Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show your home for open, honest and provocative conversations. Hey, everybody, it's Megan Kelly. Welcome to the program. Today, we've got Chocho Willink.

This is a U.S. Navy SEAL, a best selling author, the CEO of a group called Echelon Front, which is a leadership expert, consulting firm and host of the jako Willink podcast, which if you haven't checked out, you should.

This guy is basically an all around guru for how to improve your life.

He's the opposite of the helicopter parent. He's the opposite of the person who feels victimized by everything in life. He's the opposite of the person who wants to blame everyone else for their own circumstances. He is a take responsibility kind of seal.

Is there any other kind? And if you don't know who this is, he was the commanding officer of the most highly decorated special ops unit of the Iraq war. He commanded our best and brightest, including the American Sniper, Chris Kyle. You remember him and many, many others. The guys had multiple deploy deployments to Iraq and other areas as well, including to Ramadi during the worst of the fighting that the U.S. saw there came back from Iraq.

He served as the officer in charge of training for all of the West Coast SEAL teams. Right. So the guy knows something about training, leadership, how to take charge. And he's received everything from the Silver Star on the Bronze Star, which is amazing to numerous other personal and team awards. And today, he is a leadership expert. He's a motivational speaker. He's a mentor. He's an author. He's a dad. He's a husband. I'm going to ask him about that.

What was it like when his daughter's boyfriend came over to the house?

Can you imagine the boss of the American Sniper?

I mean, he's got some really funny parenting stories that I think you'll appreciate and also just some heart wrenching ones about his time in Ramadi and the losses that we suffered as a country there, but that he suffered as a man and a seal there.

And I think you'll find him just an example in how to live, how to live, right. How to live well.

And you'll figure out why he's known to his brethren as the wise warrior. We'll get to Jack in just one second. But first. Let's face it, insurance is a hassle, shopping for insurance. Who the heck wants to do that? No one wants to do that. That's why the zebra dotcom was born. These folks are going to make insurance feel like it's in black and white. No more confusion, just honest rates from real companies.

The zebra is the nation's leading insurance comparison site for car and home insurance, and they can help you save money today. It's so easy. Just go to the zebra dotcom, answer a few questions to compare accurate insurance quotes for free. The zebra protects your personal information and will make sure there are no hidden fees or surprises along the way. You can secure your insurance from the zebra dotcom or over the phone from one of their licensed insurance agents. How much money can you save on car or home insurance?

Visit the zebra dotcoms. Kelly that's t e zebra dot com. Kelly for insurance in black and white.

Let's get down to brass tacks and talk about how I can be a leader like JoCo Wellink because you got some thoughts and I'm loving every one of them, honestly, after reading through so much of your stuff.

And I've listened to so many of your podcasts now and your interviews with other people because I really wanted to prepare for this. I just deeply respect you. I thought to myself one of the benefits of my own life has been being exposed to a lot of men, in particular in the military, but men and women in the military, because that's what you sound like. Military men and women are no bullshit. They don't see themselves as victims. They're strong.

They lean into strength. They're humble. They want to know more about other people. Like when I heard all these attributes about you and what you say it takes to make a leader, I thought this is what being in the military does to you. So before we get to that, let's start let's talk about little JoCo, because I was curious, like a guy as strong as you are, not not even just your physical strength. I'm talking about your emotional strength.

Are you born like that? Did you come into this world sort of born to be the JoCo you are now, or were you kind of like the little weakling who got pushed around by other kids and then resolved to be different?

Well, that's kind of a cool thing about when you're little is when you're a little kid. There's always going to be kids that are bigger than you. If they're two years older than you, they're bigger than you and they're stronger than you. And so if you're a kid, you're always going to get you're always going to be picked on by people no matter who you are. So I think that's going to come to everybody. And certainly that was that was me, too.

I would get I would talk too much or say something that I should have said something to somebody that was older than me or bigger than me. And I'd have to pay the price just like anybody else does at that young age. And but ever since I was a little kid, the only thing I actually ever remember wanting to do as far as a profession was, was to be some kind of a commando. And so that's what I ended up doing.

You know, I ran around in the woods and played army all the time when I was a kid, and then I just never grew up.

But yeah, that's all I ever wanted to do to you from Litchfield County, Connecticut, is that right? Yeah. OK, so this is so for the listeners who don't know this, this is like one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

It's bucolic, it's a little sleepy. It's much more country than it is city. And it's where all of New York would love to go and spend their weekends. But it's too expensive. But it's amazing.

And I wonder, like, I can picture you running around the woods up there, but politically, it's about it's a little bit more Republican leaning these days than it then I think it used to be. But where were you part of a political family growing up? You know, both my parents were schoolteachers.

And so, you know, they were just kind of working all the time. And my dad would have some other jobs to help bring in money. And so they're just working all the time. I wouldn't say we were the most political family in the world. You know, my dad's pretty conservative. My mom's a little a little more liberal. And I really didn't care very much and just wanted to go in the military.

Did you have other other people in the military, in your family?

My grandfather was in the Army for twenty years, and so he retired out of the army. But my dad my dad got kicked out of ROTC. So my dad always says that the military gene skips a generation. So that was my butt in Connecticut. And in that small part of Connecticut, there's not a lot of people that go in the military. So I was a little bit I mean, I was definitely naive, not not very, very well informed about what I was getting into, but I just knew I want to do hopefully carry a machine gun one day.

So that's what I did.

Were you a tough guy in high school? Like, you know, was the was the Jacquot of today predictable at all? Based on if I saw those sophomore year of high school?

You. Yup, you the track is pretty clear. How so. I mean, you just see, I was just I was just kind of into that in that mentality, you know, I got in trouble on my soccer team for singing military cadences while we were running and stuff like that. So that's what I wanted to do. Yeah, pretty ridiculous. I know.

It's it was like in you and you knew it. I mean, is it true that your dad had doubts? Yeah. So I was also I was also a very rebellious kid, so I liked kind of hardcore and heavy metal music. And I had I've always have and still have a rebellious streak in me that runs pretty strong. And so my dad, when I I didn't even tell my dad I was joining the Navy. I just came home one day and said I joined the Navy.

And he said, what you can do in the Navy. And I said, I'm going to go and seal teams. And he said, you're going to hate it. And I said, well, why do you think I'm going to hate it? And he said, Because you don't like authority. You don't like anybody telling you what to do. And I said, Yeah, Dad, I'm going in the SEAL teams. It's a team. There's no bosses in the SEAL teams.

And of course, that's completely naive to think that. But once I got in there, I was very happy because it's a blank slate. No one cared where you came from. No one cared what you did or didn't do. If your parents had money or didn't have money, it's just a it's just a blank slate and if you work hard, you move up and you get recognized and you get more responsibility and with more responsibility, you can do more.

So it was a great environment for me. I loved it.

Total meritocracy, hundred percent. So now I read that your father told you and this would become relevant to your SEAL training.

Of course, you were not allowed to quit anything.

You couldn't quit anything. And I thought nothing like what if what if you selected the wrong arts and crafts course?

How seriously did you guys take that? Yeah, my dad was not a real big fan of creating things, so I think I definitely got ingrained in me as a young kid. And, you know, it's I think it's a pretty good trait to have. And, you know, as I grew up and I actually recognize that if taken to an extreme, just like anything else, it can actually become a negative thing. And I get these young school officers when I much later in my career when I was in charge of training, that I would try and execute some kind of a training mission and they would be failing and getting the guy shot with paintball and failing the mission and having guys put down and they would keep going and keep going and keep going.

And I would pull them aside and say, hey, look, there's a time to retreat. You know, it's not necessarily quitting, but there's a time you got to back off or reassess the situation and then go back at it. But, yeah, I'm not real big into quitting.

And I would say that definitely came from my dad.

Now, is it to the point where if you if you start a book and it's bad, will you keep going? Like just because you need to finish the book or will you abandon it? No.

If books aren't good, I'm not wasting my time with them. So I read a ton of books from my podcast and usually I can make it. I can tell within ten pages if this book is a winner or loser and if it's a loser. I shut that book and I move on to the next one.

Yes, OK, I like that because I know you also are a big believer in not wasting time. It's our most precious commodity. So I'm with you. One hundred percent.

My husband, Doug, he he can't do it. He's an author and he just can like no matter whether he likes the book or not, he will finish it. I point the audience to the book Hirohito, which was like two thousand pages and poor Doug was not enjoying it, but man, he labored through and I just thought, why, but but why? You don't you don't have to. It's like when somebody gives you a bad drink, you don't have to finish that bad meal.

You don't have to eat that. We only get to live once. OK, so you you're in the perfect spot when you find yourself in the Navy at eighteen.

Did you do it like as soon as you could. Yep. Eighteen years old and you knew it was going to be SEAL team.

And forgive me because this I don't know. Do you sign up for SEAL training right away or do you have to spend some time in the Navy before you can try to be a specialist? I signed right up for SEAL training and you've got to pass a bunch of screening tests when you get to boot camp and as you graduate from boot camp. And then but my contract was I got a chance to take those tests. And if I passed those tests, I got to got to go to seal training.

And that's exactly what I did.

Mm hmm. And you you saw it then and you see it now, I imagine, as as an opportunity, a great opportunity for young people.

Yeah.

I mean, it's awesome. It's so fun getting paid to work out a bunch and they feed you a ton of food and you get to go to sleep sometimes in a bed. If I loved it, it was awesome. Well, I thought I mean, like what I've heard you talk about it before.

You just sound so enthusiastic about it. And it made me think of the John Kerry comment. Remember when he once told those college students, if you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

And there was such a shock from the military community when he said that, because when you're in the military or related to it in any way, you do see it. You see it as an honor. And a lot of guys serving to see it as downright fun and just a great way to spend your life. And I don't know I don't remember that comment. You remember having your reaction to that, because that was right around the time you were serving.

Yeah. I mean, look, I would love to have him come and talk to one of my little platoons, bunch of the smartest guy. Look, you got some knuckleheads in there. Absolutely. You got some of the smartest guys that you can imagine as well. I mean, one of the guys that was in Iraq with me on my last deployment was was Johnny Cam, who right now after after he was a medic for us in my task unit, he went on to go to college, become an officer, go to go to medical school at Harvard and then from Harvard, got picked up for the astronaut program.

And he's he's he's an astronaut right now. So maybe maybe he's not quite what John Kerry had in mind when he was thinking that the people in the military in Iraq were not very smart.

