- Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and leadership instructor
- He says the key to success is embracing your insecurities and asking for help
- Jocko also says hitting rock bottom can sometimes be for the best for rebuilding
A former Navy Seal has revealed the tricks he learned while in training that helped him overcome anxiety in his everyday life, detailing how reaching ‘rock bottom’ actually helped him to find happiness.
Jocko Willink, 52, is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and co-founder of the leadership training organization, Echelon Front.
The former SEAL, who says he has been interested in military and combat since he was a young child, has now opened up about how his combat training helped him to develop mental coping mechanisms that he still uses today during a podcast interview on The Diary of a CEO.
After joining the military at 18, Jocko, who is also a New York Times bestseller, signed a contract that included him going to Navy SEAL training. He went on to spent 20 years as a SEAL, rising to an officer rank.
‘Navy SEAL is a part of the Navy but you’re the Special Operations component of the Navy, and the the term seal is actually an acronym which stands for sea air and land,’ Jocko explained to host Steven Bartlett.
Jocko said only about 20 per cent of of people make it through SEAL training, and for people under 20 it goes down to five per cent.
The former SEAL said they more or less try and recreate combat similar to World War II and see how prospective SEALs behave.
‘They compressed a bunch of that combat simulation,’ he further explains. ‘It’s about five and a half days, no sleep, lots of physical activity, lots of stress lots of pain and lots of people quit.’
He said around 80 per cent of people quit within the first week of training.
‘There’s some internal drive that you either have or you don’t have, and if you have it you won’t quit and if you don’t have it you’re going to quit,’ he said simply.
He also voice a somewhat controversial take that some people have a ‘will to live,’ while others simply don’t.
‘There’s some people that had a will that they were not gonna die,’ Jocko said adamant, in reference to soldiers in combat.
‘And the people that die, they they did not have the will to live.’
Jocko says the key to overcoming anxiety is through building confidence – in whatever way possible.
He acknowledged that rejection hurts and your ego can suffer – but it’s all about how you handle it and rebound.
‘I think we can all think of people in our lives – and maybe even ourselves – at times who have gotten into a chronic pattern of using excuses and blame as a form of self-defense,’ Steven agreed.
He continued: ‘Because we don’t want to [turn] that mirror back at us and have to confront reality.’
Jocko says reaching rock bottom can be a good tool for rebuilding confidence in your own life, because you are the only person who can fix it.
‘People can actually confront the fact…
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .