Jocko Podcast 12 – With Echo Charles | What Made Jocko

This is Joo podcast number 12 with Echo Charles and me Jaco Willink Sometimes people ask me what made me me how did I turn out like this? Where did I come from? And I go back and I I point at you know hardcore music growing up and it being in that scene where it was cool to be hard and strong and it was about aggression and discipline Those were like the underlying themes So I I point at that you know and I think that’s real There was mantras that I remember from those days that stuck with me my my whole life from some of those from some of that music And then there’s other things that influenced me as a kid at even even a younger age And one of the things that I know influenced me at a very young age in a pretty significant way was seeing the movie Bridge on the River Quai which is a classic war movie And that movie pretty much had it all for me And I think I can trace my ideas of being a commando And I use that word you know that’s kind of a archaic word that people don’t use anymore commando But I I think I got it from watching that movie when I was a kid And if you haven’t seen that movie you should check it out for sure because it’s epic And it’s a story of prisoners of war and American and British mostly British that are sent to build a bridge in the middle of the jungle in Burma for a train line that is to connect Bangkok and Rangon And of course these are prisoners So they’re badly mistreated They’re beaten They’re poorly fed Eventually one American escapes and he leads a commando troop back to the sight of the bridge to blow up the bridge And they do it all The commandos in the movie they do it all They parachute in They swim up the river They lay demolition on the bridge It’s like a dream operation And one part of the plot though is that the senior British officer at the camp the senior prisoner at the camp his name in the in the movie is Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson He takes a true leadership role in building the bridge Now think about that He’s being tasked by the Japanese to build this bridge And instead of sabotaging the job because it’s going to help the Japanese he actually gets his men fired up and helps organize and has his engineers redesign it and they relocate it to a better piece of terrain and and he pushes his men to do a good job building it And he actually takes pride in this bridge And again this is a bridge that’s going to aid in Japanese Japanese domination So when the commandos show up to blow it up the colonel he he almost foils the attack but in the end the bridge gets destroyed It’s an awesome movie and it was like I said it was very influential to me as a kid and people should definitely watch it And then you should know this It’s all a lie Wait what’s all a lie there? Well there really was a bridge on the river Quai and it really was built by prisoners of war But that’s about where these similarities end What the prisoners suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese guards is beyond anything that they showed in the movie and really beyond anything that even remotely civilized person could imagine I was uh I was overseas recently in Europe and I was in Britain and a friend of mine gave me a book called The Forgotten Highlander And he told me you know oh it’s by one of the soldiers that built the bridge on the river Quai Read it And I thought to myself oh okay you know great It’s like the movie And he said it’s not like the movie It’s not like the movie at all And it isn’t This is a book that shows the ultimate in human suffering and through that the ultimate in human will the author Alistister Yurkart was fresh to the British military He was sent to Singapore and when Singapore was overrun by the Japanese Imperial Army he ended up in the jungle a prisoner and a slave By this time mental health had become a major issue on the railway We all suffered from depression Men were taking their own lives All along the railway men cut their own throats put their heads on the railway line and simply walked into the jungle to die Many developed the ATAP stare and just looked intently at the thatched roof of the hut Death soon followed Others went mad because of medical conditions caused by vitamin D deficiencies And some just gave up losing their minds and their self-control They would fight with anyone over nothing at all throwing punches biting kicking They needed to be controlled physically but just could not be calmed down It came to a point where something drastic had to be done to prevent innocent men being killed by deranged fellow prisoners some of whom had reverted to animal instincts The decision was made to build our own lunatic asylum to cage these poor souls With the agreement of the Japanese the burial party built two six-foot square bamboo cages The madmen could stand or lie down in these just 10 feet from my hut and they had a bench to sit on They received food and water but sadly were largely ignored At night it was awful to hear them in the darkness jabbering and screaming throwing themselves at the cages The men who went in never came out alive Death would have been welcomed for them It was a dreadful thing to see our fellow human beings caged like animals But what else could we do? you know as I was preparing for this and a lot of times when I’m putting notes together I’m thinking about some thing that I’m going to say some comparable thing that I can bring back from some of my experiences And I got nothing for you I got nothing for you And this this book is just like that Back to the book I turned to God several times Often I felt my prayers went unanswered But I somehow lived through this madness And I think that someone must have been listening But faith in God could not prevent the beatings on the railway which were totally routine The thread of a rifle butt across your head or bamboo cane across your body forever loomed large For no reason at all wire whips would lash into our backs and draw blood Some guards would creep up on you and strike the open tropical ulcers on your legs with a bamboo stick causing intense agony Often they delivered these beatings with such brutality and swiftness that you did not see them coming or even know that they were what they were for Sometimes you just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time The Korean guards took a certain pleasure in the beatings They had expressed permission to kill prisoners without any reference to higher authority but most of them would be satisfied to stop at the sight of a blood trickling The beatings no matter how frequent never got easier to take In fact they got tougher Each time I took a beating it chipped away not just at my bones and waning muscles but at my will to endure them The dilemma The dilemma was whether to swallow your pride by going down at the first blow or to retain some of your dignity by taking several blows and standing up to them If you if you refused to show that their blows were hurting you they would fly into rages and the beating could be severe even fatal From an early period the Japanese camp commodant whom I called the Black Prince became ever more inventive with his punishments I could not imagine a more sadistic and evil person on the planet The more heinous the so-called crime the sicker the sentence Under his instructed under his instructions the guards had free reign If they felt you deserved something more than a beating it meant taking you aside and making you pick up a large boulder For the rest of the day you had to hold the rock over your head in the blazing heat Within minutes your already weak and malnourished arms would start to twitch and fail you Before long you would have to drop the rock usually the size of a rugby ball or football mindful so that you did so without letting it fall on your own skull When you let go the guards would pounce fists rifle butts and boots flailing into your body until you picked up the rock again It would go on all day And if the Japanese officer did not think you had learned your lesson sufficiently the punishment would be repeated back at camp The Black Prince was a true bastard Others called him the canyu kid but I thought my name suited Lieutenant Usuki really well He was darker than the other Japanese soldiers and strutdded around like royalty his beefy gut protruding from beneath a shabby uniform He despised us totally We were scum to him His absolute power over us and capacity for pitilesness for pitiles brutality made him so terrifying to me Long before our decision to incarcerate crazy men the Japanese had built their own cages The black holes as they were known were a higher form of punishment Those fortunate enough to be locked inside the se the those unfortunate enough to be locked inside the sem the semi-ubteran cages proportioned so you could not stand lie down or even kneel fully would be kept in for a month typically corrugated iron and metal covered the bamboo to intensify the heat and deprive victims of air and any cooling breeze few who went in came out live Yeah It’s Yeah It’s It’s unbelievable Unbelievable The Black Prince’s right-hand man was Sergeant Sechi known to us Brits simply as Dr Death Short and squat he took the roll calls and carried out all of the camp commonants orders Presumably he was more educated than the other Japanese or Koreans but he was evil to the marrow Ruthless in the extreme he loved tormenting us He especially reveled in a sickening brand of water torture He had guards pin down his hapless victim before pouring gallons of water down the prisoner’s throat using a bucket and a hose The man’s stomach would swell up from huge volumes of water He would then jump up and down gleefully on the prisoner’s stomach Sometimes the guards tied barbed wire around the poor soul’s stomach Few survived When a prisoner was caught stealing from the Japanese officer storoom or if a man turned on a guard they received the next grade on the sliding scale of Japanese torture I called it the Indian rope trick one favored by Indians in the old cowboy films The helpless prisoner would be tethered spread eagle to the ground They wrapped wet raton the same string-like bark used to lash our bamboo huts together around his ankles and wrists and tied him to stakes in the ground As the ratan dried the ties would slowly gash into the skin drawing blood and tearing into the sineu and cartilage as it pulled limbs from their sockets It reduced even the toughest men to agonized screaming and they would be there all day I would almost be glad to get out of camp in the mornings just to avoid hearing their cries of unbridled pain It was a way of torturing all of us Often when we returned from a day on the railway the men would no longer be there Nobody asked where they had vanished to I certainly did not want to know after such a horrific ordeal at the end of a Japanese bayonet would have been welcomed So as time went on eventually you know when they showed up they had their their pants their shirt their boots their socks and as time went on they all that stuff just got destroyed It got eaten by the jungle as they worked and eventually fell apart And one of the worst things to lose is the last thing that Allistar lost was his boots Now in bare feet I had a new challenge My feet were extremely soft from living constantly in wet boots and the ground was particularly unforgiving The jagged volcanic rocks often hiding just below the surface of top soil I knew that the soles would harden up but until then I would have to walk like a [ __ ] When using the spade I wouldn’t be able to use my foot to dig deeper into the soil and would have and would require more upper body strength Having no boots also made the ever frequent trips to the Benos the latrines even more unsaavory They were revolting Vast open pits later covered in after weakened prisoners began to collapse into them and drown As you approached the Benos you had to wade through the mud layered with excrement of those dysentery sufferers who never quite made it Flies and maggots and flies and maggots swarmed and wriggled over this foul mush It got so bad that we had a bucket of water at the entrance to wash our hut to wash our feet in It all added to the misery It’s amazing what we take for granted isn’t it? Yeah To say the least And he goes on to talk about and if if you how do you deal with this when you’re going through it? and he writes “In moments of adversity I would often think back to