So you get to the Navy and to the surprise of your dad, I guess you followed the rules just fine. Actually, it appealed to you, right?

I mean, it seems like in reading like your book Leadership Strategies, you you loved that it was very clear what you needed to do to get to get ahead. And if you could follow the rules, do what you were told to do, you could be a leader in the Navy. And for you, I imagine that just you felt like that was home. Yeah, it was on. And I had a lot of, let's say, energy as young as a young kid and all of a sudden when you're in in high school or grade school, you have all this energy, you don't know what to do with it.

And usually it got me into some kind of trouble whether it was causing problems or fighting or just doing things that I shouldn't be doing. All of a sudden, once I was in the Navy, it's you could apply that energy to a positive to in a positive direction. And I just wanted to do that. And then the other thing was, I really what I wanted to do is I wanted to be a good CEO. I wanted to be a good seal.

And so as I as I kind of brought that into my decision making process and I look we'll look at some decision I had to make. Would that make me a better seal or not? And if it was going to make me a better seal, I wouldn't do it. If it was going to make me a better seal, then I would do it. And it was you know, it's not easy. I'm not the guy you're working with.

Some people in the SEAL teams that are incredibly gifted in all aspects, incredible athletes, incredibly smart, just just a bunch of incredible people at the top end of the bell curve and the SEAL team. So for me, I had to I had to go hard and work hard to sort of to sort of break out and do a good job. And that's what I just that's what I focused on. Hmm. And you said this about yourself repeatedly.

I've now come to conclude at first I thought you're just being humble because you are humble. And I know you praise humility, but I believe you now that you weren't the best at all these things because you've touted it repeatedly as something for people to consider. Like life doesn't come easy, success doesn't come easy, and you may not start off perfectly suited for the thing that you really want to do, but it doesn't mean you can't do it and it doesn't mean you can't be great at it.

But man, it does mean you're going to have to try hard. You're going to have to put in more than the ten thousand hours, right?

I mean, it's about hard work. Yeah, no doubt. And I can promise you, I was average at best high school athlete in soccer and basketball. I can promise you that, you know, I'm not extremely strong or fast or anything like that. And I just had to work hard. So that's what I did. Mm hmm.

You said something to the effect of you loved your job. And if you're in the military, your job is awesome, is quoting you shoot machine guns, you blow things up, you jump out of airplanes. You do have to kill people. So you have to overcome the sort of human ideal of thou shalt not kill. And you also have to understand that people are going to try to kill you and they may succeed.

So talk to me about fear, because I would think that at the beginning and I know it took you 13 years before you actually had to fire your gun and you were deployed over in Iraq.

But it's hard to believe that there isn't that that's all an adrenaline rush and there's no fear.

Well, I guess if you if that's what you really like doing, then it's not then there's not really a lot of fear involved. It's more a lot of fun. And for me, going into combat, the thing that I was afraid of wasn't anything of me being afraid of getting hurt myself. It was always just being afraid that one of my guys was going to get wounded or killed. And that's the that's the feeling that would put the knots in my stomach more than anything else.

But, you know, when you're when you're young, when you're a young kid and they give you the opportunity to jump out of airplanes, it's awesome. It's fun. That's what you want to do. So, yeah, I think I think fear and any fear that I ever had of of getting killed or something like that, I, I just kind of accepted it and moved on. Didn't think too much about it.

Do you remember a time where you felt fearful?

Like I said, the times that I've been fearful normally would be going on an operation and being afraid that one of my guys was going to get hurt or killed, that that to me is a fear that I mean, it's a it's a it's a gut wrenching feeling thinking about that. And it's and it doesn't go away. It's there all the time when when guys are in the field as far as being afraid myself, normally in situations where, you know, oh, we're getting shot at or we're getting mortared or oh, there's a we're in an ambush right now.

We're just kind of reacting the way that you've trained to do. And you're going to execute your you don't have time to think about, I'm afraid, right now, because you're just doing you're just doing the job. And and the other thing is I've talked to on my podcast with some some with a lot of veterans and guys from World War Two that went into Iwo Jima and went into Tarawa. A lot of those guys weren't afraid either, because you get this feeling that it's just it's nothing's going to happen to me.

It's going to happen to somebody else. So you got that going for you as well. And I always had a little bit of that, too, of, hey, I'm going to be OK. And they can't they can't get me. So let's go.

That explains a lot. I mean, you do you see these videos of guys storming the beach at Normandy and you think, oh, my God, like, they don't look terrified.

Yeah. And it'd be perfectly fine if you're sitting there thinking to yourself, well, JoCo is not very smart if he thinks he could do all this stuff and get away with it. And yes, I'll say I'll agree with you with a lot of the military think, you know, I think I think, Maegan, that if I if I'm on an aircraft, like on a on a passenger jet flying over the ocean and that thing blows up in the sky, I think I'm going to live I'm going to figure it out.

So we have that mentality. Well, you're not spending too much time.

Are you afraid to fight? And who knows, maybe you're manifesting wellness and survival. You know, who knows how much we're able to control just with that kind of thinking in terms of our instincts and going left instead of right.

And, you know, I'm sure there have been studies done on this, but I believe in that power to manifest. And whether it works in the military or not, you do it better than I. But what it's better than the alternative of I'm definitely the first victim.

Yeah. You know, I would say this. It's interesting. I don't really know. You know, it sounds a little bit if I manifest that I'm going to survive, I'm going to survive. But so I'm not sure I would agree with that. But what you said that I would agree with is if I'm the I know I know that nine times out of ten, me taking action is going to be better than me not taking action. So if I have that in my mind and I think that way, I guess it does sort of turn into a manifestation.

So I guess I do take it back. And and I do agree with you, if I know that taking action is the right thing to do and it's probably going to make me make my survivability higher, then when I get confronted with something, I'm going to do something immediately. I'm not going to freeze. I'm not going to lock up. I'm going to take action. So maybe that does in a way, that mentality of I'm going to I'm going to go as opposed.

I'm going to sit back. It seems like a better decision as far as I'm concerned. It seems like the military helps you believe now, even if you're not a commander, which I know you were, but that you are in charge of your destiny, that, you know, no one actually is coming to save you necessarily.

You have you have teammates, but you have to do something. You have to act to help yourself. It's it's not up to somebody else. And it's one of the things I think is so good about serving right now, which I didn't. But I know enough guys who did that.

I see it where our mentality right now in this country is, you know, it's somebody else has to fix it. You know, I'm a victim. Somebody else has to fix it. And I've just been crippled by society's unfairness to me.

Well, I mean, I guess we could look around and say that. And I always feel like if I'm sitting around saying that societies all week, well, what am I going to do about it? Like, that's almost a complaint. It's complaining about complainers. I don't even waste my time complaining about complainers, because, as you said, that's that's the way you have to operate in the military, is it? If I don't make something happen right now, it's not going to happen.

And if I sit back and allow the world to happen to me, it's going to happen to me. And the world is a lot bigger and stronger than I am. So I need to go on the offense and and make things happen, like you said. And I would say that definitely gets instilled in you inside the military, or at least it should. And the other the other misconception about the military is that someone's going to tell you exactly what to do.

And the American military doesn't work like that. It's it's decentralized command where you know what the objective is. And you you do whatever it takes and maneuver however you need to maneuver to get to that objective. That's the way good military units operate. There's not someone at the top with with a big plan that they're going to dictate to you. That doesn't happen and it shouldn't happen because that's centralized command and centralized command doesn't doesn't doesn't react quickly enough to to outdo a military that's based on decentralized command.

So you're right. It's it's the mentality of I know what it is that we're trying to achieve and I need to go make this happen.

Not someone else. Me, I have to do it.

I, I just wonder. So if you're if you're not going to waste time complaining about the complainers, I get that.

But what do you how do we get people in our society who have become lovers of victimhood.

Right. Lovers of things like silence is violence and words are violence from somebody who's seen real violence and lost a bunch of friends to actual violence in war. How do we get people out of that mentality and back to mental toughness?

I think you set a good example. You build things, you create things. You put the word out. You know, on my podcast, I have people that can talk about what it really means to be a victim. You know, I had a woman on their named Rose Shindler, who is in who is in Auschwitz. And you listen to her story and what she did to survive and how how she had to go through that and then move through the rest of her life and work for everything she had.

You can't with you can't with good conscience look at her and say that you're a victim. I mean I mean, it's almost impossible. There's people that are out there, but there's there's people that go through such horrible things in life that, you know, and they still come out the other side. They take ownership of what's going on in the world and they move forward. So I think the best thing what I try and do is just just share stories of people that really have been in horrible situations.

And the and the indomitable human spirit can still step up, drive forward, move on and make things happen. And I think that that's what I try and do is is not just set the example myself, but more importantly is to share examples of other people that are bringing in, you know, had a guy like I had a guy named Captain Charlie Plumb who was in the Hanoi Hilton for four, six years, for six years in the Hanoi Hilton, you know, eating next to nothing, being tortured, being abused.

I have I've had those types of people on that. It's really hard to hear their stories and consider yourself a victim. And if you do if you do at the end of their stories, you realize that you're still a victim or you have been a victim. Then you look at what they did and how they handled being a victim. What they did was they took ownership of whatever they could in their world and move forward.

Well, that's something that you say often that I completely agree with, which is you when when life throws challenges at us and it's sometimes one is victimized somewhat. I think of think of somebody who gets raped, sometimes one is victimized. But a large part of the battle of handling trauma or hurt or massive pain or setbacks is attitude.

I'm not saying the attitude can solve it all, but it can solve a lot. And you I always say that when life throws a massive opportunity my way, it's a massive crisis or attack or something awful, my first reaction is to say thank you, because that's the only way you build your superhero muscles.

You don't get stronger by sitting at home having nothing happen to you and all the great things happen to you. You need tumult.

You need challenge to get stronger, bigger, better.

The best version of yourself and I when I read that in your books, I was like, yes, this is my brother from another mother, because you say that exact thing that when something bad happens, you say good when you did your low voice.

Good, right. I mean, talk about how important that is. How well I can talk about you just talked about it, which is you nailed it. You know, you use the word thank you when you've got some some thing unfolding your life that you can't control, that's that's miserable. And you look at it and say, OK, well, thank you. This is going to make me stronger. It's going to let me see another perspective.

It's going to allow me it's going to force me to learn more about myself or more about the world. And I'm going to take those lessons and I'm going to become a better person. So it's the exact same attitude, whether you're saying thank you or whether you're saying good. What you don't want to do is something bad happens. Say, Oh, no, this is horrible. Woe is me. I can't do anything. It's totally out of my control.

