means honest and otherwise even brutal force theft and betrayal of friends in order to save themselves will you have come back by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles whatever one may choose to call them we know the best of us did not return so there’s a dynamic that you don’t think of immediately when you think of the concentration camps number one you don’t think about the kapos the Jewish police that are forced into this situation and then the other thing you don’t think about is this the fact that the people that were going to survive we’re basically making it very broad say but but you know from what Viktor Frankl saying here it was the people that were willing just to do anything to survive including betraying their friends and he’s saying straight up we know the best of us did not return and that is something that you don’t think about and we probably don’t think about it because we don’t want to think about it because when you start thinking about what would you do to survive what would you do to survive what would I do to survive and that’s a question I don’t think a lot of people want to know the answer to and it’s very easy to go through life and never have to answer that question talking a little bit now about what life was like in the camp back to the book somewhere it is said that man cannot exist without sleep for more than a stated number of hours quite wrong I had been convinced that there were certain things I just could not do I could not sleep without this or I could not live without that or the other the first night in Auschwitz we slept in beds which were constructed in tears on each tear measuring about 6 and 1/2 to 8 feet slept 9 men directly on the boards 2 blankets would be shared by each 9 men we could of course lie only on our sides crowded and huddled against each other which had some advantages because the bitter cold though was forbidden to take shoes up to the bunks some people did use them secretly as pillows in spite of the fact they were caked with mud otherwise one’s head had to rest on the crook of an almost dislocated arm and yet sleep came and brought oblivion and relief from the pain for a few hours thought a suicide was entertained by nearly everyone if only for a brief time it was born of hopelessness of the situation the constant danger of death looming over us daily and hourly and the closeness of deaths suffered by many of the others from personal convictions which we mentioned later I made a firm promise on my first evening in the camp that I would not run to the wire this was a phrase used in camp to describe the most popular method of suicide touching the electrical electrically charged barbed wire fence it was not entirely difficult for me to make this decision there was a little point in committing suicide since for the average inmate life expectation calculating objectively and Counting all likely chances was very poor he could not without any a shirt he could not with any assurance expect to be among the small percentage of men who survived all the selections the prisoner of Auschwitz in the first phase of shock did not fear death even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days after all they spared him the act of committing suicide and Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist going into this situation so that’s the that’s the view that’s the perspective that he takes throughout this and he’s now been in for a couple days in Auschwitz and another guy comes in to talk to him who’s another colleague of his and we’re going back to book a colleague of mine who had arrived in Auschwitz several weeks previously smuggle himself into our hut he wanted to come and comfort us and tell us a few things he had become so thin that at first we did not recognize him with a show of good humor and a devil-may-care attitude he gave us a few hurried tips don’t be afraid don’t fear the selections dr M the SS medical chief has a soft spot for doctors but one thing I beg of you he continued shave daily if at all possible even if you have to use a piece of glass to do it even if you have to give your last piece of bread for it you look younger and the scraping will make your cheeks look routier if you want to stay alive there’s only one way look fit for work if you even limp because let us say you have a small blister on your heel and an SS man spots this he will wave you aside and the next day you are sure to be gassed now his mind and his thoughts he describes what he would think about back to the book my mind still clung to the image of my wife a thought crossed my mind I didn’t even know if she were still alive I knew only one thing which I have learned well by now love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved it finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being in his inner self whether or not he is actually present whether or not he is still alive it all ceases somehow to be of importance I did not know whether my life wife was alive and had no means of finding out during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail but at that moment it ceased to matter there was no need for me to know nothing could touch the strength of my love my thoughts and the image of my beloved had I known then that my wife was dead I think that I still would have given myself undisturbed by that knowledge to the contemplation of her image and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying set me like a seal upon my heart love is as strong as death they’re continuing on dr Frankel talks about images from inside the camp standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the West and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors from steel blue blood-red the desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky then after a few minutes of moving silence one prisoner said to another how beautiful the world could be and beyond looking for beauty around them they were able to find humor and I have people ask me about this from time to time about humor in combat situations and isn’t it important and yes it absolutely is and you’d think in a concentration camp even humor would go away but not true back to the book to discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor could find a sense of humor there as well of course only the faint trace of one and then only for a few seconds or minutes humor was another of the souls weapons in the fight for self-preservation it is well known that humor more than anything else in the human makeup can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation if only for a few seconds the attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick I learned while mastering the art of living yet it is impossible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp although suffering is omnipresent to draw an analogy a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas if a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber it will fill the chamber completely and evenly no matter how big the chamber thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind no matter whether the suffering is great or little therefore the size of human suffering is absolutely relative and I think the point that I took away from that was that chamber that can be filled up with suffering fill it up with some humor as well otherwise that that suffering will just fill the whole chamber will fill your whole brain back to the book we were grateful for the smallest of mercies we were glad when there was time to deal aus before going to bed although in itself this was no pressure pleasure as it meant standing naked in an unheated hut where icicles hung from the ceiling but we were thankful if there was no air raid alarm during this operation the lights were not switched off if we could not do the job properly we were kept awake half the night so you’re at a point in life where you’re grateful for being able to stand naked and pick the lice off of your friends before you go to bed so the lice won’t keep you awake at night by chewing at your body and you know I talked about how or he talks about how you know it was the person that was going to survive had to be ruthless basically and here he says but it’s not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when sooner or later it is a question of life or death no man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same but here he says I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one closest friends lives lost its value everything was sacrificed to this end a man’s character became involved to the point that he was caught in mental turmoil which threatened all values he held and threw them into doubt under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity which had robbed the man of his will and made him an object to be exterminated having planned however to make full use of him first to the last ounce of his physical resources under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values if the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect he lost the feeling of being an individual a being with a mind with inner freedom and personal value he thought of himself then as only part of an enormous mass of people his existence descended to the level of animal life the men were herded sometimes to one place then to another sometimes driven together than apart like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own a small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides well-versed in methods of torture and sadism they drove the herd incessantly backwards and forwards with shouts kicks and blows and we the sheep thought of two things only how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little food he’s going to delve into this deeper this idea of this inner freedom and how hard you had to fight to maintain that and how easy it was just to roll in and become one of the pack one of the herd back to the book it is very difficult for an outsider to grasp how very little value was placed on human life in camp the camp inmate was hardened but possibly became more conscious of this complete disregard of human existence when a convoy of sick men was arranged the emaciated bodies of the sick were thrown on two-wheeled carts which were drawn by prisoners for many miles often through snowstorms to the next camp if one of the sick men had died before the cart left he was thrown on anyways the list had to be correct the list was the only thing that mattered a man counted only because he had a prison number one literally became a number dead or alive that was unimportant the life of a number was completely irrelevant what stood behind that number and that life mattered even less the fate the history the name of the man the camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever this was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one’s master and that one must not try to influence it in any way but instead let it take its own course in addition there was a great apathy which contributed no small part to the feelings of the prisoner at times lighting lightning decisions had to be made decisions would spell life-or-death the prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him and so some of the examples that he brings up in the book on that are they’d get told we need people to go to a different camp for rest and they had no idea sometimes it actually was some kind of rest sometimes it kind of was some kind of actual medical facility sometimes it was just you’re going to the gas chambers at another camp and they had no idea which one it was and so they got into this mode of they were just going to externally just whatever was gonna happen that was gonna happen and they wouldn’t they go beyond when they’re trying in the beginning to like get me off that list or I want to be on that list and they realized that they just were messing with faith that’s they got into motive I’m just going to let things happen then whatever happens happens they got this this feeling of apathy you can just imagine how that that having no control externally of what’s happening how that leads number one leads to this apathy of just I don’t care what happens but number two how that that can then sneak in and start to get control of your inner thoughts and your inner feelings where you just feel like you don’t have control over anything in life and that’s it mm-hmm and here he talks about apathy some more the prisoners apathy was also the result of other factors hunger and lack of sleep contributed to it as they do in normal life also and to the general irritability which was another characteristic of the prisoner’s mental state the lack of sleep was partly due to the pestering of vermin which infested the terribly overcrowded huts because of the general lack of hygiene and sanitation the fact that we had neither nicotine nor caffeine also contributed to the state of apathy and irritability besides these physical causes there were mental ones in the form of certain complexes the majority of prisoners suffered from a kind of inferiority complex we all had once been or had fancy ourselves to be somebody now we were treated like complete non entities the consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher more spiritual things that cannot be shaken by camp life but how many freemen let alone prisoners possess it without consciously thinking about it the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded this became obvious when one observed the contrasts offered by the singular sociological structure of the camp the more prominent prisoners the Kappos the cooks the store keepers and the camp policemen did not as a rule feel degraded at all like the majority of prisoners but on the contrary they felt promoted some even developed miniature miniature delusions of grandeur clearly we can all take a lesson out of that one and that is you know you get put into a promotion position or you’ve got authority over people don’t let that go to your head yeah I guess that’s a natural thing where they did this that experiment best in that University whatever