my childhood and remember going barefoot during the long hot summers we spent down at the Aberdine Aberdine SH Fisher fishing village of Newton Hill where I was born So there he is you know having to go barefoot his feet practically falling off And the best thing he can do is try and think of the good times in his life when he was forced to go barefoot And you would think you would think some level of camaraderie would be critical And this is one of those books where again in almost every military book you hear about leadership and camaraderie And there’s points in this book where that stuff fails Fails and this is where he kind of talks about that Back to the book I even castigated myself for getting involved with another prisoner’s problems Once you got started with sentimentality and grief you were a goner It was a selfish tactic but I was desperate to survive I was refusing to let the Japanese win this Like on the death march some men found the going easier by teaming up and making a close bond with another prisoner They would fight railway life together sharing whatever food they had helping each other wherever they could and always having their back They even took beatings together to share the blows and the pain It was not the way for me I watched the heartache of men losing their best pals and suddenly being left alone They never they never usually lasted very long and soon followed their mates to the grave By now the cuts on my feet and legs had turned into painful and dangerous tropical ulcers When I suffered scrapes on the railway or had a rash I could not tend to it until yasumi time which is like rest time or at ease time or until I was back at camp Then I wrapped leaves around the cuts at night to keep the flies off but it was useless And the ulcers usually spread They rotted your flesh muscle and tendons People were left with gaping holes as the flesh simply fell away An ulcer would eat deep into your flesh So deep you could sometimes see the white of bone Even worse if you were not careful they could become gangrinous And many men lo lost legs that way by improvised amputation without anesthetics or drugs I went to the medical hut for advice In common with most of the men tropical ulcers had engulfed my feet ankles and lower calves I had avoided the medical hut until that point It was set aside from the sleeping huts and about the same size as ours The officer in charge was Dr Ma Mat a likable character from Paisley just outside Glasgow where he had studied medicine He had come to Singapore about the same time as me and would later in much different circumstances save my life On this my first encounter with him he would at least save my legs Sneaking under the cloud of black flies that circled outside the hut like a swarm of miniature vultures I entered nervously The overpowering stench immediately had me gasping Stepping across the cadaavverous forms of five or six men who appeared to be wrapping at death’s door Dr Matus introduced himself I had not spoken for so many days that when I went to reply my parched throat failed me Here he said handing me a half coconut cup of water Get this down you I sipped the cool water down and thanked him asking how his patients were Dr Matus in his mid-30s at this point appeared weary beyond his years He He was probably on self-imposed half rations just to keep some spare for his patients The men had spoke highly of him and many of our do doctors were revered as saintly figures The doctor took me by the arm and led me down to the far end of the hut away from the men In a soft West Coast accent he said “Half of these men will die within days The other half who knows? If I had access to some proper clinical treatments drugs or instruments they might live But that is not possible as I’m sure you know I could only nod in agreement The squalor and stench of death inside the hut was appalling “What can you do for them?” I asked “Quite simply not a lot I try and give them some hope if nothing else “ He went on “It’s easy for these men to give up and when they lose hope the fight just seems to seep right out of them On countless occasions I’ve seen two men with the same symptoms and the same physical state and one will die and one will make it I can only put that down to sheer willpower We do talk about willpower I don’t think we’ve ever discussed willpower at this level And that is when you have two men with the same symptoms and the same physical state and one dies and one lives And the doctor’s only determination is he thinks it comes down to sheer willpower The will is strong It is a strong force I considered this for a moment and looked around the hut You could tell the men who were dying by the look on their faces Their gaze was lost before it reached their eyes and no amount of positive attitude and care from Dr Matus could change their destiny It certainly was not the medical staff’s fault Their hands were tied No blood was firmly on our captor’s hands I told myself right then and there that I would not stop fighting What can you do for this? I asked the doctor lifting a foot onto a bamboo chair Tropical ice tropical ulcers a disease of food filth and friction Do you know what maggots look like? Maggots? I asked frantically inspecting my foot praying that I was subject to some sick joke Yes maggots They’ll fix you right up Go down to the latrines find yourself a handful of those wee white beasties and set them on your ulcers They will chomp through the dead flesh Before you know it you’ll be right as rain Almost as an afterthought he added “Remember to count how many you put on carefully You don’t want to forget one and leaving it there to eat itself to death “ I left the medical hut shaking my head still wondering if I were being had Letting maggots eat my skin did not sound particularly appetizing but I was willing willing to try anything I knew I had to stop the rot that was devouring my legs The latrines were nothing more than holes in the ground but now with bamboo slats across them A bunch of jungle leaves usually laid piled near or you took your own foliage or toilet paper if there was no river water collected for the job I did not have to go far to find what I was looking for I gingerely scooped up a handful of maggots watching them squirm and wrigle Without thinking about it too much I found a quiet spot nearby and sat down placing just two or three on a nasty ulcer on my ankle The maggots which were about a quarter of an inch long instinctively knew what to do They started gnawing away at my skin in the most with the most minuscule of bites The sensation was of tingling unearly yet not altogether unpleasant until the realization that the maggots were eating your raw flesh came racing back to the forefront of your mind I can still feel that sensation to this day But to Dr Matus’s credit it certainly worked Within days the wounds had started to heal and new skin grew back It was a trick that I persisted with throughout my time on the railway passing it on to other men when I thought I could They still use that today by the way The maggots thing Yeah Um well I’ve heard of it That’s crazy how he was kind of like um like you know I I’ll never forget that feeling of the maggots but he he talked about it as not being totally unpleasant Kind of liked it Yeah Probably because he knew it was kind of healing him you know Yeah I don’t know That’s it’s heavy bro That’s heavy Yeah So now we get into a guy that uh had tried to escape and was captured I was unaware that anyone had escaped until one morning a sorryl looking chap was dragged before us He had been horrifically beaten his swollen and bloody features virtually unrecognizable The interpreter told us “This man very bad He tried to escape No good “ Two guards threw him down on the ground in front of us The battered wreck of a human frame and made him kneel He did not plead for mercy or beg for assistance He knew his fate and waited silently resigned to it The black prince who seemed to have dressed up especially for the occasion stroed forward and unchathed his long samurai sword He prodded the prisoner in the back forcing him to straighten up Then the black prince raised his sword its stainless steel glinted in the sunshine It was a moment of such horror that I could scarcely believe it was really happening I closed my eyes tightly This was one of the many instances of barbarism on the railway that I would try to shut out of my mind But I could not escape the chilling swoosh of the blade as it cut through the damp tropical air or the sickening thack of the sword coming down on our comrade’s neck followed by the dull thump of his head landing on the ground I kept my eyes firmly shut but swayed on my feet and felt a collective gasp of impotent anger and revulsion And that line right there is something that when I heard it when I read it I kind of thought to myself that this is what separates every experience I’ve had in my life with this And that is this this gasp of impotent anger and revulsion So the anger’s there the revulsion’s there but it’s impotent and you can’t do anything about it Mhm Because you’re a slave and you’re at the mercy of another human being Your freedom has been taken away And I talk about freedom fairly often And I don’t think there could be any greater reminder of how precious freedom is than reading about someone about a group of men that have had their freedom completely taken from them Now at this point in the book and I wanted to point this out because if you have seen the movie The Bridge on the River Quai he makes some he he kind of spells out the differences The building of the bridge on the river Quai took a terrible toll on us and the depiction of our sufferings in the film of the same name was a very very sanitized version of the events Unlike the well-fed extras in the movie we did not whistle Colonel Bogey tune nor did we work alongside Americans nor did we have any semblance of a uniform We were naked barefoot slaves and there were certainly no pretty and scandalclad local girls wandering through the jungle And contrary to the film our real life commander Colonel Philip Tuzi did not collaborate with the Japanese I I was not alone in doing as little work as possible without blatantly sherking which resulted in sadistic beatings energy Every ounce of it had to be conserved for survival To bust a gut on starvation rations was absolute suicide We had long lost our dignity and working faster certainly would not have brought it back In fact it would have resulted in us in the opposite with even more of us dying Instead we made constant attempts to sabotage Men whispered orders to impair the construction of the bridge wherever possible Some charged with making up concrete mixtures deliberately added too much sand or not enough which would later have disastrous effects We collected huge numbers of termites and white ants and deposited them into grooves and joints of loadbearing trunks out of sight of guards I I sawed halfway through wooden bolts wherever possible hoping they would snap whenever any serious weight like a train was placed upon them But the river Quai and its tributaries harbored a killer even more lethal than the Japanese and our starvation diet As an inevitable consequence of the lack of sanitation and the tens of thousands of bodies buried in shallow graves or dumped along in the jungle the river system was loaded with chalera bacteria and the monsoon season became chalera season As the heightened waters of the quay of the quai flushed vibbrio chloria throughout the land this fearful disease cast a black shadow over the camp Collar arrived unseen and unheard but soon had us in its grip I was slow to hear about it but I sense something terrible was in the camp More men were falling ill than usual and the Japanese kept their distance leaving us alone They were scared to death of catching chalera themselves So this wretched disease comes into camp and you just don’t think things can get worse and they do and you think that Alistister is going to avoid Kalera but he doesn’t Overnight Kalera struck me down I woke up with explosive diarrhea and violent projectile vomiting My ears were ringing as I felt dizzy Cramps started in my bowels and soon spread all over my body as it rapidly dehydrated I was drying from the inside out shriveling like a picked grape left out in the sun The chalera bacteria burred into the walls of my small intestine producing toxins that sucked my vital salts and every ounce of