Well, what can you control? What can you control? Where can you where can you go on offense? Where can you maneuver? So you're in a better position in the future. And I mean, the choices are that that stark am I going to sit back and allow this to happen and and be a victim in this situation? Or am I going to go on offense? Am I going to take the fight to the enemy? And why am I going to move forward?

So if people can hear that message for me, great. But it's one of those messages that's been around for a long time. I certainly did invent it. You and I come from totally different backgrounds. And you figured out the best thing to do when something goes wrong is say thank you and and and move into it.

So universal lessons. I certainly try and spread and try and hope that people learn. In a minute, we'll have more with JoCo Wellink. But first, listen to this. Legacy box is perfectly named because it takes part of your legacy, part of your life puts it in a box, and then it returns it to you in perfect, newly usable form.

It's a super simple and service where you can have all your home movies and your old pictures digitally preserved in basically whatever form you want, DVD, the cloud thumb drive. So you'll actually be able to enjoy them. Right. You know how you have all your stuff stored away and never look at it all like your old VHS tapes or whatever it is.

Well, what's the point of keeping all that stuff?

Because you're never going to look at it. Nobody's got a VCR player anymore. So that's what legacy box comes in. You call them up, right. And then they're going to send you the box. And there it is looking at you, reminding you that you can get rid of all that storage. You don't have to take up reams and reams of closet space with all your old pictures. Give them to legacy box and they will put them on anything you want thumb drive for you so you can pull them up on your phone or on your computer whenever you want.

We did it. I sent it to my old tapes. I did some aerobics tapes. It did some legal tapes, did some early Fox News tapes, just some fun stuff that I had on tape back in the Dark Ages. And it was fun to see it again. And I've been forever since I looked at it.

So it was kind of a walk down memory lane. It's a way for you to easily and affordably, digitally preserve your past super easy process. And they will keep you up to date with regular email updates throughout the whole process. It's the world's largest digitizer of home movies and photos helped over a million families digitally preserve their past, be one of them and get started preserving your past today.

Go to legacy box dot com slash MGK to get an incredible 50 percent off your first order by today to take advantage of this exclusive offer and then send that box on when you're ready.

Go to legacy box dotcom MK for 50 percent off while supplies last. You've had your best friends killed in front of your very eyes, I mean, I've had terrible things happen to me. I just had Eric Bolling on the show the other day whose 19 year old son died from an accidental drug overdose after taking one what he thought was Xanax.

But really it was laced with fentanyl. It's not it's not that you in any way celebrate the awfulness. It's that after the awfulness happens, there's a way of handling the recovery process that can speed it along and make it make yourself better, make you more OK.

And like Eric was saying, he organized 15 town halls and he put them on TV talking with other parents about the opioid crisis and what's happening right now, our country. And he's reminding kids in high schools and middle schools and colleges all over the country that one pill can kill. That to me is what we're talking about. Like you can find an opportunity to make something good from from tragedy, from horror, from horror.

And even in your own mind, if you can find a way to to make yourself stronger, more enlightened, it's better for you. You know, I think some people might look at us and say it's not that easy. Right? It's not that easy. I remember this woman I met at NBC were telling me about this. What she said was not everyone is as strong as you are. I don't know. I I understood she's trying to say, but I just my feeling is anyone can do it.

You said that people might look at you and say it's not that easy. And my answer would be, you're right. It's not that easy. No one's saying it's going to be easy. But I just think that the choice between going on offense or sitting back on defense, I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you, from my experience, being on offense is better, trying to move forward is better. Trying to go on the attack is better than than sitting back and and staying put and allowing allowing these horrible things to continue to attack you, attack them, attack them.

Mm hmm. I was talking to the audience not long ago about I had two years off basically after I left NBC and started this job. And for a lot of the time, I refer to myself as like on the couch. You know, I was upset for a while. There was kind of depressed. I didn't know what the hell just happened in my life. And my therapist, who I love, sort of kind of saying, get off the couch, get off the couch.

Right. And ultimately, I found the motivation to do it, but it just getting off the couch is big. Just standing up and get off the couch, go into forward movement, change the routine.

Wallowing is the wrong choice to wellness.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's you know, I've written about this and I've talked about this. When you go through like I've gone through losing very close friends of mine. And when you go through that, it's very scary because the initial thing that I realized is you're it's like being in a storm. It's like getting hit with these waves of emotions. And for me, anyways, I pretty good control over my emotions. And all of a sudden I'm in this storm where I can't control these waves of emotion.

They're they're bigger. They're stronger than me and they're hitting me and I can't stop them. And what I explain to people is those that storm is going to settle. And so when you initially get hit with these waves of emotion, it's going to be horrible. You're going to feel like there's no control, going to feel like you don't have control and you don't, by the way. But over time, the the storm, the waves, they start to subside a little bit.

And now you can now they're not quite as strong when they hit you. They're they're a little bit further apart. And eventually you you get through these waves of emotion and you can start to control them. And then people start to think, am I a bad person because I'm no longer emotional about this loss? And the answer is no. It's just that your your mind is processing what you've gone through and now you can start to you can start to have control over it and you can start to actually look back and and take the good things away from from the loss that you've had.

And I know that's again, back to what you said about how do you look at something so horrible and how can you say that it's good? Well, if I lose one of my friends when I've lost my friends, once I get through those initial waves of emotions, I get to look back and say, hey, this is an individual that I got to know. This is an individual that I got to share all this time with and laugh with and have good times with and go through trials and tribulations with them.

And I have those forever. And and those are those were a gift to me. And even in their loss, even in them dying, I get to take away from that. I get to learn more lessons. I get to I could experience pain and sorrow so that I can remember how good the rest of the things in life can be. So I think that attitude of of taking a step back. But when you go through these horrible situations, you're going to there's going to be emotions.

You're going to feel like it's out of control. And when you feel like it's out of control, it's OK. The storm will subside. And when the storm starts to subside, that's OK, too. And that's when I think you have that opportunity to look around and say, OK, what good can I take away from this? And and you can find it. And you you don't have to make it up. You have to lie to yourself.

You can find it. You can find it there. So I've I've heard you talk about this in the context of breakup's and also to some extent dealing with death and the message it's not your only message, but it's one of the messages that stuck out of me, which is basically when it comes to a break up, one must detach. One must move on.

One one mustn't spend hours and hours and hours just thinking about it. You have to find a way to emotionally detach.

And ultimately, when you're dealing with the loss of somebody a death, it is the same.

You know, one must move forward.

And as they say, perhaps more tritely life is for the living and you've got to find a way to keep moving forward. Forward motion is the key.

But, you know, there'll be a lot of people listening to this saying how, how how do I emotionally detach from someone who I loved, who left me, you know, or or or who died, like, how on earth can I stop my brain from from obsessing over this 24/7?

So I think what you have to do is you have to accept what's happening. And, you know, this is something I Eutaw, you asked me about for your earlier. And one of the things that we talked to guys about is when you get that that. That twisting gut you start to feel afraid about something is to think yourself, oh, I know what that is. What that is, is fear. That's my body going getting ready for a combat situation.

That's my body getting tuned, getting the adrenaline flowing. It's it's all those things. And it's actually, if you know what it is, if someone says if you tell a new guy that's never been in combat before. Hey, listen, before you go out, your stomach's going to be in knots. You're going to be you're going to be you might be actually shivering because you're scared of what's about to happen. That's normal. It's OK. It's your body preparing you to go into combat.

So so it's OK. And once people realize that you say, OK, what I'm feeling is normal, what I'm feeling is normal. So when you go through a breakup, where you go through the loss of someone, that's what what I'm trying to say is those emotions that you have, their normal, it's going to happen. But once they start to subside a little bit, you said, OK, now I've got to get control of these emotions because I've got to move forward, because to get you know, I say this about death as well, remember, but don't dwell.

So so you remember you've got to remember this person that you lost. You got to remember them always. But you don't want to dwell in the past because that's not healthy. And yeah, I mean, I've I've got some things about breaking up. And look, I've been married for I've been married for a really long time. I guess coming up on I don't know. But a really long time. You know, since I was twenty five, I'm forty nine.

So what's up. Twenty four years.

Twenty four years I've been married and a lot of the, a lot of the, the information that I put out about relationships and what relationship goes wrong and things like that is what I learned well obviously from when I was a young single guy, but then also when I was a leader in the SEAL teams and I'd have these guys between the ages of 18 and 40 going through whatever trials and tribulations they're going through in their relationships and saying, hey, here's what you need to do.

Here's the best way to move forward, because when you're in a leadership position, you're responsible for all aspects or you're responsible for trying to take care of your troops in all aspects of your lives and they're going to come to you with these problems. So a lot of the experience that I have about challenging, let's call them challenging relationships comes from just talking to a twenty three year old seal who's broken up with his girlfriend and then she left and whatever happened and he's in the dumps because of it.

How do we move that guy forward? And so that's where a lot of the the the kind of, I guess, relationship counselor information comes from real world experience dealing with guys that are going through these these breakups.

This is why they call you the wise warrior. Now, how did how does one do it, though? Because I'm a big believer in cognitive behavioral therapy, where it's like, OK, my mind keeps obsessing over this thing. And the answer is to focus on this other thing. And I know this is bizarre, but it's always work for me. I had a dog for 14 years, little cute dog. Her name was Batia and she had the sweetest little face.

And I used to and now continue to think of Bush's face.

And it's basically just like it's a click, you know, it's like a reset. It's just something to go to when I'm like, oh, my God, my mind's starting to obsess over the thing that here's the thing over and over and over my head. Bosch's face to face, it's just like a break to get you away from the obsession.

And before, you know, you're like, what am I gonna have for lunch today? What am I going to cook for dinner? Oh, a minute. I'm going to go for a walk. I've got to pick up that prescription. Oh, I'm not thinking about the thing.

So I like that as a as a way of breaking cycles of negative thinking or obsessive thinking, whether it's about a breakup or a death or something awful.

What what do you recommend?

It's an interesting thing that you say that because when when I when I lost my first guy in combat, Mark Lee, who is of the first year killed in Iraq, and he was just just just a just the most. Epic human and you seem to be totally indestructible in the way he behaved, the way he acted, just just an incredible guy.

And when he died, obviously, it crushed me and it crushed his platoon mates and the rest of the guys in the tank unit.

And I didn't I didn't I was in the leadership position. I have never been trained on what to do when you lose someone in combat. There was no one in my chain of command that had ever lost anyone in combat because we had grown up guys in the chain of command like me had grown up in the in the 90s. And so there was no wars going on in the 90s and and very little combat going on in the 90s. So there was no instructions that I got about what to do, how to handle it, what's the emotional what's the emotional toll going to be on the troops?

And what I actually told the guys was, look, we're going to take a couple of days off. We're going to mourn Mark's loss. We're going to celebrate his life. And then we're going to go back to work, we're going to lock and load our weapons are going to put our gear on, we're going to go out and do our job. And much to what you're talking about, I thought to myself. This is what we need to do to get our minds off of off of thinking and thinking about Mark and dwelling about Mark's loss, which is which is a hard thing to do in combat.

And certainly I think it's the right thing to do. And then it's probably going to come back at you when you get home three months or six months or nine months later, you get home and all of a sudden you've got some time to dwell and dive into that. But I think that you're right that the to distract your mind a little bit when you lose somebody is a good thing. The other thing, I mean, as far as like a break up, when I would tell these young guys when they were breaking up with girls and and I actually have three daughters now, so I've done this routine a little bit on the on the other side as well.

And what you've got to realize is that the person that you.

The person that you just lost, this person that you built up in your head, they don't really exist. They don't really exist. They're the dream that you have this ideal that you built. That's not the person. And so you're obsessing over an ideal. You're obsessing over something that's not real. So once you realize, oh, this person was actually treating me bad, this person was actually actually said things that they shouldn't said to me. This person wasn't this ideal that I built up.

So I didn't lose what I think I lost. I lost something much with much less value than I thought. So I'll go out and look for something with more value. Mm hmm.

That's exactly right.

Is it possible Barshop proportions space? No, but I love what you just said because I think about this all the time. I've had, sadly, many friends who have had their husbands cheat or their boyfriends cheat in massive ways that that are really shocking.

And, you know, they'll they'll cry a lot of tears saying, you know, I love him so much and, you know, we had this perfect marriage. And my response is always, but you didn't. But he wasn't this great guy. You're just now finding out. But you didn't have the thing you thought you had. You didn't have many, many years. It was gone a long time ago.

You were just coming to terms with it now, just realizing the veil has come down. And, yes, there's sadness at at what you thought you had and not having that thing. But you haven't had it for a long, long time. And that's somehow soothing, I think, because it's like whatever I thought I had, I lost years ago or maybe I never had it to begin with. But my my loss is not fresh.

It's just the information that is there. I think that's a good attitude to have. Can I ask you, is it freaking terrifying for your daughters to bring boyfriends home to you? Well, when they were going through that phase and I've got one that's twenty one one that's just about twenty. And they're going to eighteen year old son and then an eleven year old daughter, I would say that's probably uncomfortable for a young man to come to my house wanting to go out my daughter.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Do you ever, like, pull him aside for a talk. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Like a scary talk certainly. I mean you can probably whatever you think I would say to someone that wants to go out with my daughter is probably pretty close to what I would say.

Just walk by your wall of metals. You know, you with your teammates, your comrades. Just let me give you a tour of the house that you'd like to see where we live.

Yeah.

Say, if you, you know, this is my daughter and don't hurt her.

Has anyone ever had the nerve to do that? No, no.

Very, very nice young man. Very respectful. Well, I can see why.

All right. So let's jump back.

Let's jump back to the young. You you go through it's called buds training, basic underwater demolition SEAL training, which is hideous from what I hear. I mean, maybe not for you, but if everyone quits basically. Right. Like almost nobody makes it.

It's like 80 percent of people quit. And yeah, it was it was definitely fun. If your mindset is that it's going to be fun, it's fun. Believe it or not, you're laughing a bunch. There's all kinds of crazy things happen. It's it's a good time.

I had a good time. And I'm not saying it was easy. Some sometimes I've had my SEAL buddies say like, oh, you made it sound like it was easy. It's not easy. No, it's it's definitely going to suck. It's hard and you're going to get pushed and you're going to no matter who you are, there's there's going to be there's going to be weakness revealed. There's no one that goes through there that doesn't have any weakness revealed.

Some people can't handle the water. Some people can't handle the cold. Some people can't handle the being tired. Some people can't handle the physical abuse. And by that, I just mean your body is getting beat down every single day. So you could in some maybe some people can't hold their breath very well. So there's going to be weakness. Everyone's going to have weakness. It's going to get found out. It's going to get exploited and it's going to get picked apart.

And you're either going to quit or you're going to suck it up and make it through. So I'm not saying it's easy, but it's also to me it's not. Some people make it out like it's this big transformational thing in their life. And I think a lot of people show up. They're. That they were going to have to kill me to make me quit. I never thought about quitting in any way, and if they would have said, hey, you're going to die now been said, let's rock and roll.

So I never thought about quitting.

And I don't think it's some people make it out to be a bigger deal than it is. I'm not saying it's easy. It's definitely hard. It wasn't easy for me. I'm like I already told you, not the fastest runner about the fastest swimmer. I had to let me let me give an example for every timed run that we did, which I think you do well, at least one timed run a week, like a Fourmile timed run in soft sand with boots on every one of those.

I had to run as fast as I possibly could to pass so that the swimmers were the same way. Everyone I did, I had to swim as hard as I possibly could. Like my life depended on it to pass an obstacle course. Same thing. Just about everything there was was a challenge for me. So I'm not saying it's easy, but you suck it up. You're cold, you're you're miserable and you have to work hard. It's not it's not that crazy.

Poor thing. Well, that's where you drew your inside straight and just not being a quitter, being raised, just you just don't quit. That's just you just don't period. So it's not even there for an option for somebody like you, but for the rest of us mere mortals, it's there.

And it's lovely when you really need it. But wait, can you just talk a little bit more about the physical? I think, you know, maybe people don't know what what I don't I don't understand what the physical challenges are like. What do they do to you that during hell week?

Hell week, you don't get to sleep. You probably sleep an hour, maybe two hours during the week, and you do a bunch of physical exercise the whole time, carrying logs around, carrying boats around. But they put you in the water, which Southern California water. I know from Baywatch, everyone thinks the water's probably seventy five degrees or 80 degrees like a tropical island. It's not it's fifty five to sixty degrees. Most of the time it's cold.

And so they make you cold, wet, miserable and tired and make you do a bunch of physical evolutions and they get a bunch of people to quit. And as far as what the actual exercises are, it's whatever dumb exercises a person to do. You do push ups, you can't do any pushups anymore. And then you do squats, you can't do squats anymore. And then you carry logging Dekalog anymore. And then they go back to push ups and they just do that over and over and over again until they get until they test people to help you, how badly people want to be there.

So when you say quit, though, does it mean I quit the Navy SEALs training, I'm out of buds training or is it like I mean, because you have physical physical limits, right? Like at some point your arms stop doing the push ups like so failing or your body stopping at the task. Is that considered quitting? Well, like let's say with pushups, it's a good example. And push pushups are probably the the one thing that you hey, if you can't do any more pushups, go lay on the ground, face down while you're getting somebody sprayed you in the head with a hose from two feet away.

And in another thirty seconds, you can do one more push up so you can go a little bit further carrying that boat. You may fall down and you lay there for a minute, you get back up and you keep going. So I guess you're right. You're obviously there's you do a certain number of physical things. How many pull ups can you do at a point? You can't. You're no human. There's a certain point where no human can do any more pull ups.

And what do you do that you drop off the bar, you shake it out and then you try again and you keep trying. So that's that's that's the deal. Don't quit. Keep trying.

What if you don't run the four minute run in the sand with the boots on fast enough? Like, I'm sure there's there's a time by which they want you to do it. What if what if you don't? So when I went through it, it always changes a little bit. Doesn't change a lot. But when I went through if you failed one run, you got written up. If you failed to run, you were gone. If you failed one swim, you were written up.

If you failed to swim done. If you failed one obstacle course you written up. If you fail to your God. I failed one run and one swim. And I never felt another one, luckily, and the one that actually this is where I learned is the one that I was, the one that I failed, the run that I failed, I I decided I was, oh, you know what? I'm going to pace myself today.

So I went out, didn't run as hard as I possibly could, and I failed. And from that day on, I said to myself, OK, well, if you gotta run, run as hard as you possibly can, that's the only way you're going to pass. And that's what I did pass the rest of. Oh, my God, it's just like officer and a gentleman. I saw the hose go into Richard, his face. I thought it was made up Hollywood thing.

I guess it's real.

Although that wasn't Navy SEAL and you didn't wind up with Debra Winger at the end. I'm sure you did better than that.

So, so much better than Debra Winger.

How long is the whole thing, the training? And then I assume Hellweg is just seven days. Yeah, I think it's actually only five days. It starts Sunday night and then it ends on Friday. And how long is buds training, but is six months OK?

All right. Let me ask you a personal question. Did you ever break down in tears? No, we're never close.

No, no. You just have built that way. Like, you just you have a mental toughness gene that you came into the world with.

It sounds like I don't actually remember too many guys would occasionally break down for whatever reason. But most guys, there's not a bunch of guys showing up there that are getting ready to cry when something goes wrong.

That's that's not the skill that we're looking for.

I'm sure I should know the answer to this, but didn't I just see that women are now able to be Navy SEALs? They weren't. But are they now?

The pipeline is open at this time. So that so far for. Well, it used to be that that women were not allowed in combat roles and then they changed that so that women are allowed to combat roles, which means they can go in and infantry battalion, they can or an infantry or any any of the combat arms in the Army or the Marine Corps and in the in the Navy. That would be that would be the training for the SEAL teams.

I mean, so I've got I've got pretty defined feelings on this, I'm all for women giving it a go. I think it's awesome if they want to try it, support them 100 percent. But I'm definitely not for lowering of standards, whether it's the the firefighters, the cops, the military. I think, you know, the standards are what they are. But I think in some instances that would probably be unrealistic. If you're talking about bench pressing a certain number, I mean, you know, women are not physically as strong as men as a general rule.

So what do you think the odds are that a woman could make it through buds training?

I don't think the odds are very good that that a female could make it through. What do you think would do her in? I don't know what the. I don't. Well, what it would be, you know, let's say you had a triathlete that could do really well on the runs and the swims, but then probably not ready to do deadlifts. Somebody carries and log. Petey's carrying the logs around. And so I think I think I think the problem will be having the range of physical capability.

