This is the JoCo Underground podcast number four with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink.

Good evening. Good evening. Also joining us.

Good deal, Dave. Good evening. All right.

Let's get into this topic of that. So I know I we recorded a podcast earlier today about the Marine Corps document and called Competing. And I know I kind of threw some stuff at you today, kind of in that opening talking about this this leadership and influence continuum.

So. I had neck issues, Manek, Manek, I had I had a problem with my neck I had when I woke up one day, this was years ago, I woke up one day and I couldn't move. My right arm didn't move. So so imagine that you wake up and you can't move. Your right arm had some. So I went to the doctor and they started figuring out what to do because I had basically some problems in my neck that was causing friction on the nerves that control my right arm.

So I had to do some physical therapy and eventually it said they said, you know, you're going to need to get surgery to fix this problem. OK, so they gave me basically two options.

Well, one option was don't get surgery. And you're the longer it's in this condition, the worse chance it has of recovering. So that's not good. But you can do it if you don't want to take any chances of getting surgery.

So they give me two options. So one was called frame anatomy, which they go in through the back of your neck and they basically chip away at some bone and they give the they give some breathing room for your nerves.

The other one they gave you is the other option to give is to get a fusion where they go in the front of your neck and they basically carve a bunch of bone out and then they fused your neck together so that it can't move.

That one is considered to be the. Has has a superior result most of the time. It's also the last. It's also the last resort. It's also you can't escalate from there. The other one, if you let's say you got the frame and economy, the one going through the back and it didn't go well or didn't have the impact that you wanted it to have, well, then you could go, well, it didn't really work the way I wanted to.

Now I want to get the other one. So you at least had one more option.

So as I consider this, actually, there was a there's you talk through the possible problems that you could have, one of the problems and this was back in the day. So one of the problems is you can have when you get a fusion going through the interior of your neck, the front of your neck, when they're going in there, they're close to your vocal cords and they can cut your vocal cords and you can't talk anymore.

Which back then? I mean, it's kind of scary to think now, since the only thing I do for a living is talk, that would not have been cool.

And I was thinking at the time, well, I'm in a leadership position. I need to be able to talk to people that that could be a problem. Also, there's you can die, you know, you can they can just screw up and you can just paralyze you or they can kill you.

So as I'm talking to the doctor who is the best neurosurgeon in the military, in the Navy, on the West Coast, at the time, he was the really skilled guy and he said, so you could die, you this and that. And I said, yeah, you know, what are the chances? I mean, one of the things I said, how many how many sides are on that dice, though? And I said, like, ten thousand.

And he goes. About two hundred, I said to myself, that's not exactly what I wanted to hear.

But then I told him, I said, hey, listen, if I can if my friends can get hit with giant pieces of shrapnel flying through the air and live, I'm sure you with a scalpel on a sterilized surgery table, you can make this happen.

And so I ended up choosing the Frame and Otomi to go in through the back and the main reason why I chose it. Is because you can escalate from there. I had room to maneuver, right? I there was some place to go. If the fusion front fusion doesn't get the desired result, you're just stuck with no with with that, that's what you're stuck with.

So we don't want to paint ourselves into a corner. As far as I can tell, I never want to paint myself into a corner. I never want to leave myself without any options. I don't want to dig in to a particular position. I want to be in a situation that I can't get out of, and this is why it's such a strange thing, because that should be your attitude as far as I'm concerned. I don't know. In my opinion, your attitude should be I don't want to be stuck in a position, should feel to feel wrong.

If you're trapping yourself in a position which is weird because there's a counter to that, which is you have to be super determined. Right. You have to be you have to be super determined. In order to move forward through tough challenges, you've got to be determined, so you've got to balance that thing between being very determined, but at the same time wanting to keep an open mind about what your options are.

When I have both those things kind of going on. And I think for me, a lot of this boils down to. Thinking strategically versus thinking tactically. We want to start thinking strategically instead of thinking tactically, which everyone knows this or you should know this. We shouldn't be doing things that benefit us in the short term if they don't benefit us in the long term as well. They're not worth doing, I'm sure. Are there some little things AIDS?

We've got a little benefit, so I'm going to do it right now. It's no there's no strategic harm or whatever. OK, fine. But I'm talking as a habitual way of living.

We don't want to do a bunch of things that are beneficial to us in the short term that hurt us in the long term.

I mean, just think about your habits as a human being between if you decipher or you discriminate between, this is good for me long term. This is only good for me. Short term, you could make so many decisions and they'd be awesome if you did things only that were good for you in the long term and not just things that are good for you in the short term, but they're bad for you in the long term. The goal, of course, is great.

We have something that's good for you in the short term. Good for you in the long term. Super great. That's a no brainer. We don't even need to talk about that one. But how do we how do we actually start?

Thinking in a way that we can think about the bigger picture. That we can think strategically instead of thinking tactically. Obviously, you got to keep your ego in check because we chase little tactical victories all the time, we chase little tactical victories all the time when it comes to leadership. Right. OK, do we chase a donut because it don't taste good? Sure we do that. That's a strategic strategic loss. It's a tactical win. It is good.

I feel good for twenty eight minutes after I eat a donut and then after thirty two minutes I feel like a loser.

I'm probably less than that. Could even be less than that. Twenty five seconds. Twenty eight, twenty eight seconds, you feel like bad, yeah, after the you figure once it's down, it's almost immediate to face it as far as donuts go. Yeah, good point.

Good point. But we do it. People do it.

I mean, whole whole swaths of society make that decision.

That's going to feel good right now, even though they know they can start the stopwatch in twenty eight seconds from now, we're going to feel bad about it. So that's the that's an extreme example.

It's an extreme example. But do you think about something that there's a little less negative, immediate impact, maybe skipping work out?

Maybe I'm going to maybe I'm going to win this argument now. I can't think strategically because my ego's a problem because I want to win the argument. I want to prove that I'm right so badly that. I will I will detract from our relationship. I'll move things in the wrong direction, but I win this tactical moment because of my ego, which is crazy to think that we would actually do that.

And we do it all the time. People do it all the time. So how do we how do we start moving towards strategic thinking instead of. Short term tactical thinking for obviously got to get your ego in check.

The second thing that you got to get up to altitude, you got to get up to altitude where you can see more than just this donut or just this argument, you got to get up to altitude. And what you have to be able to do a little bit is you have to be able to see into the future. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the JOCO Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

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