water out of my body I was unsure what was wrong but I knew this but I knew it was serious I did not want to finish up with life drained out of me I had always been extremely careful to drink only boiled water So at first I was doubtful that it was chalera I did not know much about it but I knew that the first 24 hours were crucial If you see through a day and a night you would probably survive Most men who succumbed did so in the first few hours A horrible death and so quick Men who threw the bodies of chalera victims onto the feral pers in the morning could easily contract the disease die and be thrown on the p themselves that evening They died in agony like crazed animals and it was dreadful to see I lay in my bed unable to rise for work party By then I was semi-conscious and I thought it was the end I was hallucinating Vivid red flashes stormed my eyelids I knew I had to seek help After psyching myself up on I managed to rise and wobble to do Dr Matson’s hut As soon as I walked in he knew that I had chalera It was a death sentence and he was reluctant to tell me Instead he looked at me and simply said “You’ll have to be isolated You’ll be looked after “ His orderlys led me to a cream colored tent like the ones we had used in Scouts As they peeled back the tent’s front flap a deathly stench leaped out Unknown to me this was the death tent And I was the unlucky 13th occupant of a dimly lit space already full of men When I saw their state their eyes rolling back rasping unintelligible voices their legs raised with knees bent the bizarre telltale sign of a caller a sufferer I knew that my number was up The orderlys were putting me here to die The the fight was fading from me and I lay down on the canvas floor with a sense of complete and utter desolation But he did survive Out of the 13 men that went into the tent he was the only survivor Now at this point in the book and I want you to remember that this isn’t a book This is another human being’s life And at this point in Alistair’s life he actually got moved to a another facility another prison camp that was for people that were in really bad bad shape and he was there He went through some recovery time and that’s a a very important part of the book And then he begins working on the docks you know unloading food stores for the Japanese soldiers and loading them And eventually it comes time for him to be moved And so they move the prisoners of war by shipping them On 4 September 1944 900 British PWS were rushed up the gang way of the Kachadoki Maru a 10 000 ton cargo vessel that had been named for that had been named the President Harrison before it was captured from the Americans Using sticks the Japanese drove us like cattle aboard the ship and down into the holds We could never move fast enough for them The liner had two holds both quite obviously not made to accommodate human beings Yet they wanted around 450 of us in each The lads below were shouting begging and pleading for the Japanese not to let in any more men But the louder they shouted the more frenzied the gars became down and down we went into the depths of hell Nothing in all of our suffering had prepared me for anything like this And even today I can scarcely find the words to describe the horrors of the Catchadoki Maru By the time I got down to the hold I had nowhere to sit It was standing room only Most of us packed in like sardines with no toilet facilities Most had dissentry malaria berry berry and all manners of tropical diseases Once inside and the hold crammed full the Japanese batten down the hatches plunging us into a terrifying black pit At that moment the most fearful clamor went up as claustrophobia and panic gripped the men Many feared they were doomed and began screaming and shouting Yet a strange tranquility came over me I felt resigned and just thought “This is it “ I thought that we would never get out alive and would never see home again You felt resigned to accept this as your last I could only think that they were taking us out to sea to sink the ship and drown us all Our captors were capable of it I had seen what they were capable of anything We knew nothing about these ships which would become infamous in the annals of the Second World War history as hell ships A fleet of dozens of rusting hulks used to shuttle supplies and prisoners around Japan’s far eastern empire Some of the most appalling episodes of the war occurred on these ships in which men driven crazy by thirst killed fellow prisoners to drink their blood In some cases prisoners trying to escape from the sthing mass of hysterical captives were shot by Japanese soldiers Some voyages took weeks with only a handful of prisoners surviving Men drank their own urine Sick prisoners were trampled to death or suffocated The sane murdered the insane and wondered when it would be their turn to go mad Cannibalism as well as vampirism was not unknown And even Japanese medics were shocked by what they found when the holds were finally opened In the case of the Oroko Maru where insane prisoners killed fellow men for their blood only 271 men survived out of 1 619 So all those times that you think of horror movies and they don’t seem realistic and you don’t think it could ever happen it has happened There must have been at least one officer a warn officer or a sergeant major somewhere in the hold but they certainly didn’t make themselves known Discipline had gone Everyone whatever their rank was in the same situation All of us just wanted to survive and were prepared to do anything to ensure that happened It would have taken a very brave man to try and take command of the men in the hold in these conditions It would have been suicidal And again that’s one of those points where you know every book we’ve talked about no matter how bad things get there’s a leader ready to step up Mhm And you wonder if there’s a line that you could ever go across where that doesn’t happen Well here it is I thought I never thought anything could ever match the terror of the railway Being in the hold was worse At least slaving on the railway you could move and you had fresh air Then another dread thought struck me Submarines The catchidoku Maru had no Red Cross markings painted on it I would later learn that some that none of the hell ships bore any indication that PS were on board as they were required to do by Geneva Convention Red crosses were however painted on Japanese ammunition carriers my fears that without markings we were a target for our own side So he starts thinking well um we’re part of the Japanese fleet now What if we get attacked by our own people? What if we get sunk? And as you can probably foresee because this story is just misery upon misery It happens in the hold of the catchoki maru The torment went on The noise was constant and deafening An awful cacophony of throbbing engines moaning coughing and occasional panicstricken screaming the background music for this latest torture The chilling screams of the mad and insane would stop abruptly I don’t know how they were dealt with but I could imagine I was completely stuck where I was in the hold and could not move No one could You couldn’t sit or lie down You couldn’t even go down to your hunches There was so little room You didn’t really want to lie down anyway It was a sea of human waste and you risked being trampled You had your space and protected it with your life Quite literally you stayed strong protecting your space with elbows and fists by any means necessary By this stage it was every man for himself Each person had their own problems to resolve their own life to save Again we have not seen this yet Every man for himself Yeah The smell inside the hold was indescribable or a pugnant stench An overpowering mixture of excrement urine vomit sweaty bodies weeping ulcers and rotting flesh clogged the atmosphere There was no way we could get any fresh air Even when the Japanese opened the hatches it really didn’t help that much You were still breathing in what was already there Thirst became our biggest problem People don’t understand what real thirst truly is You start to hallucinate and see miragages and that is the most dangerous thing People died down in the holds from suffocation or heart attacks The men who died were not taken away Their bodies lay among us So one of the other vessels that they’re out with gets hit with a torpedo American torpedo It’s another vessel that’s holding prisoners of war It is the 1 317 [Music] were killed or sorry 1 317 prisoners were on board None of them were killed by the explosion but 1 159 of them drowned or died of exposure And mind you these were all guys that had served on the death railway guys that had already suffered just unimaginable torture And then as he suspected it became their turn 4 minutes later we suddenly felt a tremendous blast and an explosion tore through the hold The whole structure shuddered and water flooded in it from above I knew then as the water crashed on top of me that my worst fears had been realized We had been hit and I knew that the torpedo had struck very close to us It was in fact the first of two torpedoes that would send the hell ship to the bottom within 15 minutes The ship tilted We were going down So the ship sinks Now the Japanese had immediately tried to get off with lifeboats It left all the prisoners trying to just create rafts with whatever they could Even after the sinking the killing went on for those of us who survived and got onto rafts Anyone starting to panic was thrown off into the sea When they scrambled to get back they were kicked away Men pushed under and held the Japanese Men pushed under and held under Japanese survivors Fighting broke out as the animal instinct to survive asserted itself making some survivors try to capture more seaorthy vessels and shove others off to their deaths Many gave up already so weak dangerously dehydrated and ill Many gulped salt water and quickly went stark raving mad drowning themselves to end the torment Horrible as it may sound as men became mad they had to be shoved off of the rafts or boats or the remainder might have perish perished There was a lot of shouting and screaming Cries of get off you bastard or I’ll kill you made me close my eyes in distress Most of the shouts were in English There were not many Japanese the majority of whom had gotten off early in the lifeboats Drowning and dying men called for their wives their children or mothers Men said things like “Daddy will be home soon ” and then disappeared beneath the waves It was harrowing to hear By that stage most of us were treading a very fine line between sanity and madness It didn’t take much to put people over the top I couldn’t see where it was coming from but a group of men started singing First to keep their spirits up they sang Rule Britannia After the Salaranga incident we had been banned from singing this stirring anthem with its line about Britain’s never ever being slaves So there you start seeing some spirit as they start singing rule Britannia Celerang incident was when some prisoners had just just when the Japanese had taken over in Singapore and the and I forgive me if I don’t remember this correctly but a couple guys had tried to escape and they got caught and basically it was a standoff between the the soldiers and the Japanese prisoners or Japanese prison camp commander ers and they wouldn’t and the the soldiers did not back down until they had executed four of the four prisoners that had tried to escape And then they kept everyone else locked in this uh compound for 5 days And when the guys started to die from starvation and dissentry and dehydration then they they said “Okay we’ll then they signed a paper that said no one else would try to escape ” But they they held the line as long as they possibly could 244 of my comrades on the Catchadoki Maru died that night It was tragic beyond belief that having survived the death railway they became prisoners of the deep 1 43 Allied servicemen had died as a result of the failure of the Japanese to observe the Geneva Convention and apply red crosses to our hill ships He ends up getting recaptured by the Japanese after the after Yes he does survive He gets recaptured by the Japanese Eventually he’s close to where Nagasaki is but far enough away that he doesn’t die from the blast of Nagasaki The war ends They get picked up and eventually they’re obviously brought home by Americans and eventually sent back to England He says that when he left Aberdine he had weighed a healthy 135 pounds But here in Nagasaki on the steelard scales very ac accurate contraptions similar to those I had used at the plumbers’s merchants I was reduc reduced to a skeletal 82 lbs They’ve got some pictures of these guys I mean they they literally look like skeletons It’s it’s it’s unbelievable that they were even able to survive New arrivals Men from the vast industrial goolog the Japanese had created in Fukawa flooded the quayside and lengthen the cues for showers So they’re basically cleaning these guys up now getting ready to put them on ships and ship them back to America Sadly at this final hurdle some did not make it and died on that quay This distressed the Americans immensely and they were shocked by the matter-of-fact way that the other prisoners accepted the deaths of their mates We had seen so much too much Now I think quite possibly this is the heaviest book that we’ve talked about on the podcast Yeah I would agree with that And it’s one of those things where it’s a question if people are even going to want to listen to this And I understand that I understand that some people did not make it through this reading And some people listen to it Some people are going to buy this book which they should And some people are going to take this as a message from somebody who has seen evil in a way that not too many people can claim to have seen In a person that has had their every freedom taken from them and their lives and their destiny put into the hands of sadistic people Now if you did make it this far I will let this end on a on an incredibly incredibly positive note and message from the author and he says this “My time as a prisoner of the Japanese helped shape keep and determine my path in life just as much as my childhood did Like it or not the horrors did happen to me and to thousands of others Yet some good has come out of it My ordeal has made me a much more patient caring person Inspired by the devotion of our hardpressed medics on the death railway I was able to care for my young daughter when she was ill and for my late wife who required 24-hour attention in the last stages of her life While in Japan and working with my friend Dr Matus I vowed to spend the rest of my life helping others And I am so pleased to say that I have done so It is where my satisfaction comes from nowadays I have tried to use my experiences in a positive fashion and have adopted a motto from them which I never tire of telling others There is no such word as can’t I have not allowed my life to be blighted by bitterness At 90 years of age I have lived a long life and continue to live it to the fullest I enjoyed a long marriage to my wife and I have been fortunate to have a family and to enjoy their success I have amazed my doctors my friends my family and myself by remaining fit I am grateful for my present way of life after all the turmoil that life has thrown at me and thankful to have retained my sense of humor Most importantly I now visit schools to tell pupils of what really happened in the Far East during those terri terrible war years In my 91st year I am fortunate enough despite the best efforts of the Japanese Imperial Army to have the vim and vigor required to tell a new generation of how we suffered scandalously Our sufferings which have haunted all of us Far East prisoners of war throughout our lives were only recognized by the British government in the year 2000 when it offered compensation of £10 000 to remaining survivors Unbelievably the British taxpayer had to pay out that poultry sum and not the culpable Japanese government I hope this book will stand as an indictment of the criminal regime that ran Japan during the war years and the failure of successive Japanese governments to face up to their crimes But I hope too that it will be inspirational and offer hope to those who suffer adversity in their daily lives especially in these difficult times Life is worth living And no matter what it throws at you is important to keep your eyes on the prize of that happiness will come Even when the death railway reduced us to little more than animals humanity in the shape of our saintly medical officers triumphed over barbarism Remember while it seem while it always seems darkest before the dawn perseverance pays off and the good times will return May health and happiness be yours Alistister Urkart July 2009 Life is worth living Jeez Yeah The book is The Forgotten Highlander It is a phenomenal read It is a reality check It is incredibly moving and I highly recommend you buy it you read it and you understand what the world is you get a better understanding of what the world is about And I know I definitely got a better understanding of what the world is about in reading this Bro pretty much every detail like every every little element that he went through made me think like dang I’d rather I’d probably rather die in that situation Every little thing that happened Yeah And there’s uh there’s obviously thousands of thousands and thousands of men that made that choice Yeah and their will got broken and they just they lost the will to live Dang So it’s incredible how strong the human will is that you can survive that 82 pounds dissentry starvation ulcers in your legs putting maggots on your legs Yeah I mean it’s just um it’s truly incredible what the what the human can survive And it’s also truly incredible what the human can complain about in this day and age right? I mean we can complain about just the most ridiculous things Yeah Just the most ridiculous things Yeah Yeah It’s crazy how how big that spectrum is Yeah Just remind me to never complain about anything ever again You know what I mean? Don’t Don’t let me complain about anything ever again I mean I don’t consider myself a big complainer but come on This is just We have no reason to complain about anything Yeah Yeah man What’s crazy too is one of one of the heavier parts there where I felt it was when he talked about the claustrophobia part Yeah I know you have an issue with that Dang It It’s there but it’s not it’s not I’m not super sensitive to it but it’s something I know I feel that that that’s like a tough one to get over you know? Yeah Dang And especially going through all that stuff first and then you got to deal with a cl I don’t know man This might be too heavy for me Well it was too heavy for a lot of people And yeah I mean it’s almost like you you we almost don’t need to have a discussion about this book you know like just just stop talking about it Everyone go read it I get it Yeah And just let’s move on you know? Yeah Because like like I said it just makes you realize just just what kind of suffering there can be and how good you’ve got it how good you’ve got it I’m gonna go to bed tonight in my bed and it’s gonna feel good I’m gonna appreciate that I’m gonna appreciate it every night Yep Yeah So cuz you think about like some little things you don’t even think about but they’re like a real luxury It’s just things that you really enjoy but you don’t even think about it They’re just they’re just like a whatever Like for me I really like a nice cold you know big uh bottle of water You know I have a big just a big bottle of water I completely take it for granted When I go to work out in the morning I drop a couple ice cubes in there fill it up it’s all nice and filtered and whatnot Yeah Oh I don’t think anything about that Yeah That would be like heaven Heaven And then you get you know you go to bed at night you just crawl into the to the the 500 thread sheets or I don’t know there’s there’s some kind of sheets that are nice but whatever they are Some kind of cotton sheets that are all nice Yeah You climb into those you don’t think about that You’re not thankful for that every night Yeah Pretty much everything Like how you pretty much everything Even like how Yeah You know how you’re breathing right now? Yeah Okay consider that compared to that what you just read there Just what just breathing Let’s just start with that Let’s just break it down with air Yeah Yeah Yeah The the beginning I remember um the cable guy was coming Mhm Which already sounds silly I know And um and he was late He was supposed to come at two was the cut off right where he was going to come It was like you know before the struggle is real The cable guy was late Yeah So he came I don’t know 2:15 or something and I had to go I want to see go to work out or something This is getting worse and worse I know this cable guy is gonna be to Yeah For my 15 minutes later for all my TVs you know he’s he’s fixing not fixing up some lame thing Yeah And yeah and that’s one of the things I thought of primarily when you said “Think of all the little luxuries ” So not only I’m not only am I complaining about something I don’t need I’m complaining about something that I’m get like a sup supreme luxury I’m complaining about that you know because it didn’t come 15 minutes of all things Um before the time um that it did Yeah I’m going to check myself It’s a good idea I’m going to check myself too So with that let’s uh let’s go to some questions from the internet And actually to start this one off um after the last podcast number 11 when I had Leif on and we talked about Mark we talked about Mark Lee we talked about Ryan Job we talked about Chris Kyle and you know we actually didn’t talk about Mikey Monsour So I had a couple people ask me hey why didn’t you guys talk about Mikey Monsour? Well the the the simple reason is it’s kind of similar to the reason why I hadn’t talked about Mark and Ryan and Chris yet either until I got Leif on because Leif was the the Charlie platoon commander Those guys were in Charlie Platoon and you know I wanted to have him on as a you know as a as a I don’t know what the word I’m looking for is but I wanted to have guy from his platoon on or the from their platoon on to talk about him and I just that’s the way I felt and so that’s what I stuck with with Mikey Mikey was in Delta Platoon And I I can promise you I will be talking about Mikey at some point on this Mikey was just phenomenal and a hero and a saint and I will absol absolutely be covering his life and how he died and how we remembered him and how we remember him still But I I really just want to get you know somebody from his platoon that was you know right with him uh the whole time And that’s just just the way I feel about it So that’s what I’m going to do And yeah so that’s what I’m going to do with Mikey So it was Mikey will Mikey will definitely We know we’ll have a show for Mikey Absolutely Mikey deserves a hell of a show Uh and we will have it for Mikey So be ready for that I don’t know who I’m going to get A lot of a lot of the guys from Delta Platoon are still on active duty Uh the platoon commander still on active duty The uh all his good friends are still on active duty So it’s going to be tough It’s going to be tougher It might take a little bit of time but that’s the plan and it’ll be worth it So let’s go to the next question Jaco regarding mistakes what are some of your own and some you’ve seen made by leaders you’ve looked up to and how to recover? Can someone ever fully regain trust? Yeah this is actually a pretty easy one because um look if you make a mistake own it Uh the the worst thing you can do if you make a mistake is try and avoid taking blame for it That’s the worst thing you can do And if you think about the bosses that you’ve had and you had some boss that made a mistake and he’s like “No it wasn’t my fault ” You just totally lose respect for him So you can’t do that You got to take you got to take ownership of it Um because and again if you think about the bosses that you’ve had and the times that you had a boss that made excuses you don’t have any mercy on them You’re just ruthless on them You just pick them apart Mhm So that’s step number one is um you know take ownership if you make a mistake and that’s how it’s always seemed to me from as I looked up the chain of command you know if I saw a guy that made mistakes and then he took ownership of them like okay cool the guy’s you know he knows he made a mistake cool we’ll we’ll support him if they’re doing the other thing and they’re blaming everybody else they’re not taking ownership you’re going to have a hard time with it and as a matter of fact I actually had a mutiny in in one of my platoon where this is a long time ago It’s you know all the names are long since forgotten but we had a we had a a mutiny in our platoon where we said you know pretty much us