And look, there's there's females, obviously, that are incredible athletes and incredibly strong and and everybody knows that. But I think just finding that range will be the biggest challenge, finding someone that's there's there's females that are very strong, you know, an Olympic lifter or a power lifter, incredibly strong. And there's females that are incredibly fast. I think what will be challenging, because it's challenging for guys to be challenging for for men as well, is if you've got someone that's a power lifter that's super strong, they have a hard time running fast.

And and if you have someone that super fast, they have a hard time during that vote on their head or listen that log. So it's just the range that I think is going to be the biggest challenge.

Mm hmm.

I just think I think people get confused. Equality doesn't mean we have to be able to do the exact same jobs, otherwise we don't have equality. Let's be realistic about what our physical limitations are, what what women are better at than men and what we're not. I like to joke that I'm secretly a Marine because my last job, they sent me down to Camp Lejeune and I spent a few days with the Marines down there pretending that I was training with them and I had to actually do a lot of what they were doing.

I was such a pathetic mess. You would have been horrified by me. You would have been horrified.

I could not get over any of the walls. I couldn't climb the ropes. I just I enjoyed the mess hall, but it was fun sleeping in the barracks and sort of, you know, trying to pretend that in some other really, really tough version of myself, I could have done this. But one thing the guys did tell me is women there at least have proven to be better shots than men. Their aim and their ability to sort of control their breathing and their sort of focus and shooting had proven to be very exceptional.

So that's great. Right? So that's something we could take advantage of. And we could we could not force but filter women into that kind of a role. But we don't need to pretend that they can do the deadlift and carry a two hundred forty pound man in order for them to be valuable to the military.

Yeah. And I just you know, there's men that are good shots. There's women that are good shots. I just look at them as people. And if you can do the job, cool.

What about can you imagine being deployed side by side with women and how how do you think how is that? You know, I guess, you know, you weren't you were with Navy SEALs, but I'm sure you had other other branches of the military that you're with and you saw women in combat or did you? Yeah, there's there's definitely females around.

I didn't have any females attached to any of the units that I that I was in charge of.

But, you know, it's relationship stuff that they'll have to get worked out. Obviously, there's a whole nother a whole nother aspect that comes into play when you're when you put men and women together. I don't think there's any question about that. So, you know, they do it on you would in some in some countries, they've done it and they do it. I mean, the Navy on Navy ships, there's there's males and females co-located and there's you know, so so we know kind of what what what that looks like.

I know it's fraught because you're the politically correct line is yes, women could do it. All women in combat is great and women in the military is great.

I think we can we can accept that there's amazing opportunities for women and that we're equality, that we have equality without diminishing the some of the weird dynamics that come from from this change in the way we used to do it.

And I think it's healthy and I think that's the way we get past them by being honest about what the oddities are and what the solutions are. You know, the guys I talked to and the gals down at Camp Lejeune were like, once you're out there and you're training, you don't see gender. Right? You just see like who's on your team. And that's what matters. But I've never actually been in battle. And the young, young ones that I've spoken to down there hadn't either.

It's a training camp. So as somebody who's actually been there, but I guess you have men next to next to women are working with women there. I wonder what your thoughts were.

Oh, no, I misspoke a little bit or I didn't make myself clear. So in my particular units in my SEAL platoon, I didn't have any women. There was no women allowed my to commander in my task unit. There was no women attached to us. So I never but there was there was a female army around. There was female Marines around. And I never had any issues with them. In fact, there's there's some incredible warriors throughout history, females that that served and served incredibly and performed heroically in combat.

So it is possible. It is. It is. I mean, it's it's it it has happened. So you don't whether it's good or bad, I mean, I think it all boils down to what you already said. And I think this is kind of this is kind of become the. The answer is, don't lower standards and see what happens, and unfortunately, I think there is political pressure to try and force things to to happen a certain way.

And if you do that, it's not going to be good.

No, I mean, you're talking about life and death stuff now. I mean, like, there's a there's a limit to where welcomeness can take over our lives.

And when you're talking about the survival of men and women who have volunteered to go save our country, protect our country on the fire, on the foreign battlefields, that's it. Like either you can do it or you can't. And women are strong enough to be able to say that I can't do this. I can I can kick ass over here. Can't quite do that thing. And let's let's work with that once again, people. I feel like these like, I don't know, PC jerks just treat us like we're little cupcakes and we can't understand that this job you can't do because you're not strong enough.

We get it. And and that doesn't mean we don't have other great qualities. Just bullshit anyway. OK, now I'm going to rant. All right.

So let's go back to your your Navy career. You worked in the Navy. You were a SEAL for 13 years before you actually got deployed, is that right? To to to serve in an action of an actual battlefield? Yeah.

So I was in from 1990 until 2010 and between 1990 and 2003, there was I didn't go on any combat deployments. And quite frankly, neither did too many other people because there's no wars going on. I then in 2003 deployed to Iraq. And that's where, you know, I did my first combat operations.

So you you wind up in Ramadi and I was at Fox at the time covering the war, and that those were just the darkest days, I mean, in Ramadi was awful.

And you were right there in the in the middle of it and over here, it seemed like hell. And I read that you well know, you told Tim Ferriss, Ramadi was the highlight of my life. So walk me through that. How can that be? As I was talking to you earlier and I said that the only thing I ever wanted to do was be some kind of commando. And and then that's what I did. And when you're a commando, you have one purpose, you have one job, and that is to go to war and you want to do you want to do that?

I mean, it's like if you want a football team and you practiced all the time and you never played a game, you'd really want to play that game. Well, now imagine that you spent your whole life sort of preparing for this for this game. And now the game shows up and it's a hard game. It's a challenging game. The opponent is tough and and you go you go to war. So that's why it was definitely the highlight of my life.

You finally got to do the very thing you were trained to do and were amazing at. Coming up in one second, I'm going to ask Jacko about some of the most heroic, decorated, inspirational Navy SEALs that have ever lived that he knows and knew and worked directly with. You're going to want to hear this, I promise you that.

But before we get to that, I want to bring you a feature we call you can't say that here in the Megan Kelly Show.

You can't say that or think that or do that. Oh, wait, this is America.

Well, we all know that you can get canceled for writing certain books, but did you know that you can be canceled for liking certain books?

You can, especially if it's a dangerous book. Who decides what dangereuses people with whom you do not deserve? You do not agree. I can guarantee you that. So do you like the band Mumford and Sons? We talked about this the other day. Well, one of the members of the group, Winston Marshall, had the nerve to tweet some praise for Andy Knows Book Unmasked. You remember Andy? We had him on the program to talk about his book on Antifa.

You remember he was talking about their riots and how nobody is cracking down on them and their disgusting methods of attacking people. Well, apparently, Marshall really liked the book and he tweeted out, quote, Finally had the time to read your important book, Your Brave Man to Andy, who, of course, got attacked by antifa and had a brain bleed as a result of it and kept on reporting. But Marshall's praise for Andy know unacceptable. After backlash, Marshall had to delete the tweet and apologize.

Quote, Over the past few days, I have come to better understand the pain caused by the book I endorsed. He tweeted. He'll now, quote, Take time away from the band to examine my blindspots.

Does everyone feel better now? Because if you liked a well researched, fact based book about Antifa, which is at the top of the charts right now, notwithstanding, some stores attempt to suppress it. Well, you can't say that. Oh, wait, this is America. And now back to Jako right after this. So you guys know that healthy plant based non-toxic cleaning products work and the good ones are actually more enjoyable to use?

You don't like to walk in your bathroom with that chemical chlorine smell or your kitchen.

Right. But where do you start to find this stuff and who do you trust? That is where Grove Collaborative comes in.

Grove is the online marketplace that delivers healthy home beauty and personal care products directly to you.

They make it super easy. They take the guesswork at going green. You can browse their site for thousands of home beauty and personal care products, all guaranteed to be good for you, your family, your home and the planet.

Grove has thought of everything with Grove.

You don't have to shop multiple stores or search endlessly online to get all of the natural goods that you need and want for you and your family.

So join the over two million households who have trusted Grav Collaborative to make their homes happier and healthier, plus shipping as fast and free on your first order so you can get healthier starting this weekend. Make the switch to natural products. It's never been easier to do for a limited time. When my listeners go to Grove Seo K, you will get to choose a free gift with your first order of thirty bucks or more, but you've got to use our special code.

So go to grav Dot Seo MK to get your exclusive offer. That's growth that SEO slash and.

You ran what is called, I guess, task unit Bruiser, the most highly decorated special ops unit of the Iraq war. And when it says that you were the commander of that. Does that mean you were the ultimate authority, the ultimate person in charge?

I was that I was the senior guy. Yes, I was the it sounds really strong to say I was the ultimate authority because, you know, there's people above me in the chain of command, obviously. But, yeah, I was the senior guy, so I was the I was the senior ranking guy in Takeshita to Bruiser, which ultimately means if something went wrong, it was on me. And yeah, so we had usually between thirty around thirty five, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less.

Thirty five or so seals depending we got augment. Some guys would come to help for a little while, then they leave, some guys get wounded, go home. Obviously guys got killed as well and but you know around thirty five seals and then another 60 or 70 people that were in support of the task unit. And these are all the kind of unsung heroes, the people that are keeping our Humvees running and keeping our generators working and keeping our logistical supply chain going so guys have bullets and food and and all that stuff and the people that gather intelligence and put together target packages for us.

So there's a bunch of other guys that supported the the SEALs. But and that's why we had the unit that you oversaw the hunt.

This task unit, Bruiser, seems to have had some of the most talented, impressive SEALs who fought for our country in the Iraq war.

You mentioned Mark Lee. Michael Monsoor was another one. You mentioned Johnny Cam. And the name that stood out to me, there were two of them, Chris Kyle, who we now know is the American Sniper. He wrote his book and said to be the most lethal sniper in American history. His work, his wife, Taya, actually wound up taking a job as a contributor at Fox for a short time while I was there. There's another guy I want to talk to you about, who I know you knew very well, Ryan Jobe.

Before we get to Ryan, can we talk about Chris? Because I think our audience may know that name, you know, from the movie American Sniper. And he he worked under your command.

Yeah. Chris was the lead sniper and the point man for Charlie. And so inside of tasking to Bruiser, there's two platoons, Charlie Platoon and Delta Platoon and Charlie Platoon. The platoon commander was Leif Babin. You're your friend, Jenna's husband, and then the lead sniper. And the point man in that platoon was was Chris Kyle.

