How to Detach: A Super Power for Life & Leadership | Jocko Willink & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | The solution to your problem is not going to be found in the problem. It's not going to be found
00:00:04.640 | in there. You have to get out of the problem so that you can look at it, make an assessment,
00:00:09.600 | and you can assess how to solve the problem or whether you need to solve the problem or not.
00:00:13.600 | I mean, there's a lot of things in my life right now where I shrug my shoulders and go, "Okay.
00:00:17.840 | Okay. Someone's saying this. Okay. Roger that. Carry on. No factor. Move on."
00:00:29.680 | And then occasionally, you go, "Okay. This is something I need to contend with. This is
00:00:32.640 | something I need to deal with. This is something I need to shape or adjust or move or solve,"
00:00:37.760 | to use your word. The reason I laugh when I say that is because
00:00:42.160 | problems, you have to get in there. But if you take a step back, you can usually say, "Oh,
00:00:50.320 | little adjustment here, a little adjustment there," and that thing's going to sort itself out.
00:00:54.160 | So, detachment is a superpower, man. It certainly is, and it's certainly one that
00:01:00.080 | I need to focus on more. I'm grateful for you bringing that up. This is the biologist in me,
00:01:08.960 | but what is your process for engaging detachment or for disengaging? Is it an active process where
00:01:15.680 | you go, "I'm going to detach from this. I'm going to put myself in a situation that is pulling on
00:01:20.560 | me. There's this gravitational force, and I'm going to create some imagery in my mind of walking
00:01:25.360 | away from it. Do I physically walk away from it? