Who is Jocko Willink?
Jocko Willink is a decorated former Navy SEAL who served several tours in Iraq as a SEAL teams commander. He is now a motivational speaker, podcaster, leadership expert, and a legend in the self-development field.
What is Extreme Ownersnip?
Jocko is best known for his book and TED talk entitled, Extreme Ownership, in which he details the events of an Iraq mission gone wrong. Circumstances beyond his control caused the mission to end in casualties. He took extreme ownership by accepting responsibility for the incident even though he wasn’t directly at fault. He tells the story that his superiors respected him more for this than if he’d tried to explain the incident away.
Caveat:
Before we go any further, I want to preface this critique by saying that Jocko Willink is one of my personal heroes. I’m a massive Jocko fan and he’s one of the few in the self-development field that I look up to and consider a role model.
And now on to my critique:
I recently talked to someone who knows Jocko as a friend. This person told me a story of an interaction he had with Jocko that highlights this aspect of Jocko’s personality and personal philosophy.
This person had a heart condition that went untreated for years. It was totally asymptomatic so there was no indication that something was wrong. This person went to all his scheduled medical checkups, had all the usual tests, and kept very close track of his health. Because the condition was undetectable, his doctors missed the signs and this individual felt perfectly healthy. He had no reason to believe anything was wrong.
Things started to deteriorate and he began to lose energy and focus. He went back to his doctors, but no matter what tests they ran or blood samples they took, they couldn’t find anything wrong with him.
After many tests that kept coming back negative, the doctors finally ran a very obscure test and discovered the condition already in an advanced stage. That same day, in the same office where they took the test, the doctors told this person, “You’re going into surgery right now.” They didn’t even let him leave the office. The condition had progressed to the lethal stage and they rushed him to emergency surgery then and there.
This person went through several heart surgeries, and at the time he told me this story, he still had one more to go.
When this person told Jocko what happened, Jocko’s response was, “You should have picked it up sooner.”
This is the essence of extreme ownership. It’s taking ownership, responsibility, and accountability of absolutely everything, no matter what it is, even things that are beyond our control.
Many of us who grew up in abusive families. Those who have been in any kind of abusive or toxic relationship understand this.
Holding someone responsible for something that is totally beyond their control is a form of coercion.
It’s a form of mental abuse that is the cornerstone of all abusive relationships.
Substance abuse, unhealthy eating, and every other kind of dysfunctional behavior is based on holding ourselves responsible for things we can’t control.
Abusers hold us responsible for the weather, for the actions, thoughts, and feelings of other people, for the abuser having a bad day at work, for things that happened to them in the past, and anything else they can think up to blame us for instead of the blaming person responsible—or for things for which no one is responsible.
They use this as a “reason” to punish us for things that may have happened before we were born or otherwise weren’t present for.
The list of things we can’t control is myriad. It would be impossible even to list them all, let alone control them.
We shouldn’t take responsibility for them. Not only is this not healthy. It’s actually the worst kind of conceit to think that we’re powerful enough or important enough to control all these things.
It’s extremely unhealthy to take ownership for someone else’s feelings and reactions.
It’s extremely unhealthy to say that we should have foreseen something that was impossible to foresee.
We could have been taking all prudent steps to foresee every possible contingency. Even then, we might still not see something coming.
We can’t and shouldn’t take responsibility for that.
We can deal with it. We can take responsibility for handling the situation in the present.
We cannot and should not ever hold ourselves responsible or take ownership of the thing happening.
Those of us that grew up with this kind of abuse internalize it until it becomes an integrated part of our thinking.
We carry it into adulthood where it develops into unhealthy relationships with food, substances, other people, ourselves, or bodies—the list is endless.
We continue to carry the burden of holding ourselves responsible for an unlimited list of actions, events, and even other people’s thoughts and feelings over which we have absolutely no control.
I’m all in favor of personal accountability and taking full responsibility of those aspects of our lives we can control.
I’m also in favor of creating contingency plans that prepare ourselves to deal with unforeseen circumstances, most of which are beyond our control.
It’s foolish—even pathological—to hold ourselves responsible for things we can’t control. This is the cornerstone—the very foundation—of coercion and we should strenuously avoid it at all costs.
It is absolutely critical that we do not EVER take responsibility for things we can’t control.
As with all my critiques, there is no doubt in my mind that Jocko is trying to improve his audience’s lives and to do his best for them in all areas.
I don’t question his motives nor do I think he’s doing this to be malicious, harmful, or confusing. Like most self-improvement influencers, he genuinely cares about his audience, which is why he puts out his content for free.
I’m doing the same thing. I want to help my audience and give them tools that will actually work to improve their lives.
I consider it my job to point out other methods that would let the audience down, cause them setbacks or failures, or might actively harm someone who used those tools. We all want what’s best for our audiences. I offer this critique in the spirit of service to everyone who reads it.
God Bless.
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