Did you know that this was a special serviceman like when you were working with him?

Did you know how good he was? Yeah. I mean, there you know, you said that there's all these incredible guys in the in the in the task unit. You're right. And I will tell you that all day long the guys were incredible, Chris. Absolutely. And a lot of times, if you asked a bunch of different people who in their whatever task unit or whatever platoon, whatever troop they were in, they're going to tell you that they had a bunch of awesome guys to the SEAL teams, has a bunch of really incredible humans in there, Chris.

Absolutely was was a was an absolute pro. He was a front runner and he had a lot of experience even coming into Ramadi. He had done the push up. He had fought in Fallujah. And so as a sniper, he was highly experienced. And he was just he was just really dedicated to his job. And it made him and then the environment that we were in, the operations that we had the opportunity to do were they were absolutely almost custom made to fit Chris's skill set.

And so it was just it was just a perfect fit, perfect fit for him.

Ryan Jobe I met years ago, I was at a Navy SEAL benefit. I was probably to say two thousand seven. And at this benefit was when my friend and colleague Jenna Lee met Leif Babin. They met that night and now they're happily married with three kids. And one of the other guys I met that night was Ryan Jobe. And I never forgot him. He's somebody I've talked about many, many times because by this point he'd been injured. He has his weapon was hit by artillery from the enemy and it blinded him.

It shot, as I understand it, one eye out and permanently damaged the optic nerve and the other eye. So he was blind.

And he had the most positive, infectious, lovable, laughing, joyful personality that night.

I gravitated toward him, so did everyone in the room, he was totally generous with his personality, with his story, with with his storytelling, with his time, and he was the one who told me that SEALs have a thing they say, which is say, I can't.

And of course, it you know, it means as soon as you tell them they can't, they will. And he was living it right at that point. I mean, he was just living it because after his injuries, he went on to accomplish incredible things. He climbed Mount Rainier in Washington State as a blind man. And so all these years I've been talking about this guy because he made such an impression on me and jako, I was so sad and shocked to find out he died.

I didn't know that that I missed that news. And it happened only a couple of years after I met him.

And it happened in a hospital as they were performing, I think, his 20 second surgery anyway, when I saw it, I, I texted Jenna immediately, like, oh my God, I didn't know.

And we were talking about it. And I found out that they named their third child after after him after Ryan. And I just wanted to ask you about this guy, because to me, he was just the embodiment of grit.

And he's what I think of when I feel American patriotism. That guy just devastated to learn. We lost him so long ago. And I'm sure it must have been so hard for you to have the impact that that that Ryan made on you, the impact that Chris made on the world, the impact that you monster that that impression that Ryan left you, you know, that you were with him for, I don't know, a few hours at an event.

And and you saw the just just what an incredible person he was. And, yeah, he was he was actually shot in the face. It was some some maybe maybe an enemy sniper shot his it luckily hit his weapon and before it entered his face. So that slowed down. You kind of got hit from pieces of fragmentation, from his weapon and chunks of bullet and whatever else. And it was a really grievous wound and.

Yeah, it is his attitude, if you know, his attitude was when he was in a medically induced coma for a while, and that was the same day that that Markley was killed. And probably I don't know how long it was after he got out of his medically induced coma and we could finally talk to him. He's back in America. And what he was telling me, what he was asking me was he was saying he was saying, sir, can I please come back?

Can I please come back? He wanted to come back and be with the task unit. He wanted to come back and be with his brothers, despite the fact that he had been so horribly wounded, despite the fact that he couldn't see he actually as you know, he was a very funny guy, too. He said, if you give me my weapon, sir, don't worry. I can smell the bad guys. I can smell them. I'll know where they are.

And that was that was his attitude. He wasn't going to stop and he wasn't going to quit. And he wanted it. He wanted to be with his brothers. And so, yeah, when when he when he died, it was just a crushing, crushing blow because we you know, we've been home for a few years and. We had we had lost Mikey, we had lost Mark, and and and that was horrible, but we thought we were home, you know, we thought we were home and and then we lose and then we lose.

Ryan and then as you mentioned, after that again, now we think, well, nothing nothing worse than this can happen. And then and then Chris, Chris was murdered.

And just another horrible, just another horrible, shocking and and life life altering event, you know, to have to have Chris killed like that. And, you know, his wife is just so strong. And and what she's been through and the way she carries herself is is just heroic. So a good example for for all of us.

And, you know, and then there's there's actually in twenty, seventeen, you know, again, thinking that we were through it, the the Delta platoon commander who was a very dear friends of mine and and life and the rest of the guys in the task unit, he was killed in a parachute accident. And and that's the last guy that we've lost from task to Bruiser, even though as many as 11 years after we came home and and still never, never going to be never going to forget those guys.

They were just all incredible, incredible people. And it was an honor to be able to serve with them and honor to be able to know him and honor to say that I was friends with them and I won't forget them all ever, that God bless them and all of you guys like.

We forget too often we go on with our lives over here and we forget about the sacrifice that's been made so that we can live them the way we do. It's important to be reminded of these stories so we understand the sacrifices that have been made. That I've listen to laugh, I saw I saw the two of you guys talking about this. And he was saying that after Ryan got hit in the face with this enemy sniper round. Life was saying he looked terrific and he he went over to grab Ryan and Ryan sat up and said he was OK.

He sat up even though just been shot in the face, set up so that he wouldn't choke. Said he was just incredibly tough and. You know, as you point out, shortly after he began to be able to speak again, he was cracking jokes, saying that he was going to get a parrot for his shoulder. And then he's asking, he's telling you, I can smell the enemy, that I'll find a way. I'll find a way.

Can I come back? And I just think. It's such a bullshit price to pay, you know, it's like what I read was that because the hospital paid his widow, I think what I read was four million dollars that they admitted that they had been negligent. It was what I read was it was an accidental overdose, that they gave him it of painkillers.

But it just seems so damn senseless, you know? And it's like when you talk about how you get past loss, you know, of what you speak.

Yeah. It was just, like you said, is completely tragic. And, you know, it's it makes us reminds us how precious life is.

And you need to absolutely live a life that that these guys that are looking down on us are not in their head and saying that. That's right.

Keep going. Yeah. They don't want anybody wallowing. You know, one of the other guys I met that night and I don't know if you know him, I don't I don't think he was in your entire unit.

Bruiser Jason Redman, do you know that name?

If I do, you know Jason, OK, I know he was actually inspired to go climb Mt. Rainier. Because of what? Because Ryan did it. But he, too, had a catastrophic injury to his face. And he's the other guy I remember from that night. And but trust me, my audience knows my my memory's not that good. But I remember these guys well because he told me about his recovery and how he posted a sign on his door that basically said, don't come in here and feel sorry for me.

I would go and do it all over again. And I remembered that story.

And actually, I just I Googled it right before you came on and I found out, like the sign became a thing, like it's in it's in a military museum, something that's like celebrated as sort of an example of of the mentality. And I just I just want to read the note so people understand this guy. It reads as follows attention to all who enter here. If you are coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorry for my wounds, go elsewhere.

The wounds I received, I got a job.

I love doing it for people. I love supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough and will make a full recovery. What is full? That is the absolute utmost. Physically, my body has the ability to recover. Then I will push that about 20 percent further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you were about to enter is a room of fun, optimism and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere from the management.

I love that JoCo, I love that and that that's the attitude, right, like that's the thing that makes you fall in love with these guys 100 percent.

I mean, that's just it's such a such an awesome statement by Jason Redman. And and, you know, this is a guy that was had massive, massive damage to his face and his arm. He was going through surgery after surgery, after surgery.

And he well, you heard it.

He did not want he didn't feel sorry for himself. He didn't want anyone else to feel sorry for him. He was going to do everything he could with what he had left. And and that's what he's doing today.

Wow. This is to your earlier point. These are the stories people need to hear, people who think words are violence, people who think they've been victimized by some TV commercial.

What you know, that there are real heroes in this world who have really gotten hurt and sacrificed and found a way to stay optimism about our country, about themselves, about their fellow Americans.

There's a way of doing it.

It's not to diminish, hurt or pain, but there's a way of doing it.

And we have real life examples everywhere you write if you just open minded to them. And that's in a way, one of the gifts you've been given. Jako is like having a life immersed in this kind of person.

Yeah, and it's great. We can look at the military and find it all kinds of heroes for sure, for four for the entire history of this country. There's hero after hero that has stepped up and made incredible sacrifices. And and then you look at everyday people, whether it's a single mom that's out there working two or three different jobs to to feed her kids and coming home with the screaming kids and all that stuff, or whether it's, you know, the front line police officers that are out there all taking risk every single day, firefighters, EMTs, the the heroes of the of the medical community, the first responders.

There's so many people that do so much and face such tough, challenging events every single day. I was talking to a friend of mine who's whose EMT firefighter, and he's he had done two two cases that day and he had done CPR on two people. Saved one. Lost one. And you just think that's that's a daily occurrence, daily occurrence, so all kinds of heroes out there, all kinds of people that face some really tough things on a daily basis.

And it definitely keeps me humble and and makes makes me make sure that I'm not complaining about anything. Well, since you've gotten back stateside, you've you've sort of made a career out of leadership, you in life co-founded a group called The Echelon Front, which is a leadership consulting company premier, and it teaches some of these leadership principles to others. And we need that right. It's like some people are born leaders. I think they come by these traits naturally and most people have to learn it or at least need to learn something to get better at it.

In looking at sort of the the things you say that make a good leader, one of the things is extreme ownership. You gave a great TED talk, Ted, extreme ownership on this mindset of not making excuses, not not blaming others when problems occur. I my own life, it's manifested as winners take responsibility.

Losers blame others. And can you just talk a bit about. That the episode, I think it was in Ramadi that really brought that home for you, you had to live it and it wasn't necessarily the easiest experience, but you did live it.

Yeah, that's one of the earliest operations that we did in the battle of Ramadi. We had a blue on blue or what's commonly referred to in the civilian world as a friendly fire incident.

And it was actually a firefight between some of my seals and an Iraqi a friendly Iraqi army unit. So there's friendly Iraqis that are on our side. And some of my guys, there was confusion out on the battlefield. There was mayhem. There was the fog of war, all those things. And some of my guys ended up in a firefight with friendly Iraqi soldiers who had a US Marine with them and is a nightmare. One of the Iraqi soldiers got killed.