and they’re all just random student if one played the prisoner one group played the guards and that happened yeah you know like act it’s just an experiment it’s not real life you know and it still happened yeah and it happened in real life which i think is even more in st to you and more and say yeah hey huh but then again how can we sit here and judge when if you’re in that situation and you need to survive and you need to do the best to get yours you to survive in your family survive and you have an opportunity Oh are we gonna say nope nope I’m gonna instead of doing this where I maybe can do something good in the long run nope I’m not going to go across my values I’m gonna die in three days and that’s it yeah that’s a hard decision to make yeah I mean it seems easy when you’re sitting in the comfort of your home like I wouldn’t do that or you know and this is what I would have done or I wouldn’t have done that yeah and you know I I talk to people about again it’s I’m not going to compare anything to what we’re talking about here but in the military for instance a lot of times I had to make decisions to – you know I got to do something that maybe I didn’t fully agree with but I knew in the long run it was going to get me something that was going to be beneficial to my team or to my platoon or whatever and so you make those little adjustments and you got to suck it up and you do something that you might not want to do but in the long run it’s going to be beneficial yeah I mean this I don’t even know if this is even a remotely close comparison but what I am saying is this you take a human being and you say look you can either step up and act a different way and be abusive to these people or you’re going to be dead in three days that’s it those are your choices yeah and it’s not that hard to figure out that a lot of people are going to step up and say cool I’ll abuse those people because I need to live need to live yeah my choice is either deaf yeah and by the way maybe the maybe that’s the best person in that group is going to say you know what I’m going to do this and I’m going to step up and when I abuse these people I’m going to do a little bit less than someone else might right and therefore I’m doing the best I can yeah I mean these are decisions how do you even think about these decisions you know man and you have to think about you have to understand you have to understand what human nature is that there’s a survival point for humans you have us an ending instinct to survive that very few people can overcome yeah and I don’t even you know again how do you judge whether it’s right to overcome it or not when is it right I mean obviously when is it right we’re sitting here it’s easy to say hey don’t you know these guys why would you kill yourself well if you don’t do these things you’re basically killing yourself you don’t step up if you don’t say okay I’ll work as a capo if you don’t do that you’re killing yourself right does that make it okay yeah yeah brutal it’s like you got to figure out whether or not you’re better off dead in the B even in the grand scheme of things like these are these people that they’re going to kind of succumb to these positions or do all these low things to survive so they can survive and you don’t live on and all this stuff so it’s either that or am I better off dead overall you know like that’s the decision you got to make tank who knows what you think especially with all these conditions yeah you know the opposite of that is dick winters was talking about how he had and I don’t know if I talked about it on the podcast but in it in the book conversations with dick winters he goes through a big section where he talks about some of the guys in his company and he called him the killers and he actually went on and said hey you know I don’t want to call them killers because that’s going to give the wrong impression but these guys were my most aggressive guys they were my best guys and he’s and he said they didn’t make it past you know he said most of them didn’t make it I forget which which battle but he said most of them didn’t make it past this certain time because they were so aggressive they were such good guys they were so brave that they didn’t make it and and this is sort of the opposite where you have the people that are brave I guess no it’s the same in that people that are brave and hold to their values they’re going to die right and and if you think about somebody that’s cowardly in combat that says oh you know what you know echo you go first I’m going to sit over here behind this you know a covered position I’m gonna live longer and it’s a micro example of what we’re talking about here yeah yeah that’s kit and just just given the book and over tomorrow just like come off as borderline insulting it’s not full-fledged insulting but you ever watch the show survivor III was the first one when it was kind of a thing yeah and there was a interesting psychology happening yeah and that’s like I was Rudy Bosch was on it you know this uh she retired seal mask you know who you know everyone kind of knew in the SEAL Teams okay yeah so inspecting what you’re going to say is that the the people that are not good human beings are the ones that win a lot of oil they get far put it that way because they have this weird mechanism at the end where the last you know few people who get voted off they become this sort of a jury so it’s like if you went through the whole game screwing people over the jury is going to get you kind of thing so it’s a yeah and who’s just how the Cho just sorted itself out over time but the first ones didn’t have any jury right I don’t I don’t know I did in fact I’m gonna go ahead and say I I’m almost positive they didn’t because Rudy had his hand on some log and they had to keep it there for like X and for one I still and one person you know he actually like thought of something else and took his hand off and then he was out that was it dunker but yeah there’s absolute comparison there there’s an absolute comparison to you know if you’re willing to be a snake ring you can and you can you can win the game and I’ve talked about that too and promotion people getting promoted and if you’re willing to be a snake you can get promoted but the thing that I will say in a work environment is that that snake might get one promotion they might get two promotions they’re not going to go the distance and if you hold the line on doing what’s correct then you might miss that first emotion you might even miss that second promotion but eventually if you’re on the right path you will get the recognition and you will win in the long run you got to be patient though yeah yeah I mean obviously in your job it’s not life or death you know death isn’t so close that you know one slip-up you’re dead you’re dead you know so that’s you know obviously the dynamic of different in work in that way but otherwise I think so and survivor there’s also that other thing that kind of what they talk about where or what you’re just talking about is if you it’s kind of in a matter of speaking playing it safe where you’re just hiding under the wing right attacker self to someone or you avoid any kind of you know risky for sure duration and so in Survivor you can make it far like that as well yeah I mean nowadays everyone knows about those things like all you backstab there one or you just hid behind this guy cuz he’s drunk but at the same time just like how you’re saying if you’re brave or you’re gonna stick your morals and be honest with everyone like you’ll get voted off real quick even if you’re really good at you know the challenges so in opening over don’t even like really good leaders get vote like if someone just is a dynamically do they get or I think that me write you a letter too much of it they’re actually much of a threat everybody all right and actually what you’re talking about going through SEAL training I would hear it was sliding here when I went through but I heard it later this idea of the gray man and I think we might have actually answered a question on the podcast about that was going through training and just being a gray man meaning just don’t stand out right wrong way or the other and you’ll be good to go and that’s that’s uh that’s that’s a strategy why in the SEAL Teams is that no it’s a strategy going through buds so if you see your training the initial skill training course because the minute you stand out people start knowing who you are and now you got instructors looking at you and the more they watch you the more they can see whether you’re making some mistakes or if you’re not doing everything right or maybe you’re not and so better just be that guy in the middle I was the guy in the middle not because I wanted to do it but because I was not you know the fastest runner I wasn’t the best swimmer what you don’t want to be is the guy on the tail end right yeah and it’s weird because I put so many guys not through the basic SEAL training but through the advanced SEAL training and the guys that I remember there’s two types of guys that I remember the guys that were awesome and the guys that were horrible and the guys in the middle all the gray guys I know him when I see him but a lot of times I don’t hundred percent got know their name whereas some of the pipe hitters the young piped or some e5 pipe hitter that was just getting after it I’d always remember those guys names because they would take control of everything and stand out and then the other guys you remember guys that are totally jacked up so that idea of being a gray man it seems like a good policy to have in the concentration camp look I just don’t want to stand out I don’t want to have a limp I don’t want to you know come across as I just want to fit in and you’re a man unless you’re going to go the distance right which is and that’s a horrible way of saying I’m going to stand out by saying hey I can whip these prisoners into shape right that’s going and just raising your hand and saying I’ll be a capo I’m going to step up and what you’re risking there is we don’t know where this war is going to end that where he’s going to be at the end of this thing yeah and you know I read some stories about that the war did end and they did liberate these camps and it didn’t work out good for the Capo’s so there’s there’s the same thing you’ve had a bit done alright getting your promotion the first couple times but eventually it comes around Camille exactly right yeah you know Harley Flanagan was talking about Karma and I don’t know how much reality there’s that but there’s there’s the reality of you reap what you sow yeah and if you treat people if you if you take advantage of your position if you maneuver and screw people over to get ahead of them they’ll remember that yeah so remember that yeah then that makes sense I mean karma lives and it’s never worth it by the way if I have almost never worth it I mean could you possibly come up with some scenario where we’re you know I did this to get a promotion so I could take care of you and everyone else so you could come up with it yes but it’s very very rare and and my gut feeling was always like – not worth it not worth it to do those little maneuvers in trying better your position on other people’s backs yeah or screwing someone over and you got to live with that – I mean unless you’re like a sociopath or something like that you have to live with that and man yeah and even at the time it seems like all I could live with that because oh you know what well you’re actually you’re actually taking a higher road than me because you’re saying you personally have to live with it Annetta definitely I’m saying beyond that even if you’re a person that can live with it you’re still going to pay in the long run even if you hook yourself in the mirror be like I don’t care I got promoted it’s good that’s that’s okay so you can live with that that’s cool but guess what there’s something else you’re going to that’s going to come that around and that is one of those other people that you stepped on their back is going to invent something new at work and you want to take over the division and you’re going to pay not to mention the ten people who watched it happen and you know yeah you’re just making enemies yeah enemies and that’s really what karma is for it I mean karma could be this mystical thing that personally watches you and has this judgment system and I’m real just real life just like if I walk up to a you know even meaner even we don’t know each other I don’t have any bad or good feelings towards you and I come and I slap you I created a deficit now now you’re intentionally basically a shaker yeah so your intention whether you do it or not you’re what you you’re compelled to slap me back if not more usually more yeah because you know a lot more so that’s kind of really what it is I mean really in a small teeny tiny nutshell you know I go out and start acting mad to everyone what it they’re not going to be like oh I love you I mean they might because they might be you know intellectual or you know they might be able to think about it but their natural compulsion would be to be Maddox’s that and and this you know the podcast human nature talking about human nature and I always say that war reveals human nature more clearly than anything else because it’s so much pressure on the people obviously a concentration camp it’s revealing human nature that’s exactly what we’re talking about and it reveals itself in crystal clarity on a massive scale in terms of being able to see it in a concentration camp and you see it reveal itself on a TV show called Survivor and you see that reveal itself in in the work environment and what I’m saying is from all that what you want to do is you want to make sure that when you get put into a position of authority you don’t abuse it that’s what I’m saying yeah you don’t want to abuse it you want to treat people with respect no matter what and you don’t want to step on people’s backs to get ahead because ultimately it’s not going to pay off it really isn’t you know you’re only going to fool like that leader that you