October 5, 2024 • 15 mins
It can easy to get overwhelmed with the details of a situation and find ourselves a bit stuck. Sometimes we have a very narrow view when focusing on specifics that we fail to see the big picture. One of the lessons I've learned from Jocko Willink is to take a minute to detach from the details and take a wider view. This will often reveal things that you weren't seeing and help you find a way forward.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I was re listening to one ofjocko's books. It was the leadership strategy and tactics. And
he was talking about,
he talks about a lot of coolstuff in that book, but one thing that I wanted to talk about today was he was talking about detaching. And so all
(00:21):
he if you read any of his books,he goes through like stories from when he was in the military. And so this particular story about when he was learning
about detaching from thesituation, so you can kind of see things a little better. I
think he was on a trainingmission, and he said that everybody on the team was
(00:43):
looking down their rifles andlike scanning for targets and shit, and even the even the leader of the platoon, or I don't know what it was, even the
leader, the person in charge,was also doing that. So everybody had this field of view that was pretty narrow, and they were all scanning for targets,
(01:04):
and
Jocko, in his head, was waitingfor an order. So he was watching everybody scan for targets and waiting for an order to come in, and
the order didn't come. Youwaited a little longer, the order didn't come. So, long story short, he ended up
putting his rifle in high port,which my understanding is like when you point the barrel up to the sky, so it's in a safe direction, and then
(01:33):
doing that. And I think he saidhe took a step back, like a physical step back, so he could really see everything that was going on,
and so no longer does he havethat really narrow field of view. Now he has a full, you know, 360 or 180 or whatever he was looking at. He had a much
better view of the situation,and he saw pretty clearly what call needed to happen. So he made the call and what he learned from that was sometimes
(02:05):
you have to detach from thesituation in order to really be able to see what's going on.
So when I was listening to that,and I'm thinking about it on the level of kind of talking about this information with my team, because I'm trying to bring up
some new leaders, and
I think, I think the ability todetach and look at the whole situation is a vital skill, and it's something that I forget to practice all the time.
(02:34):
And
so I remembered a scenario,pretty much like most of this year, I failed to detach, and
I caused myself a lot morestress than I would have had I had I kind of had the
(02:55):
had that top of mind, and beenable to do that. So
one of the examples is,
is so I think it was towards thebeginning of the year I started
how much detail I should getinto with this. That's
so I was looking at profits. Anda lot of the profits was,
(03:18):
what we had determined was,we're putting too much into marketing.
You know, the percentage of ourincome was too much of the too high of a percentage was going towards marketing. And I believe in marketing, and I believe in
the power of it, but I thinksome of the strategies where we're using were ineffective or not as effective as they should have been. So it was sort of
(03:41):
eating up the profit. So I was,I was implementing some strategies where I was reducing the ad spend and trying to
to make up for that in otherareas. And
so, you know, we'reincrementally reducing the ad spend, and I'm trying to do other things. So we're testing, and unless you hit the thing
(04:06):
right the very first time, whichis rare, you're going to have, like, some kind of grace period, or some kind of lull, or something in sales, where you're
you're taking marketing spendaway, but and so less money is coming in. So
even though I was like,completely aware that that's what I was doing,
(04:28):
I still was like, super focusedon the daily sales and those numbers going down. And then I kept kind of doing what I was doing, and the numbers got down
to where it was like,
you know, it was not going to besustainable moving forward. So I was really starting to panic,
and because I was so focused onthat one thing, I mean, obviously I was, I was focused on other things, trying to come up with new strategies and
(04:55):
everything. But I had so muchfocus on the fact that the numbers were going down.
It was almost as if I forgotthat the numbers were going down as a result of an action that I was taking. So my mind was going into all these different places,
like, Oh, shit. What if, like,you know, something's happening and, you know, this bad economy is starting to catch up to us, or, you know, maybe I made a bad
(05:18):
move somewhere else, like notthinking about the marketing ad ad spend going down, which is would make perfect sense that, you know, less money would come
in as you're trying to figurethings out. So I spent a good part of the year super stressed out and really panicking about,
you know, the business, becausewe weren't really bringing in enough
(05:42):
at the at the rate that that wewere going. So I was, like, really worried, you know. And then, you know, I made some moves and and figured some shit
out and, and then now we're, youknow, even though the marketing spend has been reduced, we're making more than we ever have. So like, I figured some shit
out.
