My Wife Stopped Fighting With Me After I Took This Simple Advice Jocko Willink | Carlos Mendez

0:00 you know if you push hard against your kids they're going to push back if you start imposing stuff on people they're going to start to push back you can impose things on people which is not going to produce the type of humans that you want extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that actually helped your marriage that attitude you know I come back home I'm I'm I'm having some personal issues um you know with with my wife at the time and um you know instead of trying to work things out and and be a good husband which you know I look back on I I could have done a much much better job of you know I look back at that marriage I'm like hey you know that that's 100% my fault I wasn't a very empathetic person um marriage is tough

0:46 thing and it's even tougher when you're young and you know it's even tougher when you married a teen guy who's gone all the time and I didn't think about that you know I'm just like you know she moved right from parents house to me and I'm just like I don't understand what you're complaining about anyways there's a lot of t between her and I she served me divorce papers and um instead of you know trying to take a knee and work things out what do I do they're like hey uh there's Corman needed for this Afghanistan deployment and I'm like I'll go so I end up volunteering for for a very short augment mhm before I go to trade at and and they knew that I didn't want to go to trade at so they were like hey you've got some time here at team one before you check in to trade it cool that was kind of like you know my gimme

1:31 so they're like cool go do that and so I come back from that deployment and then that's when I I check in the trade it and um you're did are you married again at this point yeah so um so yeah so when I was in traded I actually met my wife she was uh my waitress a very uh classy establishment mhm Jack called Hooters but uh I went in there with a team guy and I remember seeing her and I'm thinking like oh my God she's gorgeous like there's absolutely no way someone like that would you know go for someone like me and it turns out that I had gone a couple dates with one of her friends so she had told so she told her friend she's like oh you know I saw that that guy he sat at my table that you were dating she's like oh we're not dating anymore she was like do you care if I

2:17 get his number she's like no yeah so that's how he ended up um a meeting and so at this point you know we've been together for a while since tryad and now I was already you know at my OIC and she was just like hey you need to marry me if you don't marry me before this deployment I'm not going to be here when you get back so ultimatum delivered check and and and you know it was a hard decision for me because I was like man I love this woman but we we you know we fought a lot and during that deployment that one to to Iraq our relationship was very very stressed during that and you had just got married before you went on deployment yeah yeah yeah yeah and I'm thinking myself like you know I'm going to fail at this marriage thing again

3:03 like what am I what what am I doing wrong here and what's crazy is like when I was at trade at you know you talked about the the the four laws of combat a lot and we talked about like find what your red flags are and in the teams my red flag when I got overwhelmed was uh you know when that thought came in my head like I don't know what to do right now that was my cue to detach prioritize and execute and for the longest time I thought these four laws of combat this this own was only combat related and it was the first time in my life where I realized that it's for your personal life too because at that point you know I got back from deployment we're still fighting a lot but I'm like man I love this woman I don't want I don't want to fail at this marriage thing again and in my head I thought I don't know what to

3:48 do right now and that's when it clicked for me like wait a minute I've had this thought like literally hundreds of times when I'm on training missions where I'm like oh I'm a little overwhelmed I don't know what to do right now detach prioritize execute and so at that point I'm like I need to detach prioritize and execute in my personal life and it was at that point in my life where I decided to to start taking ownership of of my mistakes and realize that you know what I'm an imperfect human being too and I stopped concentrating on everything that I thought was a flaw on her part and just started concentrating on how I could become a better husband so I'm like hey you know what this is what I do wrong and this is how I can fix it I have no control over her attitude I have no the things that I don't have control over I stopped

4:34 worrying about them and I started concentrating on the things that I could control and at first it was a little bit of a campaign cuz you could tell that she was like what are you doing and then and then it got to the point where she started doing the same thing like we just started taking ownership of our parts of the marriage and I stopped worrying about what she did wrong and only worried about what I was doing wrong and eventually she started this to do the same and and her marriage has completely turned around since then and you know it's all marriage you got Peaks and valleys but it's it's been is amazing freaking kind of like when you're in a platoon like where everybody's taking ownership of stuff no one's blaming anybody else we're just trying to solve problems and that's how that environment finally was in my marriage so yeah it's it's funny when

5:22 you talk about like when you're in a platoon and everyone starts taking ownership stuff you know problems get solved what's crazy is the opposite of that it's not one level of Badness when people aren't taking ownership cuz when they're not taking ownership they're blaming each other so it's not just oh we're going to blame each other and that's that's not good that's not good but guess what else is coming now we're fighting we're yelling at each other like it causes exponential problems Beyond just it's not just oh if I take ownership the problems get solved if I don't take ownership the problems don't get solved if it was that simple it'd be like you probably deal with it but if now we actually are fighting we're undermining each other we're yelling at each other we we we turn into freaking idiots and so yeah and that can happen in people's personal lives too you know