that you fooled into thinking that you are great guys it’s only gonna last for so long yeah and eventually you’re going to get found out now all right let’s get let’s get back into the book here the experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action and this is we’ve talked about the kapil is easy to talk about some of the more heroic people and and some of those actions very briefly and he says because it’s the reason there’s very briefly because there wasn’t a lot of them the experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action there were enough examples often of a heroic nature which proved that apathy could be overcome irritability irritability suppressed man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom of independence of mind even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress we who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts comforting others giving away their last piece of bread they may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing the last of the human freedoms to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one’s own way and there it is I mean that is it that is it this idea and you know captain plumb talked about it as well and captain plumb had a cold from Stockdale and we got to explore this and I’ve got a bunch of Stockdale books and I we will get to some Stockdale books who was the senior guy in the Hanoi Hilton and he’s a fighter pilot philosopher guy brilliant guy in a hero won but was awarded the Medal of Honor and one of the things that captain palm was talking to us about is is captain plum said that they got word from Stockdale and I’m going to misquote it but I’m going to do my best it was just because we’re in a prison camp doesn’t mean we have to be on defense we’re going to be on offense in a prison camp that’s just a completely different attitude it’s choosing the attitude we’re not going to sit here and be abused and be put down we’re going to step up we’re going to we’re going to go on offense and and they did they did hunger strikes they passed word around they wouldn’t stand up when people under they did these things and they went on offense and that’s what he’s talking about right here this last human freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances we always have that choice no matter what the circumstances are that surround you you always have that choice back to the book and there are always choices to make every day every hour offered the opportunity to make a decision a decision was determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self your inner freedom which determined whether or not you would become the placing of circumstance renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate again there it is you can you’re in a concentration camp doomed doomed and yet you can hang on to that last that last bastion of freedom in your soul and not let them win and not let them own that back to the book seeing from this point of view the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions even though conditions such as lack of sleep insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of inner decision and not the result of camp influences alone think about that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision not the result of the circumstance here and that doesn’t matter what kind of person you become what matters the decisions that you make unbelievable back to the book fundamentally therefore any man can even under such circumstances decide what shall become of him mentally and spiritually ok physically you can have that one can’t control that although – all the time but mentally and spiritually I get to decide what I’m going to be he may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp Dostoyevsky said once there’s only one thing that I dread not to be worthy of my sufferings these words frequently came to my mind after I I’m acquainted with those murderers whose behavior in camp who’s suffering and death bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost it can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement it is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away that makes life meaningful and purposeful the way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails the way in which he takes up his cross gives him ample opportunity even under the most difficult circumstances to add a deeper meaning to his life it may remain brave dignified and unselfish or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forego the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him and this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not so think about that when you get faced with this ultimate challenge brutal challenge when life is just about to crush you that’s when you have the biggest opportunity to prove who you are you know speaking of of unworthy topics but this is something I when I was when I first got to see where I was at SEAL team 1 I ran a communications class and when I ran the class we I was like super hard and sure I know it comes as a big shocker yeah but we would create tests test test on all these different subjects you know what radio what frequency you band with what you know all these different subjects and I would say the guys hey you know tomorrow we got another test another opportunity for you to prove yourself and that’s the way I looked at it they didn’t always look at it simply but that’s exactly exactly what he’s saying here when you have these brutal circumstances that you face that’s your opportunity and if you think about all heroic tales right there’s no heroic tales where the hero doesn’t face any challenges and as a matter of fact the worst challenges he faces the more of a hero he becomes yeah if he rises to the occasion if he doesn’t rise the cajon guess what we don’t hear about right not a hero not a hero yeah in fact let’s say you’re considered a hero and then this big chance to prove yourself comes about and you fail or you don’t step up you’re kind of like this big failure in a way even though you’ve been a hero the whole time yeah I would say that’s true although if you do something heroic enough people are like good with it right I think if they’re significant yes I think that’s all it’s kind of the same thing yeah I mean the bottom line is you face these challenges and you get challenged tad to have this attitude of you know basically good opportunity opportunity to solve the problems yeah like Oh big challenge cool opportunity yeah yes like those guys who you know they start a business the businesses like grows and then it just massively fails because some mistake or I don’t know something and somebody kind of I don’t know whatever and then they well they reach rock bottom and they build themselves back up and then me no it’s this massive success you know oh it’s an impressive story yeah you know that’s much better than hey I went to this school I graduated I worked this job I made a bunch of money yeah everyone goes on cool right cool yeah oh really yeah they want to hear the struggle they want to see that you were challenged yep back to the book everywhere man is confronted with fate with the chance of achieving of achieving something through his own suffering think about that the the the suffering that you’re going through is in a chance to achieve something through your suffering that’s an incredible thought yeah that’s an incredible thought now this next part is something that I get asked about on a fairly regular basis back to the book take the fate of the sick especially those who are incurable I once read a letter written by young invalid in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long that even an operation would be of no help he wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death and incur Aegeus and dignified way the boy had a thought it agree the boy had fought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well now he wrote fate was offering him a similar chance yeah I mean there’s there’s you know diseases terminal diseases and that’s it and then what do you do well I think you have to choose the best possible attitude you can and again I’ve never been in that situation obviously but that statement seems to be the best possible attitude to take again that’s that’s when we see people doing something heroic that’s what we see and you know it’s funny some of those when we were doing a lot of the Native Americans on the podcast they all had that attitude when you go to face death hold your head high be afraid of it and that’s really it like you guys said it easier sitting here in the you know according to TV of course yeah easy for me to sit here and say that hmm but that’s a hard one and you know the other day all the Joe Rogan podcast Everlast was on there yeah and Joe Rogan he you know Everlast was saying hey you know I’m not in good shape right now I wish I could better shape I have for you know that I think he’s got a back injury and he’s got this and he’s got a daughter that’s got some kind of illness bad illness and Joe put on the good video that you made and you know Everlast when he got done Everlast was like hey that’s cool that’s inspirational but how does that help me with my sick daughter yeah what’s good about that you know and I wish I could have jumped through and and talked to him because this much I will say when you got a bad situation like that I’m telling you right now it could be worse absolutely a hundred percent and the fact that he’s talking about his daughter how she’s sick and how he has to spend so much time with her to take care of her whoa well that’s what I’m saying yeah be thankful that you’re in a position in life where you can spend time with her be thankful that she’s in a condition where she can spend time with you yeah and it you know yours she’s still here if nothing else that’s good if nothing else and so what are you going to do I mean your your your other option is to say my daughter’s sick this is horrible I got cursed it’s it’s not fair and what does that do for you where does that get you it doesn’t get you anywhere a matter of fact it takes you backwards yeah so you really truly do have to look at these horrible situations I remember I got a call back from from overseas that a guy was a seal was really badly wounded and and a couple my friends were kind of distraught and I talked to one of the guys overseas and I you know and and a man I at this point you know lost mark lost my key I don’t think Ryan had died yet but like I was familiar with guys dying yeah and I talked to one of the guys that was overseas and they said hey you know this guy is really really messed up and I’m like is he gonna live and they’re like yeah he’s stable can I go then don’t worry about a thing be happy he’s alive and it doesn’t matter if he’s missing a leg or two legs or whatever he’s gonna be coming home and he’s gonna carry on with his life and it’s gonna be hard and it’s gonna be hell and it’s gonna be a challenge but guess what he’s gonna be here yeah and that you know again it’s like man what’s the alternative the alternative is he’s dead the alternative is we never talk to him again that’s the alternative yeah versus he’s gonna come back right and this guy the guy that got wonder he wasn’t like a great friend of mine but I knew I was talking to people that were very close to him and so you know I had to make sure I wasn’t coming across like hey it’s no big deal I you know look he’s gonna be fine it wasn’t like that but look look what the alternative is you know let’s be thankful that he’s alive yeah and he’s gonna come home and we know he’s going to carry on with his life yeah and that’s what that’s what’s important so it’s really when you do look at these situations when things are going bad and then you say okay well what good can come of that and then the one step further is then what happens when someone does die then what good comes with that and and my thought is always the same thing I’m thankful that I got to know that person I’m thankful that I got to understand their personality I’m thankful that I got to spend a day with them laughing and having that memory that’s what’s good what’s good is I got to experience them in my life and they got to experience other people’s in their lives and that’s what’s good about it but just to say hey you know my friend my family member is dead this is horrible and I can’t escape from this wrong attitude and of course you’re going to go through that it’s the there’s the whatever those things are that you go through it’s shock and then denial and then anger and then acceptance and all that that’s I get it and it’s not going to be easy but I’ll tell you what will make it easier is to look at the situation and say what here is good you know and you know one of the worst things is parents will have young children that are terminally ill it’s awful it’s awful and the best you can think of is they hold them while you can yeah right again get what you can and grow the memories that you can right now because just to focus on the fact that life isn’t fair isn’t going to help you and guess what you’re right life isn’t fair yeah life isn’t fair it’s it’s it’s a random horrible thing and if you want to focus on the randomness and the horribleness of it that’s where you’re going to end up yeah but if you can focus on the good that comes out of those situations try to it again I haven’t been through that I haven’t been through that thank God you know not that level for sure but the best I can do the best I can assess is say man at least try and look at what positive is coming out of this and and and focus on that instead of focusing on what is negative q it’s going back to what Frankel said it’s choose what your attitude is going to be yeah don’t become a victim of the randomness yeah and that’s so and that goes on like all levels you know how even if like something isn’t horrible it’s just kind of junk you know all the way down to just something that’s pretty horrible oh there’s still a lot of good going on in the situation but and just like are you saying