(06:03):
And so by figuring some shitout, my mind, like, I'm not gonna take credit and say that I I purposely detached, because that's not what happened. What
happened was I was testingthings, and something that I tested worked, which led to some other things working, and so on and so forth. And ended up kind
(06:24):
of getting some things figuredout. So then the sales were back, not only back to where I wanted them, but they were much higher. So
my Jesus Christ, this turn isthe worst. So my stress levels went down because,
because the problem that I wasfocusing on was was no longer the problem, you know,
(06:50):
and so I inadvertently detachedand realized I was like, I've been stressing about this this whole time, and I was stressing about the wrong shit, like I
was, I was sitting here worriedthat all these other outside circumstances were happening, and that's why the sales went down. But it was my own actions
of intentionally reducing thatad spend which was what resulted in that so
(07:16):
I could have saved myself somuch stress had I just really thought about this detach and really look at what's going on. And started really running
numbers like, what I'm doingnow. So like, I have like ways of tracking and seeing, like, how much
I don't know I'm getting too inthe weeds here, but I just have a much better way of looking and analytically seeing like, this is how much is going out, this
(07:42):
is how much is coming in. Thisis working. This is not working, and things like that. Now I'm more detached and am able to see the whole big picture
and so, so then another, anotherthing, like just in my overall life, just like my mental health and stuff. I've also kind of felt like I've been, like, sort
(08:05):
of operating at a lowerfrequency than I want, I want to be, you know, like I'm I'm more unhappy and more stressed out. I signed up for stress. I'm not
saying stress is bad. It's just,you know, it's kind of part of the game in some, some way.
But I felt like, you know, therewas just a lot more than than should have been happening in terms of just my own mental state. So
(08:36):
it's real easy to, like, lookoutside of yourself and be like, Oh, well, you know, the economy is fucked up, like the world is just kind of weird. At least our
country is super weird rightnow. There's just a lot of like, strange stuff happening that I don't really quite understand. And,
you know, and then now we're anelection kind of cycle, so like, everybody's fucking acting like weirdos.
(09:03):
I don't know if weird is theright word, but just, you know,
there's like, a heightenedfucking fuckery going on. I don't know how I want to explain it. I don't want to get too far into all this shit, but it was,
it's easy to look outside of youand be like this is all happening, and that's that's why I'm stressed out, or that's why my frequency is not as high as I
(09:26):
want it to be. But that's not,
that's not. I don't find that tobe a reasonable thing, because no matter what's happening around you, it doesn't mean you have to allow that to to change
your mindset, and it changed theway that you feel or
affect your mental health. Itdoesn't have to, and you can look to lots of different people, like
(09:53):
Viktor Frankl was in aconcentration camp, and he was able to maintain.
Mindset that he wanted to have,like, obviously he was suffering and he saw this stuff happening. But, you know, he's the guy that has that phrase between stimulus
and response lies, what is it?Shit between stimulus and response lies a space, and within that space is your ability to respond, or something
(10:23):
along those lines. But basicallywhat it means is like something happens. And for in his case, all this crazy shit is happening because he's in a concentration
camp. He's seeing people dyingall around him. That's the stimulus. And then that space between that stimulus and his response, that's where his
freedom is. He he gets to decidehow that's going to affect him.