A couple other ones got wounded. One of my guys got wounded. And it was only by the grace of God that that none of my guys were killed. It was just an absolute nightmare. And look, being in combat and taking casualties from the enemy is horrible. You can only imagine how much horrible it is when it's friendly fire. It's your own people that you're getting wounded by or that you're wounded or that you're getting killed by or that you're killing.

It's a it's an absolute nightmare.

And after this happened, there was you know, there was a big uproar because this shouldn't happen. You shouldn't have these things that they do take place. But it's it's it should not happen. And it happened. So my commanding officer basically shut down, shut down to ask you to Bruiser and said, I'm going to come out, I want to debrief. I want to find out what happened.

And really in that it's it's who's going to get fired because this is a terrible situation. Someone needs to somebody to be held accountable. And so he said told me to prepare a briefing to him. So I started preparing this briefing. And as I'm preparing this briefing, I'm trying to figure out who I should blame for this happening. Should I blame the radioman? Should I blame one of the system, two commanders that out there? I blame one of the NGOs, one of my one of my noncommissioned officers.

Who should I blame for this happened? And it was probably 10 minutes he had flown out, so it took him a day to get out there and it's probably 10 minutes before I walked in to debrief him. And I just couldn't I I couldn't put my finger. I couldn't feel comfortable picking the person to blame.

And I just was trying to figure out that this guy should I blame this guy? I blame this other guy. And as I'm sitting there, I realized like a bolt of lightning hit me, that the reason I couldn't figure out who to blame was because there was only one person to blame. And that person was me. I'm I'm the overall guy in charge. I'm responsible for what happens. Whatever happens is on me, and so I went in there and and and took ownership of the entire incident and and, you know, this is not the first time that I ever had this idea.

This is how I was brought up in the SEAL teams. And and really this is how I was brought up as a human. When something goes wrong, you don't blame other people. You take ownership. The reason that the reason that we late and I wrote this book, we made this the first chapter because this is the most extreme situation I'd ever been in. Someone was dead, guys wounded. And I had to take ownership of it. And the part that you said about it being hard to take ownership.

Yeah, it's very hard. It stinks. It hurts. It hurts your ego. It makes you feel like you are to blame for everything. And guess what? You are. That's the point. And it's hard, but that's what I did. I stepped up, I took ownership. And, you know, when I did that, first of all, the guys in the platoon and this is life and death and the rest of the guys debriefing you and I said, hey, this is my fault.

They their level of respect for me went up because I wasn't point my finger at anyone and say it was their fault. And even my commanding officer, he realized that if I was going to take ownership of the problems, I would get the problems fixed and they wouldn't happen again. And so this attitude is just a very powerful thing. And sometimes people think it's going to be a big burden. And like I said, it is a burden on your ego.

But also, it's liberating because if you take ownership of the problems that you have, the capability to solve those problems, so it applies not just to the battlefield, that applies not just to business, it applies to life and something that's not going the way you want it to go. And all you do is point your finger at your boss or your spouse or your kids or somebody you work with. Well, then you don't change anything because it's out of your power.

But if you say, you know what, I'm going to take ownership of this and I'm going to get it solved. Now you have control and now you can now you can actually get problem solved.

Mm hmm. I think some people don't don't take ownership because they're afraid it might not be their only mistake, you know, and they if you take ownership of this one, what happens when the next big mistake comes along? You take ownership of that one and then the third, and then before you know it, you're fired.

Yeah, well, you very well might get fired. And when people present me with that with that situation, you know, I would say, well, let's say let's say let's say back in an hour, working for the boss. And we both fail at whatever project was due. And I come in and the boss says, what happened, Jocko? And I said, well, you know, we failed the project because we don't get the supplies in time.

We had bad weather and the contractors didn't do what they were supposed to do. And so that's why we failed. And he says, OK, get out of here. And then Megan comes in and and the boss says, OK, Megan, why did you fail that project? And Megan says, well, we failed the project because I didn't order the supplies early enough. So the supplies didn't show up on time. I actually didn't track with the contractors were doing closely enough.

And so they were off schedule and that that set us back. And finally, I didn't account for the possibility that there might be bad weather. When I do this next time, I'm to make sure I get some time scheduled in there in case we get some bad weather days. I'll be able to make up that time. So those are the problems. That's why we failed. It's my fault and I'll get it fixed next time. So. So who who do you want to give the next project?

Who's the boss going to give the next project? Who is the boss going to give it to me? Who made a bunch of excuses and pointed my finger at a bunch of other people or they. Or is the boss going to give the project the next project to make it, who actually took ownership and is actually going to get those problems solved? So when you look at it from that perspective, even though you might be scared to walk into that office, ready to take the blame when you actually do it and you actually think about how it's perceived, by the way, up and down the chain of command, up and down the chain, again, because the contractors that I blamed, they don't want to work with me anymore.

They're not going to put extra effort to to to cover for me. But the contractors that work for you that you said, hey, look, we're late, it's my fault. I should have I should have given you guys a tighter timeline. I should have I should have made sure you were tracking. They actually want to do a good job for you. So up and down the chain of command, taking ownership is the way to go. Yeah.

Yeah.

This is this reminds me of an experience I had at Fox News very early in my career. I was a first year reporter. They're very green. And I had a package airing on Brit Hume show Special Report. That night was one of my first packages where it's like a pre taped piece. You know, you spend the whole day working on it, getting interviews.

Then you write a script and you track the script. Then you go into the edit bay and work with the editor to get it just right.

And then it airs and there's always time, pressure. And it aired that night and there was a mistake in the piece.

There was it was a sound bite that should have been in there, and it was obvious when it aired and I should have caught it.

And so Kimeu, who is Brett's wife and our managing editor, she was our our bureau chief, came over to me after the fact and said, how could it have been prevented? And I said I told the editor to take it out and he should have taken it out. And she said, not him, you what could you have done to prevent it? And honestly, it's just like a sea change for me in that moment. I ever since then, that's my first question, not him.

You what could you have done to prevent it? And she was one hundred percent. Right. I could have budgeted my time better. I could have make sure I sat in that Atabay for the entire process. I could have made time to review the piece prior to it hitting air so I could be assured that all the sound bites would be appropriate and one wouldn't be in there.

That shouldn't be. And I'm not saying I have a perfect record from that point thereafter, but I certainly did a hell of a lot better than I would have if somebody hadn't remembered to say to me, not him, you.

One hundred percent, that's it. And it changes your attitude. And the people that work with you, above you, below you, they will all have better respect. You have a better relationship. And that's just the best way for a team to operate. Everyone taking ownership.

What do you think?

Because I know you I love your your latest book is called The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocols. And this is good. It's a code for how to tackle life. Just here's a few just for our audience. I will take care of my physical health. I'm sure for me, I will develop myself mentally by doing creative things, reading things that would help me mentally. I will not waste time. I will not waste money. I will set goals.

That's an important one. I will excel in my job. I will be humble. I will. Control my emotions, I will put others before myself, I will take care of and protect my friends and family. I was looking at that and thinking about the goal setting, because I do think that's an important part of succeeding in life, of being a leader, but also just succeeding in life. Sometimes we meander, sometimes we don't sit down and say, what next for me?

What do I want? Like oftentimes to sit back and say, I'm not happy, I don't feel good, but we don't say what would make me happy and how can I how can I get there? So when you talk about setting goals, like, what does that look like?

Somebody's listening to this right now. They write it down, say out loud, put it on like a vision board.

What is it? What does it look like?

I say write it down. And and for me, look, I have things that I'm doing all the time that I. What am I? I guess it's a trick or a methodology that I use is I sign up for things that I know are going to be very hard to achieve. But I but I but I signed up for them. So whether that's publishing a book. So by the time I have a book coming out, I already have signed to write another book.

And I know I'm not saying I'm going to take a break. I could use a little downtime. Would be nice. No, I know. I know. I have another book in me. I know already know what it is. So I go talk to the publisher and say, OK, here's what I'm doing next. And they say, OK, here's the date, can you get it in by then? And I say, Yes, I can.

So, you know, I like I like to take on things that are going to be hard for my podcast. My podcast takes a lot of time to put together and I release one every single week. And sometimes it's sometimes that means Saturday. In fact, most times it means Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I'm working, I'm reading, I'm preparing for the podcast because during the week I'm working with clients, et cetera. And so but I sign up for it and I get it done.

So that's what I do. I like to sign up for things and and things that are a little bit uncomfortable. I like to I like to bite off a little bit more than I can chew and hope that I don't choke on it. And I usually don't because I will grind until I get that that project or projects done. Do you ever cancel last minute? No, no.

And I've I've written a bunch of books and I've I've turned them in on deadline every single time. I remember one time my was I said, hey, I'm going to be tight on this book, but I'll have it to you by midnight. And my my publisher I think was like my third book. And he said, hey, you can get it to me tomorrow. Most people are two or three months late. And I said, Really? And he said, yeah.

I said, well, I'm not going I'm going to get it to you by midnight. So it's I think schedules I try and deliver.

Well, it's a self discipline that I think most of us lack. I mean, you're extremely self discipline. That's very clear in listening to you and looking at your life story. And I'm sure that's what led to your success as a seal.

But I, I don't know. Is it hard to maintain that in the civilian world or that's just part of you? Because I know you get up every morning, you work out you're big on physical well-being and like, I don't know, are you ever the guy who's like, I don't want to go to that dinner, tell them we're doing something like these just phones and in at the end, because you just overcommitted or you know what I'm saying?

Like, are you ever that guy?

I really don't make a lot of social commitments. I don't go to dinner at people's houses. I don't have you generally. I might do that once a quarter. I'll go to dinner at someone's house because quite frankly, I'd rather hang out with my wife, grab some dinner with her, hang out with my kids and do stuff like that. So I don't I don't have a lot of social commitments out there in the world.

I guess when she doesn't she make you have them. Usually it's the wife saying, we're having dinner with our friends. Oh, my wife is pretty awesome. And she knows that that's not one of my favorite things to do. So she doesn't overcommit on it.

I think she just uses it as a as an excuse. And I think people, my friends actually know me well enough that they don't usually invite me over. So why are you antisocial?

Oh, I don't know if I'm necessarily antisocial, but I'm usually just pretty busy. And so for me, for instance, going to someone's house for dinner, that's a that's a four hour evolution. And meanwhile, dinner for me is is, you know, thirteen minutes and I'm actually reading while I'm eating or I'm at least hanging out with my kids. So I'd say, yeah, four hours versus fifteen minutes. I'd rather get it done in fifteen minutes and yeah I don't know if I'm antisocial but maybe I'm a little bit antisocial.