like your attitude or another way to put it is what you’re looking for to internalise you know a lot of times then it’s natural and I’ve been there where it’s like everything just seems bad even the smile like if something real bad happens that you think is real bad and then the same day or the next day or whatever something small bad happens it’ll just add big-time to the badness like nothing’s going right kind of force trying to attitude meanwhile all the good things are going on all around we’re not the clear with all those layers yeah so in a lot of times with like real bad situations especially fish with kids because that’s like the week you can ever feel really like your kid like when my daughter had she had a big staph infection in her linked note so every negotiation hospital for week and we’re there that’s like the most weekend that that you’ll feel and of course there’s way worse situations yeah you know then that that’s nothing compared to situations I know that but there are good things that a are still going on in your situation your life let’s say B there’s good situations that can come of it and a lot of them a lot of them is just our strength related you know like if you let something beat you down and you don’t get the strength like that’s a loss you’ll lose like you’ll while you’re getting some kind of conditioning from it in a way no matter speaking yes so like if you have a quote-unquote good attitude when you emerge from the situation you will have strength now if you don’t you won’t you’ll have weakness you’ll be you know gun-shy everything happens bad my life sucks and you know you’ll continue down kind of that road so the good part like if you said like I you said if you keep that good attitude and when you make it out you will have this among the other good things that can come from it you will have the strength yeah you’re right and I mean just look at captain plum and look at Colonel reader there for those guys to go through what they went through and and maintain a positive attitude and then they come out and you talk to us and it’s like yeah I don’t you can’t think of more positive people yeah in the world yeah you know I mean not the whole world but you there just have so much positivity because they’ve been through something and they had to maintain that attitude so you’re right when they come out it’s like how I’m gonna make and I think that’s what happens with a lot of times with guys that have been to war is they come back and they’re like happy to see the Sun Rise I know I am right I’m happy to see the Sun Rise I’m happier than a lot of people to see the Sun Rise I appreciate that thing yeah and I think when people go through some kind of devastating disease in their family or themselves same thing once they get through it right they at least come out the other side and they can appreciate it and yet if they let it beat them down it’s gonna it’s gonna everything is going to look down if you’re looking down you’re going to look down if you’re came up you’re gonna look up yeah it’s got to be a it’s hard I mean it’s so hard for people very hard yeah and again I’m over here talking you know yeah for sure both of us are yeah when I was on Joe Rogan we started off talking about Chris Cornell it killed himself we kind of cursory kind of talked about depression and neither water I mean I definitely am NOT claiming claiming to be any kind of expert at all about it and I even said on there I was like look I’ve never felt this way and I it’s a couple people hit me up on social media like you know you should you should read this or you should do this or and and you know or you’re not right I’m like no I wasn’t even trying to say anything that I’m right I’m just tell I was saying I don’t actually even know yeah and and so yeah I’m not you know certainly an expert on how to overcome you know horrible situations but I’ve been in some pretty horrible situations and this is what my thoughts tried to be yeah and it’s not always easy you know at all yeah Jordan Peterson has some good good um you know good content on that where he basically in that gel he says get yourself together we’re in his example one of the men was you know a family member dies or whatever get yourself together so you know what are you going to do are you going to wallow with the rest of the people so no one can get a hold of anything in the funerals a mess or whatever are you gonna get yourself together grief for sure game but get yourself together so you can kind of lead and get the funeral together and take care of the business or whatever it’s such a cold-blooded thing to say right it’s the complete and that’s what I think is hard about it is you know think about this oh if someone in your family died Mel’s like I’ll go get yourself together right you know to me like I who says that yeah but that’s probably the best thing I could possibly say to you know I might need to say the more tactful way three I made to say hey echo man I feel for you hey man what we need to do is breathe but we also need to focus on moving for you know what I mean is that kind of thing but the reality is what am I really saying I’m really saying hey get yourself together you got to move on we got to move on we got to move forward you got to move forward in your life and that’s like such a hard thing to say to somebody yeah but that’s probably the right attitude the cake is okay like this is horrible and I need to keep it together yeah yeah yeah man especially when there’s no majorly prevalent things that are at risk at that moment as well like you know like your situation at situation I think uh btf Tony was talking about this one it’s like you’re in a firefight or something like that and some gets hit you don’t just quit no exit the firefight of you oh my gosh my guys hit use it it’s like okay he said boom let’s continue the firefight but let’s say there was no firefight then the guy who gets hit it’s it seems like a harder thing to to just move on in so what are you fighting means you need to like you need to have a firefight going on also that you like it you can say okay I’m gonna deal with this but I need to also think about the rest of life yeah so hard and you know again it’s it’s I you know what I’m feeling like right now I got I get some social media sometimes for someone will say hey I’m not a vet but like a friend of mine is going through problems and I don’t know how to talk to him because I’m not a vet and that’s kind of like what I feel like right now like I haven’t been through those kind of suffering so I’m throwing darts but I’m throwing them based on what I know so it’s the best like you know yeah best I could do right yeah you like you’re at risk with someone say hey you you simply don’t understand why the fact is there right yeah and my statement that we yes I don’t understand you know it’s like in the in when I was talking to veterans saying look people you feel like people don’t understand they don’t and that’s okay and so definitely not sitting here saying oh you know I know this is what you do in a situation like that no I don’t know yeah I don’t know what you do when your family members suffer something egregious like that like a terminal disease or death I don’t know haven’t been through it what I have been through is losing guys in combat that I have been through this is this is darkness it’s a different kind of darkness but this is what I did yeah in those situations and that’s what I would think would help you in these other situations hard the question right what do you what’d he do hearted we are we are sitting here reading a book by a guy that was in a concentration camp and he’s saying this thing to do you know so that’s that’s another sort of reinforcement of this thought pattern yeah alright he talks a little bit about the passage of time here in camp a small unit of time a day for example filled with hourly tortures and fatigue appeared endless a larger time unit perhaps a week seemed to pass very quickly my comrades agreed when I said that in the camp a day lasted longer than a week how paradoxical was our time experience and that’s something this actually reminded me I was talking to our Sara Armstrong and she and when I was actually around the conversation when Lafe was talking about he’d come out here and seen all my kids my kids are all grown up now basically he’s there for my littlest one but you know my oldest daughter’s graduating high school in a couple of weeks and she’s gonna go to college and you know when Lafe met her she was what was that twelve years ago so she was you know life no five six six something like that so you know younger than when he came out here you know he just come left his apartment in New York City where he’s got his wife and kids now and you know it’s chaos and the little kids and they’re crying and screaming and spilling stuff and throwing up milk and pissing everywhere and it’s just you know it’s that’s what life is we’re there and you know he came out here and saw how my kids were now grown up know that time had gone by the way gone I get it back and and he you know he talked about it on the podcast just day and make sure you appreciate those and Sarah Armstrong you know said something along the lines of the days are long but the years are short yeah that’s a very true statement and you can you can see that cure the same thing you know all of a sudden this time is just going by so quickly this is starting to talk again back to the attitude we could say that most men in a concentration camp believe that the the real opportunities of life had passed yet in reality there was an opportunity and a challenge one could make a victory of those experiences turning life into an inner triumph or one could ignore the challenges and simply vegetate as did a majority the prisoners saying the same thing same topic I know it’s interesting I told you this before we started this book you know is a great book but I I kind of wanted to talk about how bad concentration camps were and I went and found some other sources for that because Viktor Frankl doesn’t highlight it that much I mean his ad I mean he was in Auschwitz for crying out loud it doesn’t get any worse and you know can really give the impact of how bad it was I went and found some other sources that were a little bit a little bit more directly written and a little bit more horrifying to be lack of a better work because in his accounts he doesn’t go into those some of those graphic details which I feel like you should know and you should understand what before you talk about hey he’s keeping a good attitude but no no it’s not he’s keeping a good attitude because he was in a concentration camp but I wasn’t that bad no it was freaking hell yeah and that’s what he’s dealing with and in his mind you could make a triumph or a victory out of those experiences which is incredible attitude to have yeah going back to the book the prisoner who had lost faith in the future his future was doomed with his loss of belief in the future he also lost his spiritual hold he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay usually this happened quite suddenly in the form of a crisis the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate we all feared this moment not for ourselves which would have been pointless but for our friends usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds no entreaties no blows no threats had any effect he just laid there hardly moving if this crisis was brought about by an illness he refused to be taken to the sickbay or do anything to help himself he simply gave up there he remained lying in his own extra-extra de and nothing bothered him anymore and that’s similar to what Colonel reader said how if you didn’t actively stay alive you would die you couldn’t just passively exist you weren’t going to make it if you want to die all you had to do is stop trying then you were going to die back to book as we said before any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in the camp had to first succeed in showing him some future goal in these words he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how that could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psycho hygienic efforts regarding prisoners whenever there was an opportunity for it one had to give them a why an aim for their lives in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible howl of their existence woe to him who saw no more sense in his life no aim no purpose and therefore no point to carrying on he was soon lost got to know why you’re doing what you’re doing and that’s all there is to it he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how and obviously that translates right into leadership perspective making sure people understand why they’re doing what they’re doing he just don’t bark orders at him but from an individual perspective why are you doing this find that and I actually I actually made a post on social media the other day it was something along the lines of finding your inner Y or something like that and I was I was uh you know mocking that attitude right and I was saying you know sometimes my inner voice is trying to find out why I’m doing what I’m doing I’m like my when I’m doing something hard my inner voice doesn’t allow to talk be quiet I’m over here working you know but there is obviously just like a leadership perspective and from a personal perspective why are you doing what you’re doing and that should be the driving force yeah and if you don’t have that it’s hard to overcome these challenges you can’t just overcome challenges because you know they’re there you need some greater reason yeah and when that gets lost you get lost you I don’t know why I thought those I think the when y-you were mocking that this is my why and my interview was it wasn’t it wasn’t now that I think about it wasn’t really the Y thing great yeah it was more about the inner the inner inner voice but ya know I definitely said why on earth because keep I think people you like it’s like a lot of good expressions or sayings or whatever or people just all I like then they’ll just