us lower enlisted guys we had a we went to the we literally went to the commanding officer and said “We don’t want to work with this guy ” Dang Yeah So you know all these ideas that people have of the you know military and of you know we obey orders and all this stuff I mean think of what a little jackass I was We you know we said “Well you know what? We don’t want to work for this guy We’re going to go to the commanding officer and tell him we don’t want to work for this guy ” And the commanding officer to his full credit he was like “Listen guys you can’t have a mutiny Not at my command not at my team You guys suck it up You figured out a way to work it out Go do what you’re told Get in line ” Oh so the mutiny didn’t work and then he fired the guy Yeah No but he he like basically made it perfectly clear like this is your one chance And he fired him Dang But it was it was it was pretty crazy to see to see it happen But and I say this all the time it wasn’t because the guy lacked tactical skill It wasn’t because he wasn’t physically fit It most of the reason was because he just couldn’t take anyone’s you know advice He wouldn’t listen to anybody And so when he was making a mistake it was like “No no we do it this way No it’s okay ” Constant cover up for himself And obviously it it didn’t work out for him So your mutiny sort of just put him on put him on notice That was his write up essentially Yeah But I think the commanding officer I think was really just doing the right thing saying “Look guys you can’t have a mutiny Doesn’t work that way This is the military get back in there do what you’re supposed to do And then he was like “Okay I got to fire this guy cuz he’s must not be good to have every enlisted guy in the platoon come forward and say I don’t want to work with this guy ” Yeah That’s not a good sign So the commanding officer did an outstanding job and he was actually a great great commanding officer too So it kind of worked on the DL kind of It worked on the DL I guess as Ekko would say And then I actually the guy that took over was one of the best guys I ever worked for if not the best Dang Yeah it was pretty awesome Um and then as far as regaining trust which is the other part of the question as almost as soon as you admit that you made a mistake you are automatically regaining trust That’s where you start regaining trust and it just goes from there Then you follow through with what you say You know you’re constantly trying to build trust in relationships That’s what you’re trying to do And the minute you’re lying to people how are you building trust? Right? And if you make a mistake and you say it’s not your fault then that’s a lie and everyone knows it Yeah That that fear is um especially not especially but in regards to regaining trust so to speak Um you know when someone admits mistakes they have that fear that oh they’re going to think I don’t know what I’m doing or I don’t have a handle on this You know so doesn’t matter It so doesn’t matter It’s so much better to go hey guys I don’t really know how to do this Can you show me how to do this? I’m not sure Never done this before Right? or hey never I’ve never used this kind of weapon before Can you give me an indo on this thing? Right Right The worst thing you can do is step up to the line with a weapon you’ve never used before and not know how to lock and load it or clear and safe it and look like a total idiot cuz then you look like a guy that is too arrogant and too insecure to ask Yeah It’s actually it’s actually a sign of insecurity if you can’t ask when you need some help with something Yeah And it’s funny how when people are in that position and all kind of just this is kind of a general thing to know is that you’re you come off way more transparent than you think You know how people will like I don’t know something just as small as like name dropping if you name drop someone right even or you just mention this person name but you’re really name dropping them even in a small way Yeah Yeah Like people can smell that Yeah So even like this stuff stuff that’s a little bit more important where if a leader’s insecure about something they want to make like he knows everything but he really doesn’t I hate when I do stuff like that I know But and I hate when I do I hate when I do stuff like that I I’m like “Oh god I’m loser “ And it’s transparent Everyone Everyone knows it And a lot of people bro they’re not in touch with that They think that oh yeah they don’t know cuz I’m just going to sort of mention it And there’s all these little things that it’s just you just of Yeah And I don’t I don’t want to put it like that I want to I’ll just say like I said you’re way more transparent than you think Yeah You know and transparent in this day and age actually has a positive connotation I don’t know if you know that but people view oh he’s really transparent guy You know he really just tells you what’s going on If you’re deliberately you’re using it in a negative way saying “Look people can see right through your BS ” Yeah Yeah When you’re not trying to be transparent right? Right There’s a big difference there And uh totally true but it is definitely better just to you know ask and say hey I don’t know that insecurity the when you don’t feel like asking something that’s a little knock at your door that says oh you’re insecure you’re insecure when you’re like hey you know what I don’t know how to do this can you can you give me a hand with this or hey I’m stuck on this problem here can you can you give me help with this because I don’t know how to do it people don’t say oh this guy’s an idiot unless you’re doing it every three sentences because that means you haven’t studied Yeah Yeah Cuz you got to study You got to know your trade You got to know your craft And if you don’t you got to learn it You know you got to break out the books and get on it But once you’ve broken out the books and now there’s a little bit of stuff that you still don’t understand Well guess what? Just ask the question Yeah Cuz your frontline troopers are going to know more than you They should know more than you Yeah You know this It’s highly likely that they don’t know more than you I mean I was a radio man for eight years in the SEAL teams And by the time I was a lieutenant commander in a troop I didn’t know as much as those you know guys knew about all the new radios and stuff So I just had to ask a question It’s no big deal Yeah If you’re secure in your leadership you’re you’re fine to ask a couple questions It’s not that big of a deal Yeah But you are not clear to lie to people You’re not clear to make excuses And that’s what that’s how you regain the trust is by telling people the truth It’s really a simple concept Yeah Next question In regards to working out right and training for um you know selection And by selection you mean special forces or ranger or SEAL selection That’s what they’re talking about here Yeah So Jaco what do you think of rucking as fitness versus just train up? So for for people that don’t know what rucking is rucking is putting a backpack on a rucks sack with a bunch of weight in it and walking long distances And and to be honest with you you really are jogging You know you’re really going at a pretty good pace when you’re doing it And that’s it as far as rucking goes That’s what rocking is because because in the military they can bring the pain with ruck m marches Forced road marches is what they’re called Yeah You’ll be rucking all up in the you you’ll be rocking till you don’t want to be rocking anymore And uh and so you know you’ll do 20 mile force road march which is just you’re on the road with a 50 lb pack just marching you know and uh so the thing is like anything else if you want to get good at it you got to do it right So if you want to get good at People ask me how do you get get pull-ups? You know how do you get good at pull-ups? I’m like do pull-ups How do you get good at running? run How do you get at swimming? Swim Mhm Oh you want to know how to get good at jiu-jitsu? Do jiu-jitsu you know get on the mat and do jiu-jitsu a bunch Yep Uh and if you want to get good at rucking at humping a rock at carrying weight over long distances ruck Because there’s all kinds of little things got to get used to Your feet got to get prepared You’re going to get weird muscles Your back’s got to get stronger You’re going to get you know calluses all over your feet It takes a special type of fitness regimen to get used to and ready for long ruck marches And that special fitness regimen is rucking and lots of it So uh if you want to eventually you can augment that you know you can start doing squats you can start doing sprints and that’ll help you You know that’s fine But the foundation of the preparation for ruck humping should be ruck humping And that’s what’s going to make you good at it So did you do that? I did I did And rucking for me actually oddly enough is something that I was I was good at No And it’s weird because I wasn’t the fastest sprinter and I wasn’t the best long distance runner which what does that make you? makes you a loser right? You can’t win a sprint and you can’t run a long distance run What’s wrong with you? Yeah You’re kind of in the middle though I was in the middle And what I realized was that was good for carrying a rucks sack Yeah And I I got used to it too because I was a radioman So you always had I always had to carry a freaking radio you know 30 lb radio with water and batteries and you’re just it’s always heavy You’re just sucking it up And so I got used to it I suppose it was that more than anything else You’re like um you ever seen the movie Tremors? No I seen the movie Tremors Well there was a time at the end they were like “Man we need to we need to go to those mountains for those you know to to avoid the underground worms ” And they were like “Hey we could take the cat ” And he’s like “Hey it’s it’s slow ” You know a cat is a big you know the bobcat You know I actually know what a bobcat is I’m not sure I know what underground worms are That’s some something completely different but they’re bad So they took the cat and the guy the guy was like “No we can’t take the cat It’s slower than L ” And he’s like “It doesn’t uh it can carry a ton though You know it was it was like you you’re like the cat ” So they hooked up this big trailer which is the rock in your ch and you know and they and they drove everybody um you know to the mountains What were they planning to do? Walk? No they were trapped on on roofs on a rooftop And they’re like “We’re all going to starve up here We got to make it to the mountains It’s like nine miles ” Okay They’re like “How are we going to get there? We can’t you know we can’t run They’re going to get us We can’t you know so they’ll say “We’ll get the cat ” Got it And they were like “Oh it’s too slow ” But they’re like “Yeah but it can carry this big trailer ” Yeah You know and I used to say that in the SEAL teams and I I don’t know My opinion was it was better to be built like a 4×4 than like a Porsche Yeah I mean it was better to be just because you got to carry weight around You got to be durable you know What would you rather have working on a farm? a Ford F350 or a Porsche Yeah I mean a Porsche is cool for the track when everything’s all lined up and dialed the way it’s supposed to be but you get any kind of terrain going on you want that 4×4 and you want it bad And so that’s why you know the seals the seals guys that were kind of more a 4×4 than a Porsche Yeah Yeah Would be better in the field in the real SEAL situations Yeah You know the re the actual because the the thing about that’s that’s it’s a a misconception about the SEAL teams is you know you see guys running on the beach and you see guys swimming in the ocean and they never are carrying anything And that’s just complete lie because every time you do anything in the SEAL teams you’re carrying a ton of weight with you Yeah And so you got to be built like a 4×4 and not like a Porsche Yeah Yeah Makes sense So yeah you’d way rather someone like you than some sprinter who can run like a 4240 but then you put some you know something on his back A sprinter is actually you know what you you just want somebody that’s durable Yeah Durable is the word Yeah And if they’re a great athlete and they can have an awesome 40 time or they can run a marathon but they’re just durable it’s awesome Yeah Okay I’m not trying to put parameters around the guys Sure because there’s guys there