(10:47):
And I can't think of a muchworse existence than to be in that, you know, and somebody like Epictetus,
one of the most well known Stoicphilosophers, and talks about
things like, you know, thingsthat are beyond your control don't have the ability to affect, like, how you think and your freedom inside your own
(11:09):
mind. And he was a slave duringall of that, most of the time or not. I don't know how long he was a slave for, but he was a slave from when, I think it was,
from when he was a kid until hewas
quite a bit older. I wish Ishould know this, but either way, he was able to maintain these stoic philosophy, these stoic virtues, while being a
(11:34):
slave. So
what that tells me is that youknow, you could be in this terrible situation. And it doesn't necessarily mean it has to affect what's going on in
your own mind. Like, obviouslythere's certain things you know that are happening, like you could physically be detained or beaten, or all these kind of
(11:55):
things. But the way that theseguys who were going through some horrible things we're talking about. It is like, you know, those things don't have the
power to affect my mind. That'smy that's under my control. And so when I'm sitting here worried about my own shit, which is obviously no nowhere near
(12:16):
in the same fucking universe asthe shit that those guys were going through,
I was finding it easy to put iton outside circumstances, and I took the time to detach and think like, well, what am I doing that's potentially causing
this lower frequency that Idon't want to be in? And it was pretty easy to see that it was like, I wasn't, I wasn't doing all of the things that I know
(12:42):
help me be at a higher frequencyand like that's taking care of your mind, body and your spirit, or your soul, or whatever you believe in is. And so what are
those things that I that I usedto do, that I'm no longer doing? And
it's three things, well, not nolonger, but not doing them with the consistency that I think I should be. So the three things are
(13:08):
reading, meditating and workingout, and then, you know, there's other stuff that goes along with it, like eating well, and,
you know, doing what I need todo at my business and stuff like that. But
so I made a commitment thatevery day I'm going to read 10 pages, I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes, and I'm going to do some kind of intense workout for
(13:31):
at least 15 minutes. And I know15 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, but
I am more looking at and 10minutes of meditation isn't a lot either, but I'm looking at gaining these habits again, so I'm not going to go, Okay, I
only really read 10 pages a day.I think that's perfectly fine, so that's not going to change. But I would prefer to meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, and I'd
(13:58):
prefer to work out maybe alittle bit longer, but I
just want to get those habitsgoing again. And so I started doing that, and I started putting that on my power list as three items that go on there
every day I have to do thesethree things. These are the three things I have to do.
And as soon as I started doingthat with some regularity, I started feeling better, because
(14:22):
even though the effects of thoseactions maybe take some time to really settle in,
the fact that I was back ontrack with the things that I know I need to do to to help
that was enough to really startto clear up a lot of my
a lot of my issues in my headthat I was having so
(14:45):
So I guess the overall topic ofthe conversation here is,
you know, anything that's goingon in your life, in your business, at work, or whatever, if you take the time to detach and step back and.
At everything
and really look at like, whatare you doing that's causing any of this stuff, even if it is totally outside of your control, you know where what's your part?
(15:12):
Instead of, like, blaming onother shit, if you detach and really look at what your part is, there's likely a lot of different moves you can make
that are gonna at least startgetting you in a better path. So,
yeah, that's it. Alright. I'm atwork. I gotta go. I will see you next time.
(15:41):
All right,
appreciate each and every one ofyou guys who are supporting the cause and continue to spread the love and yeah, stay up.
I was re listening to one ofjocko's books. It was the leadership strategy and tactics. And
he was talking about,
he talks about a lot of coolstuff in that book, but one thing that I wanted to talk about today was he was talking about detaching. And so all
(00:21):
he if you read any of his books,he goes through like stories from when he was in the military. And so this particular story about when he was learning
about detaching from thesituation, so you can kind of see things a little better. I
think he was on a trainingmission, and he said that everybody on the team was
(00:43):
looking down their rifles andlike scanning for targets and shit, and even the even the leader of the platoon, or I don't know what it was, even the
leader, the person in charge,was also doing that. So everybody had this field of view that was pretty narrow, and they were all scanning for targets,
(01:04):
and
Jocko, in his head, was waitingfor an order. So he was watching everybody scan for targets and waiting for an order to come in, and
the order didn't come. Youwaited a little longer, the order didn't come. So, long story short, he ended up
putting his rifle in high port,which my understanding is like when you point the barrel up to the sky, so it's in a safe direction, and then
(01:33):
doing that. And I think he saidhe took a step back, like a physical step back, so he could really see everything that was going on,
and so no longer does he havethat really narrow field of view. Now he has a full, you know, 360 or 180 or whatever he was looking at. He had a much
better view of the situation,and he saw pretty clearly what call needed to happen. So he made the call and what he learned from that was sometimes
(02:05):
you have to detach from thesituation in order to really be able to see what's going on.
So when I was listening to that,and I'm thinking about it on the level of kind of talking about this information with my team, because I'm trying to bring up
some new leaders, and
I think, I think the ability todetach and look at the whole situation is a vital skill, and it's something that I forget to practice all the time.
(02:34):
And
so I remembered a scenario,pretty much like most of this year, I failed to detach, and
I caused myself a lot morestress than I would have had I had I kind of had the
(02:55):
had that top of mind, and beenable to do that. So
one of the examples is,
is so I think it was towards thebeginning of the year I started
how much detail I should getinto with this. That's
so I was looking at profits. Anda lot of the profits was,
(03:18):
what we had determined was,we're putting too much into marketing.