start throwing it out there and abusing it and it dumbs it down and then now everyone’s saying it now it just sorta sounds cheesy because no one’s actually doing it no one’s actually understanding like the real what what it really means you know like the person who’s like hey I’m gonna lose weight and you know they’ve basically spent their life being their health or whatever then they’re like okay I’m gonna you know I’m gonna get in shape and then they go on this you know program they quit you know but when they’re doing good on the program let’s say the first or second date I’ll be like this is my why and they’ll show their I don’t know their their dog or something like that my why where my kids or whatever you know but then the next day they quit the program like it’s such a weak thing you’re like whoa whoa whoa you can’t just do that you know like that the whole thing my why whatever that’s way too powerful for people to just be located my why and then just yeah it should know just like a little thing yeah just throw together a 38 second inter Instagram post yeah yeah are you why yeah that you need to dig yeah you got to do that stuff so that’s why it’s funny because like just people just throw that out now not means like nothing and it’s almost like they see it seems like it seems like it’s totally my interpretation on it but it seems like they’re saying it and thinking that they sound so profound and deep and new and inspirational you know but everyone had an end to counter your point I’ve had plenty of people that have talked to me about you know I was in bad shape I wasn’t taking care of myself I wasn’t healthy and I had my first kid and I said to myself I need to I need to be there for my kid or or I was doing bad at work and I don’t really care and I wasn’t focused on that career it wasn’t focused on being squared away and I was wasting all my money on dumb stuff and I had my first kid yeah and then I said I gotta you know this this is me taking care of my kid and I need to do a damn good job and that’s exactly the point right there is that it’s a real thing and if that’s really your your why conceptually now I’m saying the expression you know like you for sure there’s a difference between G well there’s a big difference between the contemplation that goes into I’m doing this for my kid it’s cool I’m gonna go on Weight Watchers right it’s like umm no like think about this they thought your relationship with your children and where you’re going to end up and now you want to see them live and what guidance you can give them as human beings and the example that you’re setting for them and you’ve line all those things up then maybe you can put down the donuts and yeah that’s right in other words you gotta do it yeah actually you know so yeah that’s why it just sounds cheesy cuz everyone doesn’t says it this is a great section going back to the book we had to learn ourselves and furthermore we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life but rather what life expected from us we needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life daily and hourly one answer must consist not in talk and meditation but in right action and right conduct life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual again you’re turning you’re flipping this idea around not about what I want from life it’s what what is life want from me and it’s put me challenges and these hurdles in front of me and I got to go and jump over them and then I gotta smash them and then I gotta set fire to them and then I had to use that fire to fuel the domination of everything that’s in my path is that kind of like hey these weights aren’t going to lift them and it’s the exact same thing it’s the exact same thing yeah and again going back to this idea that war reveals human nature and and this is dr Frankel’s way of putting this exact same thing that I say back to the book life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths it is is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature or a mixture of good and evil the rift dividing good from which goes through all human beings reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp so we’ve got this ideal once again that there’s a dichotomy in people in people this dichotomy that you’re capable of doing extreme good and you’re capable of doing extreme evil and we’ve seen it a bunch we’ve seen it a bunch on this podcast do you look at the me I massacre those guys were normal guys that committed extreme evil straight up evil normal guys that were you know four days earlier probably would have done something heroic to save someone and here they are the other end of the spectrum and I think that you have to we have to face that not only individually do you have that but then obviously as a group you have that as a group of human beings we have that capability we’ve seen it over and over again and if you want to know what that good part is you got to know what that darkness is too yeah the group thing is interesting you know you know how you always see it not always but you hear sometimes about these riots on college campuses whether it be after game there’s something like that but at a glance you think dang is this college filled full of just hooligans like if this bit like you’d riot you know but it’s that it’s like as an individual or you know under quote/unquote normal circumstances they’re just they’re just normal people you know guys girls whatever there’s normal people but then you put them in this particular situation in some way extreme or whatever you know it’s a spectrum but and they just act different and the whole group dynamic to act different the group dynamic is a is it can be a very very scary thing there’s no doubt it can be a very very scary thing and that’s that’s why you know even when he’s talking about and I mentioned this on when I was on Joe Rogan’s last podcast but this the idea of individual freedom and acting as an individual is so important as to structure your life around to say look I’m not part of this group yeah hope is not me yeah this group is not me they don’t represent me I represent me it took and I’m I have my own individual choices and that’s what he’s saying here the minute you give away to the herd yeah that’s when you start going you know you no longer control it yeah and when you give up that control that’s a scary scary thing and that’s when these evil things take place yeah and then that but once again that it’s like it’s easy to say now because grouping yourself is actually a survival mechanism true so you you know it’s not going to be just that you’re not going to naturally just be an individual and act like an individual and conduct yourself in all these extreme situations as an individual not just going to naturally do that true so I guess it just helps to know these well and that’s your you’re a hundred percent right on both facets number one yes grouping and fitting in is a survival instinct that people have and that’s why trends happen and that’s why nations happen and that’s why that’s why groups occur and people and politics yeah new politics and everything right to get into these groups and I mean it’s weird now because with the internet you can have groups you can be part of these groups yes really yeah again whatever group you connect with all these different people but it’s also important to make sure that you you do remember they who you are an individual then candidate that you don’t want to give up that last shred of human will you know could decide what your attitude is going to be yeah dang and today you know in our luxurious society if you can consciously navigate your waist clear that of falling into the group trap is what it is the trap because your mother is if you can do that successfully don’t fall for the tricks man like that’s the thing you get air we all get trip all the way down to just something is is seemingly benign as marketing just man you’ll just fall for way less tricks you’re like those tricks out there and I’ll do you know I don’t put itself or too many of them missing this is a wrap this book is this book is not long it’s a very fast read and actually he goes into sort of goes into the more of this psychological the psychiatrist the actual academic of it then I covered but this is a fast read I mean it’s only a hundred and fifty pages or so and you definitely get a raw look at human nature but this closing I think is very very powerful going back to the book a human being is not one thing among others things determine each other but man is ultimately self determining what becomes within the limits of endowment and environment he has made out of himself in the concentration camps for example in this living laboratory and on this testing ground we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like Saints man has both potentialities within himself which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions our generation is realistic for we have come to know man as he really is after all man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz however he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright with the Lord’s Prayer or the shema yisrael on his lips and I think that’s thought that man has both potentialities within himself and we’ve seen them over and over again these grand expanded potentialities in extreme display and we’ve talked about these situations in the podcast over and over again and the the Burma railway that was built by the prisoners of war and the prisoners of war were tortured and killed by the Japanese in the genocide in Rwanda and The Rape of Nanking and we’ve also seen the other potentiality and we’ve seen that over and over again that that potentiality of goodness and of sacrifice those men that we’ve seen over and over again that lay down their lives are for their brothers and in doing so protect our freedom but it’s important to note that again that whether the good or the evil is actualized in the minds of men that is not based on conditions but on decisions and this doesn’t only apply to good and evil of course that’s the that’s the most expansive thought that we can apply this to but it also applies to everything we choose to do or choose not to do and everything we choose to become or not to become it’s us it’s our choice and we are responsible we are responsible to be good instead of evil to be strong instead of weak to become what we want to become not what we let ourselves become we own the course and with every decision that we make we actualize ourselves we become what we choose swine or Saints so when you make decisions every decision think think about where that decision leads and what that decision will make you become and then self-determine self-determined choose what will make you a better person and even in situations where you feel you have no choice at all you still have one last freedom and that is to choose your own attitude in any given set of circumstances keep that choice keep that freedom that hard choice the disciplined choice and with the discipline to make the right choice maintain your freedom I think that’s all I’ve got for tonight powerful book yeah isn’t it crazy how I can’t help but think of this like where how they talk about the SS officers what are the Nazis the guys there who are just savages obviously but are they really savages as people though or is it a circumstantial thing I mean I know they’re trained to kind of regard this you know the Jews are these groups of people as you know beneath them and all this stuff but like are these savages just as in because it takes a savage to do some of this stuff you know especially having a baby and smash eNOS as the book said skull against the wall like that’s like subhuman behavior you know well when he goes home you know he has kids you know is he like I don’t care if these kid alternately if their heads get the you know I’m sure it’s not like that injury is just a normal person would just be just as weak as all of us if your kid stubs its toe and starts crying you know yeah well we’re going to explore I got some books in the queue to explore the other side of this and they’re very revealing about some of that but again it’s it’s you’re right that some of these guys you know were we’re normal right some of these Nazis were normal and they were doing their job and that’s one of the worst you know there’s a whole there’s a whole argument on whether that even is allowable like I said if you’re doing your job and and I’ll tell you what in the US military yeah that doesn’t that doesn’t work that’s an excuse that we don’t have you can’t say hey I got ordered to do this thing that was against the law or against ethical values doesn’t matter yeah I still can’t do it that’s not an excuse and that came directly from this attitude that nopsi said hey I was just following orders don’t hey wasn’t my father’s fallen orders no actually you can’t you can’t pay it you’re not allowed to say that yeah so as far as the normality sure they might have been no normal when they went home but that doesn’t remove their guilt at all yeah absolutely and you can’t take a baby and smash its head against the wall you don’t get a pass on that one whether you order to do it or not there’s certain moral standards that exist and you can’t violate them and if you do you’re guilty it doesn’t matter what else you did back then who’s kind of the you know the authority on that like where the moral was it like a global thing you know or is it because obviously Hitler would feel it would be like and whatever well there’s different societies that had different viewpoints obviously in not war yeah yeah hence the war the Nazis and the Japanese both felt okay we can do what we need to do to dominate yeah and whether that’s the Rape of Nanking or whether that’s the concentration camps and the final solution both those things were in their societies now there was of course there was people inside those societies I don’t know I haven’t I haven’t I don’t know of any Japanese I’m sure there were some Japanese that that were against him and even when we read The Rape of