#949 - Jocko Willink - How To Build Unstoppable Confidence

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 119 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I know that you're a fan of the Thomas Soul quote,
0:02.6	there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
0:05.8	What's that mean to you?
0:07.5	That you're never going to completely solve anything in your life or in the world,
0:11.8	and there's always going to be compromises that you have to make.
0:14.4	And if you aren't willing to make those compromises or you don't keep your mind open for those
0:18.9	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
0:25.4	over here that's going to take away from some effort over there, you can't just do everything at
0:29.5	once. So, yeah, no solutions, only tradeoffs. How do you deal with the tension of feeling that other thing pull away from you, right? You know that you
0:40.3	need to focus and you know that by focusing on one thing, another thing is going to start to drop
0:44.1	away. But the classic overachiever mindset is, well, everything needs to be growing at all times.
0:50.2	So there's an emotional pain watching something stagnate or watching something fall behind.
0:55.5	How do you try and navigate that?
0:57.1	You just have to figure out what the priority is.
0:59.9	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.
1:07.0	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
1:14.6	recognize that you can't do them all simultaneously at the same time, all the time. It's just,
1:20.0	it's not going to work. So you've got to figure out, we're going to make some compromises.
1:23.2	We're going to make some tradeoffs. Yeah, the, uh, the sentence, you can be anything you want, but you can't be everything you want,
1:29.0	is so good for that.
1:31.1	And especially if you like novelty, like doing lots of different things.
1:35.5	Oh, this is interesting to me.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 15 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Chris Williamson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Chris Williamson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.