I think, you know, I spend a lot of time talking to people. I mean whether it's doing the podcast, whether it's working with clients, whether it's going to events. And so I'm interacting with people all the time. And so sometimes when I don't have to interact with people, it's kind of nice. So how long after meeting your wife, did you propose to her? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that I told one of my friends maybe two days later that if if I can't, I'm going to marry this girl.

So it's pretty cool. Wow. I probably could have told you that. 15 seconds. Is she British? She is. She's a Brit. OK.

And so what was it what was it about her? What kind of a woman does JoCo like it? Just like she tough. Does she have sharp edges or is she soft in sort of the yin to your yang?

I would I would go Ying Yang to the yang over here because she's super nice. And that's you know, I realized within 30 seconds of talk to her that she was a really nice, good hearted human being. And then also she was incredibly beautiful. So between those two things, I thought this might be a keeper.

So you have four children together, right? For three girls and a boy? Yep. OK, and did you have similar? Because I know three of them are now college age and one is like 11 or 12. Did you have similar? Do you have similar parenting styles?

I would say that there's a balance there as well. But we're pretty we're in the same ballpark. We're in the same boat.

Are you like are you like a Navy SEAL in the morning? Like, up, get up. I have a run of workout, you know, lift the boat. What what do you do to them? I'm I'm more just like any other leadership positions I've ever been in. I believe in decentralized command. And so with my kids people, this is something I said to a client maybe a month ago. My kids never had curfews. So my older kids, if they went out until whenever they went out, I didn't it was fine.

They could go out with their friends. They could stay over someone's house. I didn't really put restrictions on them other than, hey, what are you doing? Well, in school, are your are your athletics going well? Are you doing your job as a kid? And if you're doing your job as a kid, I trust to you and to make good decisions and so that my kids have a lot of decentralized command, they can wake up whatever they want.

I can tell you right now, my kids wake up early and they can work out whenever they want. And I'll tell you what, my kids work out every day. And it's not because I yell at them or because I tell them to. It's because they understand the importance of being physically fit and getting stuff done. So I've always been sort of a decentralized command tiger and that that absolutely applies with my kids as well. I don't I don't want my kids to be robots.

Right. But like, what happens if they they came home and they did something really stupid?

Yeah. Then there's going to be consequences. And, you know, I had a variety of punishments that I would use with my kids at various stages of their lives. One of them was one of them was smashing toys. So I had to use with my son. I had to use it with my son once. And then once I did it, there was no more issues. But I, I very calmly said, hey, you know what the what you did, you're not allowed to do that.

So I'm going to have to smash one of your toys. And I this is probably what he was, I don't know, seven or eight. No, no. Actually he was probably five or six. Took one of his toys. I had a hammer and I said, yeah, this is what's going to happen. So I took the toy and I said, I'm sorry, I have to do this, but lessons have to get. And I smashed it.

And then I went into his room. I took one of his other favorite toys and I put it in I put it on the table and I said, this one is on deck.

So if you don't want to behave, then this one's next and never had an issue again. I my kids are always scared when I tell them to put their work clothes on. So if I, if I, if I, if I if something happens, I tell you to put your work clothes on, you're going to be doing some serious manual labor. And whether that's pulling weeds or cleaning up garbage or sweeping sand from one side of the driveway to the other side and back again, I can come up with some pretty good physical physical labor that comes into play.

But quite honestly, the amount of punishments that I had to dole out with my kids is very small because they day I think it's more important to just like just like with a with a front line CEO. Look, that front line SEAL is going to be in a situation where you have to make decisions on their own. And if they don't understand the strategy, if they don't understand how what they're doing will impact everything else that's going on, if they don't understand that, you can't count on them to make good decisions.

So you have to make sure they understand not just what to do and what not to do, but why they need to do it or why they need not do it. So if they understand that, OK, now they can make good decisions without direct oversight. So my kids are very they have they they have the luxury of decentralized command because I trust them.

It's the opposite of helicopter parenting. The opposite of helicopter parenting. Yes, they know what they should and should not do, they know the consequences, not consequences from me, but consequences from life. Look, consequences from life are much more stringent than the consequences of a parent. So if they understand that, if they understand what, you know, getting a DUI or going down the path of drugs or whatever type of behavior, reckless behavior, they understand that those consequences are way worse than anything I could I could deliver unto them.

So they know that. And they can make their own decisions based on that knowledge. And those decisions are are good. What did you tell your kids about dealing with bullies? Well, for one thing, my kids are trained jujitsu a lot, and so bullying becomes a lot less of a problem when kids actually know how to fight. And that goes in both directions, both in being a bully and and getting bullied. So when, you know, jujitsu.

Someone's going to bully you and look, if they if they're going to talk to you, whatever, talk back, no big deal, don't you can you can ignore them. Don't worry about what someone's going to say. I said all those to them. Oh, they're just jealous. They they're just jealous of what you are, who you are. And that's OK. Think about their position. You don't know them. And look, I've written them, I've written for kids books and I, I focus heavily on bullying in those books.

And so but when you know jujitsu all of a sudden, not only do you do you know how to fight? But people know you have people know, you know, how to fight in the way you carry yourself is stronger and so you have a lot less chance of being bullied because you're not going to allow that to happen to you.

So a beautiful solution for bullying is learn jujitsu, learn how to fight. And and I know that might sound like I'm a Neanderthal and I'm a knuckle dragging, which I can't deny either one of those two. But when people know who they are, they are less likely to fight and they're less likely to get bullied and they are less likely to bully.

OK, but wait, let me ask you about this, because you got you got three girls. And as you know, girls, they don't often fight with their fists.

They use something far more powerful, which is emotions, social access. I mean, they they put those guys in in Ramadi to shame.

I mean that the 13 year old girl has got powers unseen in certain theaters of war. And so how do you tell your kid to to deal with that? Right. The emotional torture that these young girls can unleash on one another? Yeah, certainly the psychological warfare among the young females is this is a thing to be reckoned with for sure. But once again, if you have that, if you have that level of confidence, then it doesn't only pertain to your to your physical state.

It applies to your mental state as well. It applies to the way you carry yourself. So having that confidence is important. Well, where do you get confidence? You get confidence from knowing how to handle yourself. How do you learn how to handle yourself? Again, it's not just jujitsu, but it's being in good physical condition. It's studying so that you can can articulate what you're talking about. And and like we started this whole conversation off when I was a little kid.

Everyone's going to get bullied. You're everyone's going to get bullied. There's always going to be someone stronger, someone meaner. And so, again, talking your kids through, what if someone is bullying you, let's say, tormenting you verbally, why are they doing that? What situation are they in? What what kind of home life do they have? What what trauma have they been through that they feel so bad about their own life that they want to take it out on you.

So if you can kind of explain that to your kid, it's very helpful because they realize that. They don't need to stoop down to that level, they can they can rise above it and nod their head and smile and say, I hope you feel better tomorrow. It's good.

You know, it's funny because I didn't know that you had written children's books. And one of the things I did in preparing for this interview is I haven't read it yet, but I said to my assistant, get me every single one is written as though they're all sitting there. I'm actually really excited to get started on those with my kids because, you know, too much of the children's books are total nonsense. And now they've gone like, totally woak, which I don't want either.

I want, like, good practical advice for life's situations. And it sounds like these might be right up my alley. And and by the way, it reminds me of you wrote you wrote something not long ago about toxic masculinity and what bullshit this whole thing was about, like the American Psychological Association guidelines on how, you know, you shouldn't control your emotions and you shouldn't be competitive and you shouldn't be dominant and you completely just killed it.

It was actually a great, great piece. But I love that this is one of the lines that you had. A leader must strive for balance and a man must do the same. Be courageous, but not foolhardy, decisive, but not dictatorial, open minded but principled, disciplined, but not rigid. It certainly sounds like you've you've lived that JoCo. And listen, if you don't if you'll indulge me one more second. I really wanted to ask you as somebody who has spent your life the way you have before I let you go, can you just try to sum up what you love about America?

It's pretty simple and straightforward. America is is a wide open opportunity for four people, and it's based on the fact that we have freedom as individuals. And I'm I'm living proof of that. I own multiple businesses right now. We've got a I've got a factory up in Maine where we're making clothing and boots and jeans in America. One hundred percent from the cotton that's grown in the fields and in the south to the the dye houses down there to us bringing that material up and and weaving it up and making this this is just a place of incredible opportunity.

And I think that that's what that's what that's what the strength of America is. The strength of America is. You know, I talked about decentralized command a couple of times today. What what makes America so incredible is we we have decentralized command. You know, you can pick what your goals are and you can go out. And if you want to work hard and you want to dedicate yourself, you can absolutely you can actually absolutely achieve those goals, not based on what someone else does for you, but based on what you do for yourself.

So to me, the individual freedom that we have in this country is the strongest asset. It's just look, decentralized command on the battlefield is the strongest asset you can have, knowing that people are going to make decisions and make things happen based on understanding the goal that they're trying to strive towards. That's the best kind of team. It's the best kind of team in the business world where everybody on the team knows what the goal is and they go out there and they maneuver and work and move the team towards that goal as an individual.

And it's the same thing with this country. We have the individual freedom. You have the freedom to go out and make things happen. And that is what makes America so strong in my mind. And then obviously on top of that, we have incredibly brave people in this country that serve and sacrifice and the fact that every single day there's a new recruit walking into boot camp in the Army, in the Navy, in the Air Force, in the Marine Corps, and no matter what race, gender, male or female, they are stepping into that role.

They're ready to make that sacrifice. And that's why we will always maintain this freedom that we have in this country.

Chacko Willink, thank you for your service. Thank you for being here.

It was an honor to serve and thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Coming up on Friday, don't forget to tune into the show, because we've got country superstar John Rich of Big and Rich. He's a pal, he's a great guy, and he recently spoke to Trump and has a little news for you. He also recently spoke to some senators whose names you will know with a personal warning of Kines from John Rich. And he's going to break a little news on what happened there.

I think you're going to love him. This is a lover of America, folks. He his granny Rich, who instilled him with the proper values. And he's got a deep love of country and a lot of thoughts on how the rest of us need to be thinking about the United States and our government and our connection to one another. And I know you're going to love it. That's John Rich next episode. Don't forget to subscribe, download rate five stars and give me a review, would you, please?

I'm still reading them. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No bias, no agenda and no fear. The Megan Kelly Show is a devil may care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.