Nanking there was a Nazi in Nanking remember that sheltered people so there’s an example here’s a guy now he didn’t know what was going on with the final solution back in Germany but at least it doesn’t appear that way but yeah this is what makes morality and ethical decision-making so challenging yeah but there is in my opinion you know a certain standard moral code that human beings live by yeah and that is a universal relatively in analysis now I should actually say it’s universal great there’s the way that I believe that there’s morals and standards that human beings should live by yeah and when you start stepping outside those bounds yeah you’re going on the wrong side yeah and like anything men it’s like obviously a spectrum and then what you’re talking about that universal line that you cross it’s like actually when you really look at the line it’s like it’s a universal gray area of yeah and then you really look closer but I think that the circumstances don’t really fall within the confines of that gray area very often so it’s easy to be like that’s obviously right that’s obviously wrong well yeah and everyone’s in all these great areas of emergent and it’s like this big debate and it depends on who you are yeah I don’t spend a lot of time in the gray areas to be honest with you like in my pattern I don’t spend a lot of time the graters right I spend time because to me it is pretty obvious yeah like when you’re Isis and you’re systematically raping twelve-year-old girls and boys you don’t get to live that that doesn’t work yeah that’s not is that’s not part of my deal over here you you you die and when you take people and you put them in cages and you burn them to death right you don’t get to do that just like these Nazis that are putting people in cut you don’t get to do that no yeah we go to war we fight and we win that’s the way it works yeah now these gray areas that you’re talking about I don’t mess around in those gray areas yes III think there’s too much there’s – there’s turbulence in there right and and a lot of times you look at it from the outside and you don’t it’s hard to tell what it is what it actually is happening in there right I’ll and maybe that’s not the best policy but I won’t escalate something personally until I see it go outside the lines of what I deem to be okay yeah you know once you get outside those lines you’re done well thankfully you’re you’re you know a little bit smart in a way where you know whether you name these things or not there’s always a particular standard that you go by you know so just like like the difference between killing someone and when someone says murder you know murder is a is clearly defined you know so if you murder someone like killing someone is this broad thing you kill them accidentally kill them you kill them after planning there’s a million of the revenge and all you know that’s killing someone but murder is defined you know so well somebody asked me when I would attend Faris’s second time and someone asked me or something along the lines of well who defines these rules which is basically what you just asked me and I think it actually there is an answer to who defines these rules in warfare it’s the law of armed conflict in Geneva Convention we follow those laws right there they’re very clearly defined what you can and can’t do bullet that’s it next question yeah and and I mean unless you straight-up disagree with the Geneva Convention you know on because of your personal moral code but it’s you have again a standard that you’re going by that will reduce the gray areas by a lot and yes we’re over there but you operate in black and white when you have standards and it won’t always be easy but you know it’s like well let me this this when we start getting the gray area and you’re sitting here saying I’m all black and white and that’s and I’m actually saying that like hey once you cross this line but guess what those lines can get blurry – yeah it does I heard about a guy that was on a documentary who is he was he was a Western journalist of some kind and I gotta watch this documentary sure someone will tell us what it is but somebody else told me about it the Western journalist he’s embedded with insurgents in Iraq and he’s filming and they’re going out and attacking coalition forces Dan yeah right and I guess he was while he’s doing it you know he’s trying to get his story and do his job but then all of a sudden they’re attacking coalition forces right now there’s a gray area now let’s say if you want to take that example to the extreme if we’re in a firefight and I see a guy with a camera who’s wearing a press badge following an insurgent right I mean they going to work out good form because it’s not like I’m gonna say okay well I you know he’s clearly he’s with insurgents but what I’m saying is that’s that’s one example of many that that you could get into we’re also another thing that happened in Iraq a lot was people change sides and they went from supporting the terrorists to supporting the coalition and then back again and then back again so how do you how do you balance those yeah and I’ll tell you how I balance them was how can we achieve our mission yeah and that sounds like like one of those mission focus but it’s true I look at okay this guy you know a year ago was being targeted by coalition forces for being a bad guy now he has changed course so what am I supposed to do still prosecute him or is he gonna help us achieve our mission of overall victory guess what I’m gonna do I’m gonna cut him some moral slack yeah because we’re gonna win so those are hard things – that’s exactly what I mean they’ll see the standard the standard in your case became the overall mission yes so you know you have that say it’s not like just some guy floating down the road through life being like I don’t feel good about that right there so I feel this way so I’m going to do it’s not that it’s like there’s a standard there concrete attached to it still gray areas going to emerge but like I said it just reduces that gray area that the bottom line is this is why Peter ship is hard yes the whole idea of leadership whether it’s in combat or whether it’s in the business world or whether it’s part of a team or whether it’s part of a family or whether it’s in a concentration camp or whether it’s in a prisoner of war camp leadership is hard there’s gray areas like when captain plum was saying hey he got told an order you know make communications with this guy at all costs at all cost that means I’m gonna get beaten and tortured and died by the guards to get this guy this piece of communication is he gonna follow that guess what no he had to make a judgment and say you know what though that doesn’t make sense that doesn’t make sense so this gray area that went outside the bounds the gray area he said nah I’ll do my best I understand that it’s critical but I’m gonna stay within me staying alive right so that is what makes leadership hard is you have to constantly make these decisions where there’s their gray area and you’re doing your best you’re assessing and that’s that’s again to me it was always I love that I love that about leadership I loved weighing those decisions out and I loved discussed them with my guys up and down the chain of command and saying hey here’s where at me tell you exactly where at yeah you know I’ll use life I’d be you know Lafe here’s what’s going on this is the situation what do you think yeah yeah well I think this okay that’s a good point but did you think about that oh that’s a good one you know I mean we’re gonna have those comes and I had never had any problem opening my mind up to these various opinions that people have and I think as a leader that’s a huge piece of building trust up and down the chain of command is when you have an open mind to discuss things with people and that also double gravitational pull HECO charles helps you build a relationship helps you build a relationship and helps you say oh you know what like it with the men and I’m in there I’m talking like hey Aiko we got a gray area here yeah you know we got a customer that is threatening to put us on Yelp but we didn’t do anything wrong how do you think we should handle it okay well you think we should just tell them go ahead put it on Yelp we don’t care and we’ll go to Yelp and we’ll talk to them that might be the good answer but also it might be good to say bro wait why are you so mad all right customer let’s talk good hey we want to refund you we want to take care of you because our customers are important to us maybe you’ll give us a positive thing on you you know I’m saying this all this gray area yeah and if you have an open mind to discuss things with your teeth team up and down the chain of command you know what you’ll do is you you’ll get in that gray area you’ll start to get clarity you’ll start to get clarity you’ll start to see better and you can move through the gray area without being without being so decisive that in a gray area you don’t know if it’s black or white right right so if you decide as the leader I’m going black going black then when the gray area clears up it was white that you should have gone with yeah you don’t need to do that in many cases you can say okay I’m a lean a little bit towards the black because that’s what I’m feeling and almost done you start moving there and you start saying that no this is gonna be a white decision yeah okay I can recover from that I can move backwards and repair what decision was made and the best way to do that is say hey guys here’s the situation I thought that black was going to be the right decision I started leaning in that direction I was wrong yeah now I see that white is the right answer and we’re going with white does anyone have any questions about that does everyone understand why I did that oh you don’t understand why let me explain it to you here’s what I thought here’s what I saw do you next time do you want me to wit like contact you secret that’s what I’m talking about and by the way when I’m doing that I’m building relationships with my team which is what I want to do I just was talking to leaders the other day and I told him and reiterated something I’ve said over and over again the people that did things for me and the teams that were in the Army the Marine Corps in the SEAL Teams in my platoon up and down the chain of command doesn’t matter 99 9% of it wasn’t because I had some kind of rank of privileges over them it was always because I had a good relationship with people and when you build that good relationship with people that’s what it’s all about then they do things for you and you know what you do things for them – yeah it’s not a one-way street that I’m talking about because you won’t build any relationships if you’re building one-way street right no one’s going to be your friend after you just take advantage of them over and over again like those people that call you only when they need something from you right now I actually don’t have a problem with that because I don’t communicate with a lot of people right I communicate on social media with a bull with a bunch of different people they’ll get you there but as far as if something like when one of my buddies calls me up and says hey I need this favor am i cool on it I haven’t talked to him for nine months he’s only calling me because he needs something for me doesn’t matter people do that with me all the time and it’s cool now this isn’t a big group of people there’s like six people in the world and those same six people they don’t call to wish me happy birthday don’t call to tell me you know uh Merry Christmas they call me up and say hey I need this from you can you do it no Mike’s got it no factor do you have a birthday negative I have a manufacturing date so buddy like I’m just trying to imagine someone calling you to wish you have a birthday I mean maybe like your wife they were awkward when I got in the civilian sector and people be like when’s your birthday I get whiteboy yeah what are you talking about why are you trying to get my personal information attack you yeah what sign are you no you don’t know I think the was the other funny thing about the birthday deal oh that’s like getting presents I’m not good with presents yeah man but don’t get me any presents right because I don’t want what you got me yeah if I want something I already haven’t get it yeah so what you got me isn’t going to be appreciated there’s one gift that my wife got me one time and I haven’t been thinking about why I haven’t talked about this particular whole situation and that’s there’s a band called the White Stripes sir likes and the White Stripes Jack White Meg white the white stripes are awesome they’re awesome band and there’s so layers with the white stripes first of all there’s I’ll tell you two layers that I love about the white stripes number one all their clothing guitars drums keyboards everything that they have on stage and everything that they have on their record albums everything that they have is either red black or white on all the records since day one that’s number one number two they only have three sounds in any other songs at any one time so those three sounds could be drums vocals guitar they could be drums keyboards vocals they could be keyboards guitar vocals but they only have three sounds at any one time vocals is one of the sounds well thanks again and there’s only two and there’s only two people in the band anyways the White Stripes is an awesome band and my wife bought me tickets to go see the White Stripes now I didn’t even think about I never pay attention to when bands are playing or whatever somehow I was I don’t use this term very often but I was overjoyed that she got me tickets to the White Stripes I was so stoked and then Meg white had some issues and they canceled the whole tour and they never played again day well like a couple weeks away from being in San Diego where I was going to go to the White Stripes so the question is it will ultimately ultimate grand scheme things was that a good gift to give chuckle that was an awesome gift to give me so look it was at the thought that counts in this yes it was a beautiful city Dodgers not meet you and I was and I couldn’t believe she thought of it yeah cuz normally it’s like oh you got me a sweater from some store that I hate no I’m really hard to shop for right I’m really I find wanted something I have it and I don’t want that much so it’s like oh I want something I have it but this once every 18 months I want something and then I get it yeah I’ll get you like a new t-shirt or something you wear now this t-shirt is fine don’t get me a new one this one works good mm-hmm so yeah um yeah it seems like a good to get off on a tangent okay I feel like you went off on the tangent you know you know why because I was listening to white strikes the other day and I was thinking I never give the white stripes too props that they deserve yeah and Jack white the prop said users as a singer-songwriter plenty brother and sister they’re not allegedly alleged that they were a husband-wife they got divorced but they always claimed to be brother sister my little sister Meg white more lame no this is my big sister that’s right yes we always said saying it’s good man cool well the original point was these crazy savage type people maybe normal people other than their crazy job yeah and what’s and I’m but I’m not saying so it’s cool I don’t say that it is your your your accountable for your actions yeah you’re honest about who you are yeah yeah and that’s something from any leadership position you need to be aware of and when I say in a leadership position I mean you as a frontline trooper if you as the frontline troopers getting told to do something that you know is morally ethically or legally wrong and you still do it it’s on you sure you can point the finger and blame the higher-ups and the higher-ups should be burned too if they told you to do something that was wrong but you need to be accountable for what you did and that’s all there is to it yeah okay that’s a rough tour and no one wants to play that game the Nazis wanted to play that game online hey I was ordered to do this you can do that can’t say that don’t get that excuse you don’t get the I was a good person and I took care of my kids even though I was shoving people into into a gas chamber you don’t get to play that game no yeah man’s too much rather there’s a small little documentary online I don’t I don’t watch little thing but it was about the executioner in the Middle East somewhere you know one of these countries where you know he has this sword and it’s his job you know and he’s a straight-up executioner yeah that’s it that’s just a model a job that he’s like yeah yeah it wasn’t old-school no it’s like on YouTube yeah like last week yeah and there but it’s like it’s funny because the whole feel of the documentary was just real like oh yeah this guy has a cool job and he’s like slicing people’s heads off with great precision and he’s so good at his job you know let’s here’s his family and they’re loving you know and they’re you know he’s playing with his kids it’s like all this stuff’s just weird man anyway yeah if there’s another culture a lot of gray areas in that one – my man indeed kind of anyway or not I feel like we should go into the support yeah we should go into the support support is one of those good things very dynamic supporting others supporting yourself supporting others and yourself which is a separate category of support to my opinion so there’s yourself others and yourself and others that’s it want to talk about on it we’re talking about all three categories support yourself by way of supplementation and we talk about supplementation all the time but now you talk about supplementation well you’re the one who turned it turn me on to it so actually some of it I took Shum tech before you talked before pre podcast free podcast I was on shroom tech I was an alpha brain Shoom tech I got my shipment of alpha brain pills the back end I had run out now it only had the instant and so now like I said what’s nice about the Builder is you got something come to become do the podcast guess what alpha brain pills and I might double up on the alpha brain if I think I gotta really get my favorite he did yeah but it’s good to have the the capsules yeah well I dig you know what’s cool about the drink is it tastes good and I if you get the sweet tooth it’s going and you want something sweet and you get the peach the natural peach not the spicy the spicy has a different situation going on the peaches just straight up like tasty like peach yeah peach peach I enjoy just kind of situation yeah kind of like that agree well I dig it the pills I dig it and that’s actually what we had was the pills um I said we cuz me and my brother we oh yeah awful brain but when they came out with instant that was better and it starts to become like this little kind of ritual you know it makes up your brain you know kind of thing and it’s instant I don’t know either way it doesn’t matter um if I haven’t mentioned it already I think it did these are supplements from on it on it calm the way we talk about the supplements but there’s like workouts I just bought a jump rope did you yeah see so when I was younger I was good at Chavez Ravine a joke jump rope – yeah and then as I you know as I think kind of when I don’t maybe early twenties kind of stopped so that’s a long time ago jump rope is awesome yeah so I’m you know you know how like like riding a bike eat and stay good at something a little bit you’re rusty you rusty yeah definitely be rusty you can shred and can go as long you know like that conception shit’s weird because it you know how to jump rope yeah you know what you were just back in the day of boxing yeah boxers jumping up to three minutes was like no factory yeah go jump ten minute one go get your jumper right out just get out get out get out three minutes all around you feel it yeah so yeah I bought one of those and if so the interesting thing about that is jump rope technology has changed a little bit what is it made of steel no well this I’m sure the steel in there but it’s like each handle has a swivel the little imminent or ample but like way more to it than before last time it’s like two wooden handles and arm holes yeah for sure actual rope this one is like a cord that survives all this stuff I don’t know anyway jump rope the jumpers on there if you want well the jump off yeah I was pretty good too good man okay remember one like when you jump rope and then when the you know how like in this is like elementary school and if you get tired or you couldn’t keep a rhythm they’d say hey just just wave it from there furth you know whether there’s a name for that move yeah what’s it called when you to turn to taro taro when you boom like it like a matador isn’t it called Matador yeah goes by the time I can’t get it or whatever yeah I just get that rhythm going oh yeah I don’t know the name I never had to do that because I was expert level even in elementary school but that’s not that’s going to be you if in fact you want to step up so you can get that on it not just if you watch if you want kettle bells on there too good kind well kettlebells are good straight out they’re all good and but I it has those artistic ones yeah even those add another layer but they have the regular come the one I think they’re called the competition ones I very oak oh hell no yeah oh yeah so yeah you get the legend bells which is like what a cyclops the werewolf better look at them they’re they’re dope you know primal bells which is like all this you know primates and stuff yeah I think I got the chimp two chimps and two werewolves yeah see I have I have zombie bells mine are just evil zombies how big is it’s not the one you know after Gary look yeah that’s looks like designer you can you probably keep it inside – yeah that’s it you really do know the one that I keep inside is not the ones in my garage are for a bit long heavy work this one is for oh I’m tired of writing right now I’m gonna bang out some snatches right boom boom God a lot better now right more of a write harder yeah there you go but yeah anyway the point there is there’s very cool things on the website on accom that and the supplements not to mention this the fact is the supplements are straight up the best ones straight up because from the beginning and how’s this and I don’t know if we already mentioned this but I hear like Joe Rogan talks about all the time how name job yep I listen to Joe Rogan all the time and says these things and I believe them um if you get like I don’t know shrink tech yeah you’re like Harry I didn’t feel it I got tapped out so you know I expect more out of shroom tech I expect this to make me tap out everybody I don’t like it send it back no you don’t even send it back you send them I eat email saying hey I don’t like this stuff though to send your money back you have to send it back that this is pretty awesome yep but don’t be trying to be like you’re gonna give me my money back in the next month after you’re done with it order some more and then do it again – I’m gonna try – yeah you’re gonna get ostracized nonetheless um krill oil that’s the one you don’t want to not have krill oil even if you’re like a young guy in my opinion which I should always been unfair and if you’re not in krill oil I think you are like a step behind joint wise and it’s a which puts your behind in a lot of different ways a lot of different ways yeah you did not working out as hard I was working on as hard struggling through various activities in everyday life I told this story whatever but I do it all the time you know when you fill up water in the big 5-gallon jugs yeah you know and read do that at night when it’s kind of cold it’s like bright you carry those things from a thing to your car you don’t want to be worried about my knees or whatever your back the trials you can do and you gotta put it in next life yeah you don’t wait write your own book dude what about like the truck that’s kind of crazy trials you’ve been through carrying water on a cool night in Southern California oh very fresh like pure water by the way yeah doesn’t make it lighter though then you still have to struggle but here’s the thing though there are micro Vikram scrolls they’re called micro struggles is really what they are you know standing in line actually the sending line thing that’s not a struggle that’s manufactured struggle so it’s like an exercise in discipline and embracing struggle that’s what it is it’s not an actual struggle bestowed upon your heaped on your shoulders you know that you have to bear in everyday life that’s not what’s the standing in line anyway if you need you talk about echoes struggles right you can document these various me looking for a specific why no matter wine was there a tomato was you like you got a tomato so I went yeah okay there’s our goal the wine struggle and the groceries now we got the fill in the water bottles there’s four chapter metal micro stroke and filling up the water is not a struggle because I’m on the krill oil Oh omega-3 is frightening to my joints straight into my joint for uptake high percentage uptake anyway get on the car oil I’m on the strombone now too by the way for death for tendons the tendon attaching to the bone strontium separated about it does it I feel really good about it actually more preventive like because I lift nonetheless strontium that’s in strombel that get doesn’t if that doesn’t hit that like the limelight isn’t on that all the time it’s all on calcium most of the time calcium makes your bones strong strontium just as much so get on the strombone bone strength also alpha brain obviously stream tech for high performance go on the website whatever you need they got it they even got like try bland peanut butter nut butter it’s not peanut butter it’s like almond cashew and walnut don’t know anyways delish get on that one anyway hi comm slash jackal if you want 10% off pay full price uh that’s all that’s up to you really you don’t say mmm I wouldn’t recommend it I don’t even know if anyone would recommend that it’s also good way to support if you’re interested in the book man’s search for meaning Victor Frankl what I have done is I put on the website a page with all the books all of them that Java is covered everyone’s launched a whole cover an article this is the links think they’ll do that but nonetheless the books are all on there all in order to by the way so the most recent is going to be at the top this one will be on there it is on there if you want to support click on there if you’re gonna get the book click through there directs you straight to Amazon or if you’re doing other shopping hey man go ahead do the same thing click on it we have a banner on the front page too and then you can click on there yeah and then you can use a shopping yeah if you want sounds like a good plan even if you buying duck tape also do you have a link to your favorite duck tape on there oh dang no no sometimes I say things that are just so apparently really unless I wonder yeah we will have a duck tape link link for sure yeah just in case everyone needs duck tape and they especially need it when they get down list in the podcaster there about the things that they’re going to be duct-taping together yeah so yeah that’s true you know why I mentioned duct tape in the beginning and I didn’t really realize this because they didn’t think about it until a handful of people asked me you know why why because you watch MacGyver all the time actually I still watch MacGyver obviously man no no it’s on a channel called clue CLO random random channel yeah it’s like a retro channel kind of apparently diver man well there’s a new MacGyver by the way new one with Elaine I don’t think it’s as good as old one but it could be just my but you know how you get attached to your old shows it could be that but MacGyver was dope back in the day so you know whichever and I was just think duck tea people people like to say well paperclip write MacGyver with a baby he never really had a paper clip really he had duct tape that was the thing I’m no sorry night TV all right lay that’s on you and