You know, the percentage of ourincome was too much of the too high of a percentage was going towards marketing. And I believe in marketing, and I believe in
the power of it, but I thinksome of the strategies where we're using were ineffective or not as effective as they should have been. So it was sort of
(03:41):
eating up the profit. So I was,I was implementing some strategies where I was reducing the ad spend and trying to
to make up for that in otherareas. And
so, you know, we'reincrementally reducing the ad spend, and I'm trying to do other things. So we're testing, and unless you hit the thing
(04:06):
right the very first time, whichis rare, you're going to have, like, some kind of grace period, or some kind of lull, or something in sales, where you're
you're taking marketing spendaway, but and so less money is coming in. So
even though I was like,completely aware that that's what I was doing,
(04:28):
I still was like, super focusedon the daily sales and those numbers going down. And then I kept kind of doing what I was doing, and the numbers got down
to where it was like,
you know, it was not going to besustainable moving forward. So I was really starting to panic,
and because I was so focused onthat one thing, I mean, obviously I was, I was focused on other things, trying to come up with new strategies and
(04:55):
everything. But I had so muchfocus on the fact that the numbers were going down.
It was almost as if I forgotthat the numbers were going down as a result of an action that I was taking. So my mind was going into all these different places,
like, Oh, shit. What if, like,you know, something's happening and, you know, this bad economy is starting to catch up to us, or, you know, maybe I made a bad
(05:18):
move somewhere else, like notthinking about the marketing ad ad spend going down, which is would make perfect sense that, you know, less money would come
in as you're trying to figurethings out. So I spent a good part of the year super stressed out and really panicking about,
you know, the business, becausewe weren't really bringing in enough
(05:42):
at the at the rate that that wewere going. So I was, like, really worried, you know. And then, you know, I made some moves and and figured some shit
out and, and then now we're, youknow, even though the marketing spend has been reduced, we're making more than we ever have. So like, I figured some shit
out.
(06:03):
And so by figuring some shitout, my mind, like, I'm not gonna take credit and say that I I purposely detached, because that's not what happened. What
happened was I was testingthings, and something that I tested worked, which led to some other things working, and so on and so forth. And ended up kind
(06:24):
of getting some things figuredout. So then the sales were back, not only back to where I wanted them, but they were much higher. So
my Jesus Christ, this turn isthe worst. So my stress levels went down because,
because the problem that I wasfocusing on was was no longer the problem, you know,
(06:50):
and so I inadvertently detachedand realized I was like, I've been stressing about this this whole time, and I was stressing about the wrong shit, like I
was, I was sitting here worriedthat all these other outside circumstances were happening, and that's why the sales went down. But it was my own actions
of intentionally reducing thatad spend which was what resulted in that so
(07:16):
I could have saved myself somuch stress had I just really thought about this detach and really look at what's going on. And started really running
numbers like, what I'm doingnow. So like, I have like ways of tracking and seeing, like, how much
I don't know I'm getting too inthe weeds here, but I just have a much better way of looking and analytically seeing like, this is how much is going out, this
(07:42):
is how much is coming in. Thisis working. This is not working, and things like that. Now I'm more detached and am able to see the whole big picture
and so, so then another, anotherthing, like just in my overall life, just like my mental health and stuff. I've also kind of felt like I've been, like, sort
(08:05):
of operating at a lowerfrequency than I want, I want to be, you know, like I'm I'm more unhappy and more stressed out. I signed up for stress. I'm not
saying stress is bad. It's just,you know, it's kind of part of the game in some, some way.
But I felt like, you know, therewas just a lot more than than should have been happening in terms of just my own mental state. So
(08:36):
it's real easy to, like, lookoutside of yourself and be like, Oh, well, you know, the economy is fucked up, like the world is just kind of weird. At least our
country is super weird rightnow. There's just a lot of like, strange stuff happening that I don't really quite understand. And,
you know, and then now we're anelection kind of cycle, so like, everybody's fucking acting like weirdos.