was a guy when I was at team two and he was a guy I actually went through buds with and he was he’s he’s kind of a short guy and he was kind of had a odd body shape odd and so he kind of looked he kind of had almost like a little pudgy belly and uh he just was one of those guys and the funny thing is He could run faster than me and he could bench more than me Yeah no kidding It was awesome I love that Yeah he’s an awesome guy Awesome guy I said you know that’s cool People say that about him cuz he’s a little bit short and a little bit pouty looking I’m like he can he can actually bench more than me and he can run faster than me He can beat me in all the runs So let’s just be quiet here Yeah Yeah All right Next question Jako do you think that the military Army Navy Air Force is a young man’s game? Because he this this guy is 29 years old and he’s about to join up He’s about to get it on Yeah man That’s awesome Uh two answers to that question And as usual with answers from me the dichotomy Unfortunately there’s a dichotomy and they oppose each other Uh first of all yes And anybody that says it’s not a young man’s game is not telling the truth because it’s a game where you’re going to be on travel You’re going to be gone You’re going to be risking your lives at times You’re going to have to put up with a lack of comfort in your world You’re going to be living in barracks You’re going be I mean it’s just going to be it’s not it’s not creature comforts right? It’s the military It’s a semi-partan environment Mhm It’s not the forgotten Highlander for the love of God but it’s but it’s definitely more Spartan than what the average person has in regular life Mhm So to anybody to say it’s not a young man’s game is is not telling the truth because it absolutely is And for me you know I joined when I was a kid when I was 18 years old and it was awesome I had no attachments in life Like I went to the MEP station with nothing That’s the That’s the recruiting station where you actually go and I forget what it stands for but it’s where you actually leave for the military And I had no I had nothing there Oh do you need to store anything? No What’s your You know where are you going to send your mail? I don’t get mail No mail There’s no mail that’s sent to me I’m a blank slate And that’s awesome You don’t think about family You don’t think about anything You just get in there and you get your job done And if they say “Hey we’re going to deploy you tomorrow for the next eight years ” You say “Cool Let’s do it Yeah let’s bring it And you have a obedient nature because you don’t know any better You know you join the military and you’re you’re stoked You’re getting a paycheck all of a sudden You know you got a three hots and a cot It’s all good You know whereas when you’re you know when you’re 17 years old and you’re not quite putting things together yet Yeah man All of a sudden like I said you got a paycheck you got three hots in a cot you’re ready to rock and roll They tell you what to do you do it That’s good So yeah it’s a young man’s game Now that being said of course there’s a dichotomy to that and that is that the military is always in need of guys that are mature and smart and have experience in life right? That you need to have people like that Now you get them eventually through the military but it’s also good to have people that weren’t raised in the military environment so they can always have a little bit of an outer view and you can learn a little bit from them But what you have to get over is all those things that the young guy can eat for breakfast right? You know if you’re 29 years old there’s a decent chance you’ve had a pretty nice apartment somewhere There’s a decent chance you slept in until you know 9:45 on the weekends there’s a decent chance that you stayed out until two o’clock in the morning and partied and you know brought a girl back and you slept in until 9 and you might be doing that on the regular You know what I mean? You you got some clothes You’re watching cable TV You got all these things right? And then the other the other part of that is you might have a family You know you might have a wife You might have kids at 29 years old Yeah You might be established You might have people relying on you not just financially but emotionally Yeah Just to be there So how are you going to cut all that away? That’s the challenge for the older guy Now some older guys that are 29 years old they don’t have any of that yet If if so best case scenario you got both Now I’m not telling the 18-year-olds to hold off on on enlisting in the military Don’t hold off Just get it done Get it done and you won’t regret it unless you’re unless you screw up and bring it upon yourself But if you are 29 and you can either overcome those obstacles of the things that are going to the things that are going to things that are going to tear at you emotionally right? They’re going to tear at you emotionally Now what’s cool is when you’re in the military and you’re raised in the military you are raised in such a way that those those distractions are easily overcome right? You learn how to you learn how to compartmentalize those things At least I did to say you know what? Hey I understand it’s nice to stay home and sleep in on the weekend but I’m not going to do it Right Right It’s nice to be able to hang out with your wife and kids but it doesn’t matter to me compared to my job That’s what you end up like which is slightly psychopathic but it’s where you end up right? It’s where it’s where I end up you know it’s where I ended up was you know nothing else matters besides the SEAL teams And I don’t care about anything else So if you want to be in my life cool You just got to do it around these giant parameters that’s called the SEAL teams Deal with it Yeah So join up my brother at 29 years old Go and get after it Do that BTF Next question Joo when do you cut your losses or give up on something and walk? When and how to decide to cut bait? Not a quitter Too much brain damage brain damage It’s a word I’ve been hearing more from the corporate world actually is people talk about when something’s really hard to do and they’re just causing brain damage by trying to do it Uh and these was actually two questions That’s obviously a metaphor obviously Yeah Yeah It’s a it’s a metaphor for and it’s a metaphor for what I talk about when I was like beating my head against the wall to try and get something done Okay And this is one of those things that confuses people because everyone hears including us in the SEAL teams we hear the mantra of never quit right? Never quit And it’s not just a mantra that we say it’s actually it’s actually what we believe Yeah And furthermore it’s not just what we say And it’s not just what we believe But it’s literally how we act Yeah So that that drive and that attitude of never quit it’s a powerful force and it does push you over the edge to victory to victory in many cases But and there’s always a dichotomy to just about everything There’s a dichotomy to this too because over that attitude you have to layer something on top of that and that is is basically strategic vision and understanding of the battlefield as a whole So you know it’s like the the the saying of win the battle lose the war This is the opposite right? Win the battle lose the war Meaning oh you you stick to it right now and you might win right now but in the long run you’re going to lose This is the opposite where you you’re going to say you know what I’m going to lose this battle right now Yeah But I’m going to win the war in the long run So you absolutely need to know when you got to stop beating your head against the wall You’ve got to know that I personally draw my limit at 27 times after I’ve beating my head against the wall 27 times On the 28th time I’m going to say you know what? I bet there’s another way to do this or maybe this isn’t a battle worth fighting Now the main reason I think why people get caught in the trap of banging their head against the wall or not knowing when to quit is because and again quit is a strong word and it’s almost hard for me to say right now because it’s not knowing when to quit I’m not talking about quitting I’m talking about give up Yeah You know I’m talking about making a strategic assessment of an unwininnable situation and deciding to disengage only so you can re-engage with superior firepower and crush the enemy Yeah that sounds so there’s a big difference between that and quitting Quitting means you curl up into a ball and wait to die That’s what quitting is And uh I don’t support that under any circumstances So when do you when does it happen where it happens because people get emotional They get too emotional about whatever is obstacles in front of them They get crazy about it and they start seeing the obstacle as not only the battle but also as the war and they get lost in their own determination And I’ve seen this with some SEAL buddies of mine They’re so determined that they they will not stop even when it’s completely detrimental you know and and they do it with just about everything you know they’ll be determined at anything you know they’ll be hurting themselves training they’ll be you know determined to drink harder than anybody else They’ll I mean just anything you can throw at them and they’re determined to win at that and you’re actually losing Yeah Yeah Um so so how do you prevent that from happening is you have to again common theme here you have to detach You have to detach yourself You have to be able to step back away from the problem enough to look at it from a strategic viewpoint and say okay what’s what’s going on here? What’s the risk? What’s the reward? How much am I willing to sacrifice right now? And how is that sacrifice going to impact me tomorrow or the next day or next week? Yeah And then once you’ve detached and you’ve weighed and you’ve seen what the real value of the this immediate objective is then you can assess and make a logical decision based not on your emotion but on the actual impact of the situation in the overall strategic picture Yeah that um how you were saying when you weigh the the the detriments and the and the the rewards and I think that that really makes it real clear when you can assess and be like “Oh all of this we’re getting all this like all these this detrimental stuff when we’re trying to get this you know this one right benefit you know out of this person or out of this situation or whatever And when you’re you’re using up your resources or sacrificing more resources than you are gaining ground then you know that that seems like a clear time to at the very least start thinking about uh disengaging And you got to you got to detach to be able to notice that And I noticed this in jiu-jitsu all the time People try and pass the passing guard is the simplest example People just like do one guard pass and it doesn’t work and they do it again and it doesn’t work and they do it again It doesn’t work They do it again and they go on and on and on until they’re exhausted They get swept They get mounted and then they get put to tap and it’s because they were stubborn and they didn’t detach and say I mean after you’ve tried to pass a guy’s guard 14 times in a row the same way and it hasn’t worked Why is it going to work the 15th time? The answer is it’s not try something else You know I’m actually trying to think of a solid solid answer to that There is no solid answer And it’s the same thing I used to see this put and seals through training they’d get like bogged down in a bad situation and they would um they would they would just be start get focused on that one problem you know one room in a building They’d be like “No send more guys into it Send more guys into it “ Everyone’s just getting sprayed with paintball and put down in the training operation and no two more guys And eventually everyone’s just you know it’s training but everyone’s dead and they’re like I don’t know what happened You you just didn’t they got focused on it and it cost them So the leader’s got to be able to step back and detach and take a look at the situation and decide you know what I’m going to go ahead and uh change course right now Not going to quit but I’m going to adjust make a strategic adjustment Yeah And and that’s it’s weird how those semantics can really change your outlook on the whole task when you when you use the word quit versus disengage Or another one with quit like I said is is give up You know give it up I