6:08 you it's not just that oh well we've got this problem in our marriage and it's not my fault it's your fault if that's where it stopped you might be able to muddle your way through it but that's not where it stops it stops when you say it's your fault and they go what do you mean it's my fault actually here's some nine things that are your fault but all of a sudden we have not just one little problem that's not getting solved you have exponential problems across the board it's a freaking disaster I went back and read the book again but in a different way cuz the first time I read it I was like okay I want to be a better leader in combat so that's kind of like the vision I had when I was reading it and then the second time I'm like wait a minute I'm going to read it from my life my personal life so yeah yeah that's a good s lens it's such a useful switch where like cuz that's a big thing right where it's like oh yeah these big bad

6:54 Navy Seals they're going to tell me how to run my daycare center like bro no way like real life no way but it's like yes exactly right where it's like the Navy see like all the combat stuff that's just the example essentially it's just an example of these principles like you being used in these like situations or whatever but and since they they are useful in everything if you look at it in in the sense of where this is they're talking to me for my specific situation and using the the battlefield as a metaphor for sure but they're talking to me for me for my specific situation it's like oh shoot everything checks out yep and as you read things from different perspectives like yeah you can read it from a professional perspective like you did the first time Carlos then you read it from a personal perspective the next

7:41 time but then guess what happens you get promoted read it again you see it from another perspective again then you have a problem where you get moved to a new team and everything's the Dynamics are different read it again it's a you will have a different perspective and you will pick up more things from those books yeah it's a game changer uh you know a lot of times people ask me questions about because I got kids and parenting and all that stuff and one thing I warn K warn parents of you know if you push hard against your kids oh yeah they're going to push back and by the way this isn't just with kids this is with a seal platoon this is with a company this is with a business you start imposing stuff on people they're going to start to push back because they're humans and humans don't like to have things imposed on them and you can by the way you can impose things on people permanently but you have to like

8:26 crush them and you have to continuously crush them forever and you have to be willing to go to that distance where you crush them which is not going to produce the type of humans that you want yeah here's your your dad saying hey you can't go out with your friends or sorry your stepdad saying you can't go out with your friends Etc your mom's super strict and it makes you want to not do what they're telling you to do 100% when they impose things on you it makes you not want to do it this other dude says hey you do what you want just you know just let me know what you're doing and you all of a sudden want to follow the rules it's like so such simple psychology on human beings when you impose things on people they don't like it when you give them Freedom they're going to take advantage of it in in a positive way I don't here's something interesting like I have grown kids now I

9:12 have one that's not grown but my other kids are you know uh how old 22 20 and 18 they didn't have curfews like like I'd just be like oh yep cool oh you know go out this is when they were 13 years old 15 years old I'd say okay you know let me know where you're going sometimes hey you know when are you going to be back are you coming back tonight and I just let him do what they want to do and they all turned out they they all are fine you know which I mean you to funny you're like stuttering then they all well you know they're fine I mean they're all good kids I mean they're all they are actually all they all good kids they all like you know are on really good paths in life and I I never now if you were to

9:58 step there was some incidents that took place along the way some some things that need some corrective measures needed to be imposed from time to time if things got a little bit too far out of line and that happened a few times but then it was like oh they'd get back in line and realize and then I would just give them kind of give them their freedom back but you know what one of the key things is that you said is and I tell this to people all the time treat them like adults especially when they're in that age this is this is a trick too this is a little trick to this there's an age where oh you're 14 years old oh you think think you can you want to be you want to be an adult okay cool guess what adults have jobs guess what adults do pay bills they pay rent they pay for their cell phone they pay for their food so you want to be treated like an adult you want to do whatever you want cool I can treat you like an adult you owe rent or you know you need

10:45 to pay for food and all that stuff and they realize really quick that's a real good appreciation tool they you want to make somebody appreciate what they've got make treat them like an adult and and they kind of they're thinking they want to get treated like an adult and then when they start getting treated like adult they go hey I'm cool with being a kid for a little bit longer yes sir thanks for joining us everybody hey if you want to get into these a little bit deeper or you want to talk to us directly you go to extreme ownership. comom you can join our online Leadership Academy we talk about this stuff this stuff is what we live for and in the meantime thank you for listening to us now go lead