I did it but I was busy the America he had the Swiss Army knife and the duct tape that was his thing everything else he just found in an environment is environment which which change from episode to episode nonetheless subscribe to the podcast on iTunes stitcher google play all these platforms that provide a podcast we’re on all of them boom subscribe whichever one you use I mean if you use to I guess write everything the two people use to clap for and why why did I do that the other day there’s some reason I had to go to a different platform so I have a backup platform boom subscribe to both yeah right is that kind of like YouTube and Vimeo you know you guys love a gmail account as well personal why that got us committed a bad video about tell you what well I don’t know why but this could be the reason like as YouTube okay so the émile is kind of reflect profession people who fancy themselves as like film makers is my piece that I’ve made an important it tends to be that right YouTube is just like guys Utah have a cute but overall yes exactly right just throw my video it’s YouTube like I know the tube TV to you whatever you are female is another name I guess I could think about it but nonetheless that’s what it shook itself out to be you know so it’s funny when people are like I’m not on YouTube my Monday me an amalgam artist yeah you do you have to do anything to be on Vimeo you just still submit same exact thing it’s exactly like YouTube except for the fact which now that I’m thinking about it makes sense where if you upload a video and you’re like oh man in one of these titles midway through the video i spelt it wrong which happens to me sometimes you can go back into your account and replace the video even if it’s been up for a week you can say or YouTube Vimeo YouTube you cannot yes a new video yeah so you gotta upload again and here’s the thing you can’t upload the same file get a really because YouTube’s loop now you got to re it it’ll it has all these little little information in the file you’ll be like hey that’s a duplicate file you can’t do that no I only had something to the advertising I don’t know nonetheless subscribe to Chaco podcasts on youtube if you like that channel we’re trying to provide we call providing value you know that’s don’t say that but I can sound cool that’s another it sounded cool when I first heard it but it has another character and that’s another one of those things where it sounded cool and then I one thought like me or I think like everyone else whatever and so everyone started using it now it’s like deeper abusing it I’m over here just trying to provide value and it just you know it starts to some noise you just really don’t do voices other than excavation thanks taco anyway subscribe to youtube we’re trying to provide some value there with the excerpts and the various other clips aside from the video versions podcast your Memorial Day one was really good like dad knows a powerful powerful letter yeah a bunch of other stuff um like Jocko has a store it’s called Jocko store if you didn’t already know chuckles store calm what do we have on taco store we have t-shirts if you guys realize Jocko also has a podcast cheer called dr chocolate white tea come Jocko white tea yeah I think I see a trend here yeah yeah the trend is real for sure um nonetheless the fact of originality and name-o not mean things yeah so in a way like because here there are layers in that too and there is sophistication to that even though it seems simple because there I was being perfectly you are being such a diva governor there’s more to jakka than just order that just happens to be my name this – there’s more – that goes beyond this podcast beyond the TV on whatever right okay so just let’s to start with that fact which is complex in and of yourself then you’re like okay look this is what roughly considered a company technically maybe I get I guess or you had to if you have to guy asked me today what do I do like for a living and I was like I was like almost dislike stuff yeah he goes well what would you how would you what’d he say he said well how would you describe what you do I said stay busy that’s what I do yeah okay fair enough yeah there you go but technically cuz bar is dang I’ve been heard that one in a long cool Jaakko podcast com that’s an int it will color the entity I don’t know company business it’s a place where we have forever nonetheless oh you know what I’m gonna go ahead and out on a limb and call it a brand no it’s brandish whatever nonetheless if you call okay bull Jaakko store that’s the name of the store yeah well true so and to be honest with you the reason that I called the podcast choco podcast when I was on Tim Ferriss podcast I said Jacque go hungry I and I don’t even know I don’t know if I just said I don’t on the podcast or not but he I think he says I’m like oh you know we got agreed to no like Jocko hungry-man does ago a new podcast record Jocko podcast right that was the initial Fox there’s the layer makes sense yeah and that’s a but even with naming the other word is I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted to do and not care yeah and that may be why I knew we’re going to talk about jujitsu and fighting and music and hardcore and war and death and I just wanted to not have any limitations and the only way I could do that because if you give the podcast a name like you know the okay this podcast yeah it looks like okay well then well next thing you know we’re talking about war and or if you call it the war podcast but you’re talking about business or if you don’t talk about the leadership podcast but you’re talking about jujitsu how do you get all those things into one thing called the Jocko podcast and I can do whatever I want yeah there you go and if people are looking for you they see you talk about XYZ they’re like oh you know I sure I can look on that easy connection yeah and it’s simple which is like you know simplicity there’s a long way yeah you know and that’s kind of like a thing so why are we talking about this I’m just saying that’s what’s called Jacques Cousteau yeah that’s right so because it is ignore people want to do other things in their life decide to listen to our outside cooking you’re the one chiming in I’m over here turns up like I said notice that the other day when we had Roger Hayden on and I gave you the silent treatment and in when you looked at me for affirmation while you were giving the advertisers I didn’t even nod I just looked at you and you got you actually got uncomfortable yeah you actually got uncomfortable you were like maybe you you the look on your face like you’d look at me like I was gonna give you a smile I know I just look at you like hurry up and then you got uncomfortable and I said oh you start to feel it yeah you know versus yeah that’s like subtle gestures you know nah man it’s all good you know so do that again right now you know so I can talk about the store Joff ghosts or chocolate or calm if you like t-shirts now I’m not saying if you like t-shirts in general I’m just saying if you want to represent just clinicals freedom what get after it know the darkness know the dark men that’s a good one um anyway go on the sir Joxer I come you can see shirts if you like them go ahead get one support that way that’s a good one got some rash guards on there one new rash guard out already says get after it on it discipline on one sleeve freedom on the other sleeve Jocko approved really good um I think it’s good I feel that the people who have witnessed it that pump is to see witnessed it like there’s some kind that we could live in oh yeah yeah there’s a lot you said you in that’s witnessed my rash guard that I bestowed upon them by way a visual how about people they’re also how about people that saw thought it was a pretty cool that’s cool is that’s really I thought it was cool and um so there it is you gonna story look at it if you think it’s cool you want to get to witness the glory of echo Charles’s rash guards you may go to Jocko store calm and revel in the glory exactly right and whatever else you want there’s some good stuff on there and we added this little thing too if we’re out and I’m generally like I’m gonna restock you know we should talk boom but I added this little thing where it’s like let’s say size medium or whatever is house it just as a little button notify me both put your email boom notifies you when it’s back in stock and again I’m trying to put them back in stock ASAP boom boom boom right now but you know give me a day or two or whatever um well notify you boom also psychological warfare if you didn’t know what that is it’s an album with track not music track word track sent it like spoken word you know so basically what it’s for is you know it’s not like poetry so arguably not poetry but stock on there talking talking to eat us to me Chuck was talking to me that I actually quite literally was talking yeah when that was made exactly right so you know you can have them talk to you would so basically what it’s for is he’s not just talking like everyday stuff so when you have hard time waking up in the money or you have our time because you’re tired and you want to skip the Erica or you have a hard time because it’s lunchtime and I’m all hungry and all they have is donuts here or whatever but I would have to request name also have you procrastinating or what do you call it if you’re pretty bad ending the podcast maybe you could listen that one right now Ariel I’m trying to explain this thoroughly so this so we can all have a really good understanding of what its and its value that’s that’s it’s downloading over to me talking about moments of weakness so you can get through them yeah next ask next comment yeah I guess let me add this one more thing actually you can even take it at moments of triumph and strength and it will still work you’ll just want to do it more you know yeah it’s like drinking coffee when you’re not tired you know I mean yeah double-bass let that sink in anyway a lot like a lot of a warfare on i-tunes FM music all these musicals google play google fine I think I think it’s on everything cool but yeah man do it right on alright also you can get jock a white tee on Amazon and when you order jock a white tee make sure you also order more weights for your barbells because your deadlift is going to go up to approximately 8 000 pounds so you need to get that much weights when you order it weigh the warrior kid book it’s been out for a couple weeks now and thank you for getting it also little warning that someone put on Amazon in their review I thought it was worth hearing and thinking about parents be ready I bought this book after listening to jock on the Joe Rogan podcast where Jaco was the guest great podcast bought the book after learning Jaco has a book for kids my son who isn’t very motivated yet was excited about the book when he started reading the book a fire lit underneath him he said to me dad I’m going to get up tomorrow at 5 a m will you get up with me in that moment I realized that I was what I was going what was going on and I couldn’t let him down I enjoy my sleep like everyone else but I was amazed that my son got excited so I replied yes let’s do it got up at 5:00 a m and his alarm clock must not have gone off but I turned on his light in his bedroom and he got right up he got his clothes and shoes on and we went for a jog we’ve never done this before I had him do some sit-ups and push-ups after and he gladly did couldn’t quite do push-ups if that’s ok we’ll get there long story short this book only being a few chapters and the only few chapters in I was kind of surprised when I saw that only few chapters did made the book worth getting in this day and age of electronics and iPads and tablets kids don’t seem to be as motivated to do activities as when I was a kid I’m 39 so i edified him after for making the decision to get up at 5 a m on an on school day and I told him that he can apply that mentality to anything in life boom way the warrior kid get it for your kid be prepared to get yourself back in the game also discipline equals freedom Field Manual the instructional manual for getting after it feel free to preorder that one also extreme ownership combat leadership combat leadership and also combat leadership that’s what the book is about how to apply the fundamental principles of combat leadership to your business and to your life also for a more hands-on experience you can call a chillon Front our leadership and management consulting company myself Lafe babban JP Danelle Dave Burke you can contact us at in info at Esalen front comm also the muster austin texas july 13th and 14th at the Omni Barton Creek Resort no fluff there’s no fluff just pragmatic information you can act on immediately you can literally in a break email your team and give instructions that’s going to move them in the right direction in the austin muster there’s only 306 smaller venue it’s going to sell out so get online get registered if you can’t make it I want to come to San Diego in September September 14th and 15th for muster 0:04 will be there live and while you’re waiting for the muster if you need to communicate with us you can find us on the interwebs on twitter or on instagram on that face ebola echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko willing and to the military personnel out there holding the line in places no one wants to be doing things that no one else wants to do thanks for keeping us free to police law enforcement firefighters EMTs and other first responders thanks for keeping us safe and for everyone else out there remember remember what human beings are capable of suffering through and remember that even in those situations where everything seems to be taken away when you seem to have no choice at all in the world remember remember that you can still choose how you react to the things around you you can still choose your attitude and you can still choose to actualize the best person that you can be in every aspect of your life you can choose to get after it so until next time this is echo and Jocko out you