mean unless it’s something negative like smoking or something like that You quit smoking or I’m going to give up smoking That’s good But obviously smoking is negative But any kind of task or anything that requires effort if you quit or quote unquote give up it’s like it’s hard to have that sound like a good thing you know? Yeah And one thing that’s this is you know obviously it applies to combat It applies to jiu-jitsu as we just talked about but also you know you look at what you’re doing daytoday and the little things in your life that you’re trying to make work or in a business that you’re trying to make something happen And sometimes people get so addicted to their plan Yeah They get so their ego is wrapped around their plan Their plan is like 50% 50% tactics and technique and it’s 50% their own ego And so when you try when that person’s plan starts to fail guess what? They don’t want to let it go because it’s all wrapped up in their ego So they just push it further They push it further They push it further And especially if that person’s in a senior position Well then everyone’s kind of just falling in line and they’re looking at them They all know They all know when they’re at the bottom of the chain of command they’re all looking at this person saying “Hey buddy it’s not working ” Yeah Let’s disengage Yeah And fall back and figure out a new plan of attack and then let’s reapproach the target from a different angle Let’s flank this target So if you’re in a business if you’re in a relationship relationship yeah and you’ve got a situation where you’re trying to make something work a certain way and it’s not maybe it’s you got to disengage and you got to come with a different angle of attack so that you can get the big win in the long run Yeah And with relationships obviously it’s it’s it’s the same dynamic but it’s different because um well it’s the same because when you’re in a let’s say a boyfriend girlfriend relationship whatever even husband wife um you let’s say it’s not working Let’s say one of them’s abusive right? Meanwhile the other one’s trying to quote unquote make it work And if they end up leaving oh you gave up on him you know he you or you quit No I don’t think you’d ever say you’d quit the relationship but we’ll just say you gave up on the relationship right? You know well he’s been abusing her for 10 years already you know or in your case 27 years or you know whatever the number is And um and you got to I do not abuse my wife Right Right But you know as far as your numbers go 27 Um but again like if you say “Oh you gave up on the relationship ” It’s kind of like it’s kind of like it’s the girl’s fault a little bit like maybe she she she shouldn’t have done that almost you know but um yeah you disengage and if you want to if you want to go for the win in that relationship and if you really want to maintain the relationship don’t let it be a husband wife relationship maybe go back to being neighbors or something like that even though in an abusive relationship that might not work but I’m just saying theoretically Yeah I’m not sure about all that I’m sure man I’m sure Uh but I do know that if you find yourself trying repeatedly to make something happen and it’s not happening try a different route Don’t consider yourself a quitter Consider yourself a tact strategist or a tactician Good Next question Jako in a fight MMA or otherwise would you substitute anger or rage for aggression? Would I substitute anger or rage for aggression? This isn’t a fight MMA or otherwise That’s important actually Yeah So wait So just to clarify this means like instead of aggression is it okay to use anger or rage? Yeah Yeah Okay Well I think pretty obviously and people would expect the answer to be from me The initial answer here is no And I would not substitute anger or rage for aggressiveness Uh I think obviously when you let rage take over you you’re not thinking anymore Yeah And the mind is allegedly the most important weapon And I actually believe that to be true So if you let your rage and anger take over you’re not using your mind And that’s not good And you actually get to see this in MMA on a fairly regular basis because you’ll get somebody that is really good at talking smack Yeah And they’ll get into the other person’s head What does it mean to get in the other person’s head? What does it do to them? Does it make them sad? No Does it make them not hate the opponent? No What does it do to them? It makes them angry Yeah It makes them frustrated And that anger leads to frustration which leads to defeat So and again I think it’s important to recognize that this doesn’t just occur in MMA It occurs in everyday life And a good example is when you get in a conversation with somebody you get in a debate with somebody You get in an argument with somebody Mhm The minute you get frustrated or angry or enraged you just lost the argument Yeah Right I mean you might you might feel like you won right? But you will not win the argument You you lost the argument Y the minute that that happens Yeah In any Yeah Especially if it’s in a debate man because it’s it’s an understood You’re debating you’re kind of against each other and then it’s you just went off the rails basically right? Yeah it’s not good to lose your temper in a debate in a conversation or in an MMA match It’s like if you were playing chess We were playing chess and I was talking smack to you You got frustrated and you flipped over the chess board Yeah You win actually with a with a um you know a display of monumental power or whatever whatever that was Yeah Rage actually Rage Yes Um yeah you you lost in a way Yeah Yo you absolutely lose Um so I you know I talk about this all the time is that the rule is you never let your emotion get in control So you don’t let anger or rage overwhelm your little brain Now here’s the here’s the other side of that coin Here’s the dichotomy And I don’t think you can even argue against this because it’s that’s a pretty sound argument right? I mean what we just said I mean we’ve seen it We know we know for a fact but rules are made to be broken Um there are times when emotion can increase performance Yeah Right There absolutely are And I remember when I was a kid growing up the the Soviet Union was still just hardcore communist And when I would watch like the Olympics they would be like machines the Soviets with no emotions And I thought man those guys are badass I wanted to be like that And it often brought him victories But I heard a quote when I was a kid and I I actually looked for it cuz I wanted to bring it up but I couldn’t find it But it was something along the lines of this And that was that Soviet the Soviet athletes perform better in practice but the Americans perform better in the stadium H So the Americans and that’s not a universal statement and there’s plenty of examples of the Russians beating Americans and whatever but there’s also examples of where the Americans with their emotion and their fire were able to beat these Russians And I mean the greatest example would be the miracle of ice on ice in in Lake Placid New York in 1980 which is you know that was a bunch of college kids that were fired up to beat the hardened Russian professional hockey team Yeah And and it’s because you know they kind of trained their emotions out of it And there’s a great time to have your emotions trained out of it You know there’s a great time where you’re like you know what? I’m not going to let my emotions play into this I heard uh I heard something about Tiger Woods and his golf game and he’s not thinking about you know the the broad statement is when he’s hitting a shot in golf he’s not thinking about the last shot and he’s not thinking about the next shot He’s just thinking about that shot right there So there’s no emotional of whether he’s ahead or behind or nothing else It just he just is there on that one shot So I think that you know we I think that people I mean Americans is the example I used but I think that people in general can use your emotion to to your advantage sometimes but it does take control and it takes direction and also I think it’s important to remember that it doesn’t take long for that extra fire of anger to go from making you stronger and faster to making you slower and weaker both mentally and physically So you can get that burst Mhm And you know you see this in fighting all the time where people punch themselves out You know they go they go level seven rage and they start swinging for the fence Excitement even Yeah Or excitement They think the guy they think they got the guy in the in the hurt locker They come they bring the thunder for they get they get emotional Yep And I think on the mat when you get a guy that loses his temper when when somebody loses their temper with me on the mat it’s just a matter of time Like I just go “Okay cool He’s got you know he’s got three minutes left because he’s going to be done ” So I I Yeah you’ve got to stay calm Now a couple situations that I’ve seen or been a participant in uh and I’m pretty sure I was trying to remember this for sure but I was cornering Jeremy Stevens Mhm And if you don’t know who Jeremy Stevens is little heathen MMA awesome guy stud fighter and we were training him at the time and he was fighting I I’m pretty sure it was against Marcus Davis who’s a wellrespected boxer really good MMA fighter as well but definitely known for his boxing Well Jeremy’s known for his striking as well He’s a very powerful striker and he’s got unbelievable one punch knockout uh power Jeremy does So I was cornering Jeremy and it was a really really close fight I mean it was a I didn’t know if he was winning or losing I think it was leaning towards Marcus actually And there’s three rounds in MMA in this in this fight And in between the second and the third round I got in the ring got in the cage with Jeremy and I I did the fullon you know in his face and I you know I gave him the “Hey listen This is what’s going on This guy across the ring from you is taking money off your kids’ table He’s taking food off your kids table He’s going to take your the roof off their heads He’s taken everything that you’ve worked for He’s going to take it from you right now You got to get pissed You got to go in there You got to destroy him And I got you know I got gave a fired up speech like that And you could see it switch in his eyes He realized like he went into a rage of I need to kill this guy Yeah And he came out that round and knocked him out Yeah Remember that? And that’s one I’ll tell you another one I saw that was it was the same So it was it was Carlos Condit versus Rory McDonald And this was this was the first time they fought I’m pretty sure it was in Canada I was there I forget who I was cornering but I was there And I was done with cornering whoever I was cornering And I want to say it was Peterson Bod I was cornering I think it was up in Canada But um so Carlos Condit versus Rory McDonald and Carlos who’s the veteran is going up the against the kid You know Rory McDonald was an kind of an he was an unknown but he was definitely the younger I think he was 20 years old You know just a kid No offense Rory but he was young You know what I mean? Badass but young And Carlos was the vet You know what I He was a veteran grown man with a wife and kids And man Rory was getting the better of it It was in front of Rory’s hometown Well I don’t know if it’s his hometown but it was in Canada And so the crowd was absolutely supporting Rory At least I’m pretty sure I remember this right I’m sorry if I don’t but it seemed like the crowd was on the side of Rory McDonald So in between so I’m just watching the fight but I had snaked some really good seats so I had a really good view By the way when I go to UFC thanks Dana White and the rest of the crew like I sneak into some awesome seats after I get done cornering people So thank you So I was sitting you know in the second row or some phenomenal seat that I’d snuck into And because they throw you in the cheap seats when you’re when you’re cornering people and you come out to watch the fights and and yeah you’re up in the nose bleeds which isn’t isn’t cool So I just get aggressive and tactically move to better positions which is usually the second row right behind the press box Sure So I’m sitting down there and I’m watching the fight and Greg Jackson is cornering Carlos Cond Now if you don’t know anything about Greg Jackson he’s he’s a pretty zen-like guy And I’ve actually uh