(09:03):
I don't know if weird is theright word, but just, you know,
there's like, a heightenedfucking fuckery going on. I don't know how I want to explain it. I don't want to get too far into all this shit, but it was,
it's easy to look outside of youand be like this is all happening, and that's that's why I'm stressed out, or that's why my frequency is not as high as I
(09:26):
want it to be. But that's not,
that's not. I don't find that tobe a reasonable thing, because no matter what's happening around you, it doesn't mean you have to allow that to to change
your mindset, and it changed theway that you feel or
affect your mental health. Itdoesn't have to, and you can look to lots of different people, like
(09:53):
Viktor Frankl was in aconcentration camp, and he was able to maintain.
Mindset that he wanted to have,like, obviously he was suffering and he saw this stuff happening. But, you know, he's the guy that has that phrase between stimulus
and response lies, what is it?Shit between stimulus and response lies a space, and within that space is your ability to respond, or something
(10:23):
along those lines. But basicallywhat it means is like something happens. And for in his case, all this crazy shit is happening because he's in a concentration
camp. He's seeing people dyingall around him. That's the stimulus. And then that space between that stimulus and his response, that's where his
freedom is. He he gets to decidehow that's going to affect him.
(10:47):
And I can't think of a muchworse existence than to be in that, you know, and somebody like Epictetus,
one of the most well known Stoicphilosophers, and talks about
things like, you know, thingsthat are beyond your control don't have the ability to affect, like, how you think and your freedom inside your own
(11:09):
mind. And he was a slave duringall of that, most of the time or not. I don't know how long he was a slave for, but he was a slave from when, I think it was,
from when he was a kid until hewas
quite a bit older. I wish Ishould know this, but either way, he was able to maintain these stoic philosophy, these stoic virtues, while being a
(11:34):
slave. So
what that tells me is that youknow, you could be in this terrible situation. And it doesn't necessarily mean it has to affect what's going on in
your own mind. Like, obviouslythere's certain things you know that are happening, like you could physically be detained or beaten, or all these kind of
(11:55):
things. But the way that theseguys who were going through some horrible things we're talking about. It is like, you know, those things don't have the
power to affect my mind. That'smy that's under my control. And so when I'm sitting here worried about my own shit, which is obviously no nowhere near
(12:16):
in the same fucking universe asthe shit that those guys were going through,
I was finding it easy to put iton outside circumstances, and I took the time to detach and think like, well, what am I doing that's potentially causing
this lower frequency that Idon't want to be in? And it was pretty easy to see that it was like, I wasn't, I wasn't doing all of the things that I know
(12:42):
help me be at a higher frequencyand like that's taking care of your mind, body and your spirit, or your soul, or whatever you believe in is. And so what are
those things that I that I usedto do, that I'm no longer doing? And
it's three things, well, not nolonger, but not doing them with the consistency that I think I should be. So the three things are
(13:08):
reading, meditating and workingout, and then, you know, there's other stuff that goes along with it, like eating well, and,
you know, doing what I need todo at my business and stuff like that. But
so I made a commitment thatevery day I'm going to read 10 pages, I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes, and I'm going to do some kind of intense workout for
(13:31):
at least 15 minutes. And I know15 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, but
I am more looking at and 10minutes of meditation isn't a lot either, but I'm looking at gaining these habits again, so I'm not going to go, Okay, I
only really read 10 pages a day.I think that's perfectly fine, so that's not going to change. But I would prefer to meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, and I'd
(13:58):
prefer to work out maybe alittle bit longer, but I
just want to get those habitsgoing again. And so I started doing that, and I started putting that on my power list as three items that go on there
every day I have to do thesethree things. These are the three things I have to do.
And as soon as I started doingthat with some regularity, I started feeling better, because
(14:22):
even though the effects of thoseactions maybe take some time to really settle in,
the fact that I was back ontrack with the things that I know I need to do to to help
that was enough to really startto clear up a lot of my
a lot of my issues in my headthat I was having so
(14:45):
So I guess the overall topic ofthe conversation here is,
you know, anything that's goingon in your life, in your business, at work, or whatever, if you take the time to detach and step back and.
At everything
and really look at like, whatare you doing that's causing any of this stuff, even if it is totally outside of your control, you know where what's your part?
(15:12):
Instead of, like, blaming onother shit, if you detach and really look at what your part is, there's likely a lot of different moves you can make
that are gonna at least startgetting you in a better path. So,
yeah, that's it. Alright. I'm atwork. I gotta go. I will see you next time.
(15:41):
All right,
appreciate each and every one ofyou guys who are supporting the cause and continue to spread the love and yeah, stay up.
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