Jocko Willink is a retired United States Navy officer in SEAL Team 3, an author and a podcaster. In a world overflowing with choices, we often confuse freedom with indulgence. But real freedom—the kind that builds confidence, resilience, and leadership—comes from discipline. From forging inner strength alone to leading elite teams of Navy SEALs, Jocko's life proves that discipline is the foundation for true autonomy. Expect to learn how people can be more confident with their decision making, the best tactics to overcome fear, what it’s actually like to be in a firefight, what people misunderstand about what ‘Discipline equals freedom’ actually means, what a disciplined like looks like to Jocko, how to train mental toughness, Jocko’s thoughts on the new administration and military recruitment numbers, if we’re close to a major conflict, how men can be better about handling their emotions, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
I know that you're a fan of the Thomas Sowell quote, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. What's that mean to you?
that you're never going to completely solve anything in your life or in the world. And there's always going to be compromises that you have to make. And if you aren't willing to make those compromises or you don't keep your mind open for those compromises, you're going to run into some real problems.
But if you look at it and the fact that, you know, you might put a little more effort over here and it's going to take away from some effort over there, you can't just do everything at once. So yeah, no solutions, only trade-offs.
How do you deal with the tension of feeling that other thing pull away from you, right? You know that you need to focus and you know that by focusing on one thing, another thing is going to start to drop away. But the classic overachiever mindset is, well, everything needs to be growing at all times. So there's an emotional pain of watching something stagnate or watching something fall behind.
How do you try and navigate that?
You just have to figure out what the priority is. And at certain times, you know, certain things might be a higher priority right now than it is at some other point and something else picks up. And sometimes the family needs to be the priority.
Sometimes the business, sometimes the other business, sometimes the health, like you're just going to have to weigh those things out and recognize that, you you can't do them all simultaneously at the same time all the time. It's just, it's not going to work. So you got to figure out where you make some compromises. We're gonna make some trade-offs. Yeah.
The, uh, the sentence, you can be anything you want, but you can't be everything you want is so good for that. And, uh, Especially if you like novelty, like doing lots of different things. Oh, this is interesting to me. I'm curious. I want to... Yeah, okay, dude, but there is a limit, right? And when you start to... It's the most obvious thing in the world.
If you spread yourself too thinly across lots of different things, you can't be that great at all of them. You can't be really that great at any of them after you start to spin it up after a while.
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