going back in the day going way back in the day when Dean and I were competing all the time in the kind of the SoCal scene of grappling Mhm We would we’d do every competition there was We’d be competing all the time grappling I I don’t even remember There were there were so many of them that we’d do and and uh Greg Jackson would bring guys out to to fight to compete And so like we wrestled against these guys you know or we did submission grappling against these guys So I kind of knew him from that And then surprisingly one time when the UFC was in San Diego I was at work at the SEAL teams and someone called and said “Hey there’s a there’s a guy from the UFC here Do you want to give him a tour of you know he wants to tour the UFC set up a tour of the SEAL teams? They want to show him around ” Like the facilities the facilities you know the whatever Show them some guns you know just the gear whatever So I show up and it’s Greg Jackson and you know we kind of had a little bit of a recognition but uh anyways Greg Jackson and you know you kind of hear this stuff about Greg Jackson all the time that he’s this really nice guy and that he’s super mellow and that he’s really humble Well it’s all freaking true He’s a super nice guy He’s super humble He’s just a fantastic guy And uh I gave him a tour and so we kind of got to know each other And then you know going fast forward now in the UFC I I’ve I’ve cornered him several times I don’t know how many times I’ve cornered against him you know like my fighters are fighting his fighters Uh and you know like I said he’s a really like a really mellow and a zen-like guy If you watch him in the corners of his fights he’s always like that Just very steady and hey this is what you need to do You need to watch out for this or whatever Mhm So I’m watching this fight and like I said Carlos Condid versus Rory McDonald Carlos is not winning right? He’s not winning And in between uh the second and the third round Greg Jackson goes full berserker mode on Condan I mean he is yelling at him He is in his face He’s pointing at him He’s waving his finger He’s just going nuts on him And I was like damn Greg Jackson is bringing the heat And sure enough he amped up Carlos Kick Carlos KIC came out and finished Rory in the third which of a fight he was definitely going to lose So what you see there is emotion helping to win in that situation Yeah And uh actually be when the fight was over I saw Greg and I just kind of said something to him you know like “Hey dude you went full berserker mode on on Carlos ” And he said “Yeah he’s I had to do it ” And it’s funny It’s you could see it It almost seemed like he’d never done it before I don’t know Maybe we’ll have to have Greg on at some point He can tell the story but he was said something along the lines of you know I I had to do it and and and it worked you know he had a big smile and and that was working it and it definitely indeed it did work Yeah And those would you do you think I mean this total guess but do you think that’s because those just happen to be the exceptions or is it cuz really the formula kind of seems like here’s the emotion and then here’s all the logic and the skill and the planning implementation of of you know game plans and all the all this stuff that you’re going to use in your in your mind and here’s the emotion It’s like it’s like a little spark plug or something And then um sure the emotion can go up but the skill got to go up proportionately And once you start to do this when the emotion takes over that’s when you know when you’re going to fail or or take advantage don’t think there’s a sweet spot in there where for moments in time emotion and even borderlining on rage which I think rage is a little bit strong cuz I think rage you lose your clarity but anger which is you can still have some clarity of what you’re doing right so if I I think you can actually that can be utilized appropriately at the right times and I think these times you know like I talked about with Jeremy you know I had to provoke provoke some anger out of him Yeah You know I had to provoke and it absolutely helped him He was going to lose that fight And it’s the same thing with Carlos Carlos was absolutely going to lose that fight if he didn’t do something different If he didn’t you know it’s like it’s like hitting a turbo button It’s like hitting a nitrous oxide right? It’s not It’s like hitting the blow the nitrous oxide blower It’s only going to get you It’s only going to make you go hard for another Yeah What is it? another two minutes or well without nitrous oxide it’s not very long at all but yeah but with but with anger you know it can make you go for another you know whatever maybe it’s maybe it’s 2 minutes and this is something else have you ever missed like a heavy signal like like okay you’re lifting you’re deadlifting or you’re doing power cleans or something and you miss a heavy signal no I never have you I’ve heard I’ve heard so so this is another easy way to prove M man I miss a heavy signal sometimes And sometimes I just get angry Yeah it’s true And I just have to bring the anger and I start getting fired up and I start thinking about things that make me angry Yeah And I get over that bar and I rip that thing off the floor like I hate it Yes And it absolutely makes me stronger in that moment So is that that’s probably adrenaline And that’s probably the same thing that pumped into Marcus’ or or into Jeremy’s head It’s probably the same thing that part pumped into Carlos’s head But it’s crazy because despite getting punched despite getting beaten despite having someone you know trying to destroy you in front of a large crowd of people none of that was able to spark the was able to spark the adrenaline as much as some kind of a a tap into the emotional portion of your mind to bring out just enough rage to get out there and get that job done once and for all Yeah And Yeah And that’s really the key there just enough rage especially when you’re talking about um something that requires technique When you say lifting your your like power clean for example and um I remember it was in in college and I was going for my one rep max and yeah you fail a couple times but for the sake of saving time and stuff you can they only give you three times Well in my case they they were like you have to get it three times Um so the first time I’d gotten all of them I was I was pretty solid at power cleans at that time So I was getting all of them And then I got to that point Um and I didn’t get it It was 300 It was 300 I weighed 185 at the time Uh it 298 Are you looking for props right there? Yeah Yeah Okay Props to Echo everybody Props to Echo Remember what he was talking earlier about when you name drop and stuff? There you go There you have it That’s what it sounds like I did No I did that on purpose I did that on purpose because if I if I were to go out of my way to leave out that number True True You know you wanted to know You wanted to know how much I was doing I knew you were gonna say it It didn’t matter if I wanted No you wanted to know bro Anyway doesn’t matter Nonetheless the first time I failed and everyone’s like “No you got this You got this ” And I had had this guy named Ron Wood was his name Uh real blonde hair Like he was like he’s this tough guy could hit real hard and he would he would always get nuts and he’d be like “You got this You didn’t you know you’re this and that ” You know making me mad or whatever And I didn’t outwardly express any kind of anger but I felt that anger And power clean takes technique That’s the thing It’s not like it’s just um you know like I don’t know like a even bench has some technique but deadlift is is I mean everything has technique but power clean takes a little bit more technique than other lifts Yes Yeah So it was just the perfect amount of rage you know and that’s going to depend on what kind of person you are like Jeremy Stevens you could tell just even the way he trains he uses some rage in there in there you know as opposed to Rory McDonald for example seemingly I don’t know I don’t watch him train all the time or nothing but it seems like he’s super methodical you know and rage or anger or whatever isn’t as much of a part as someone like um fight with uh with uh Robbie Lawler Yeah Oh my god we’re all Yeah What a what a just a Yeah man Yeah Rory’s nuts man He’s the way they train up there at Tristar I I spent like the the the weekend or it was like half a week or whatever with them with Frazz and um and Rory and it’s he Frazz has this head You know how guys will hold mits? I’m sure they hold mits and stuff but he has this head that you hit the head instead of the mits I was like well it seems like oh that’s not that like it seems kind of obvious I never seen no one do that And it made way more sense because I’ve hit mits before and then when you go to spar it’s like it’s kind of weird You got to get used to the difference between hitting mits and hitting someone’s head So I thought man that’s [ __ ] clever man These guys are these guys are smart up here in Yeah Respect to those I mean I respect all the guys that get in the get in the UFC and fight Man it’s awesome to watch And that that Lawler uh McDonald fight was just uh was just insane It was insane You should watch that fight if you haven’t Anyone that hasn’t watched that fight go watch that fight If you want to see a couple warriors just bringing the bringing it all and leaving it all right there in the cage go watch that fight Uh so did you get the power clean? I got the power clean Yes Yes And then here’s the thing about that power clean is so you I Yeah I got it right And so you go up and you’re like “All right you got it ” You go up in weight The next one was like 303 like super small weights you know cuz you want to get Yeah Yeah Just so you can get the 303 Not even close Everything was spent on that The We missed that one didn’t we? Yeah Big 10 Was that the alltime life life? Uh no I just disengaged That’s all that I just disengaged I see where it’s at You can be good with that All right I feel like we should go on to the next question I think we got time for about one more What do you think? I think so Yeah Okay Joo is the ability to switch on and off a personal feature or is it a trained skill? Is this confused with the term beast mode? What causes that switch to flip? the overdrive the beast mode the fullon destroyer that will not stop I think it’s actually this is it is something that’s learned I think and I think it’s a hard lesson I don’t think everyone gets it I think some people go through life without ever getting it And I’ll tell you it’s it’s an important lesson It’s a it’s a critical lesson It’s a thing that allows you to go the extra distance to dig just a little bit deeper and push a little harder to get after it And like many other things in life there’s a dichotomy because it actually takes in my opinion two opposing forces to bring it to life It takes both emotion and logic for you to reach your m maximum potential to to really give everything you have and go beyond your limits Because both emotion and logic they’re going to reach their limitations And when one fails you need to rely on the other one So when it doesn’t make sense logical sense to go on that’s when you got to use your emotion That’s when you got to use that anger that frustration that fear to push yourself harder to push yourself to say “I don’t stop And when your feelings are screaming that you’ve had enough and when you think you’re going to break emotionally you got to override that emotion with the concrete logic and willpower that says you know what I don’t stop So you you fight the weak emotions with the power of logic and you fight the weakness of logic with the power of emotions And in the balance of those two that’s where you find the strength and the tenacity and the the guts to say to yourself I don’t stop and you won’t And I think that’s about it for tonight So thanks to everyone for tuning in and listening to us If you want to continue these conversations you want to join in these conversations you can connect with us through the interwebs On Twitter I’m Jaco Willink and of course Echo Charles is echo Charles Thanks for leaving reviews of the podcast on iTunes and of the book on Amazon And most of all to everyone that’s out there tuning in listening you got your headset on you’re getting in the zone Thank you for getting after it And so until next time this is Joo and Ekko out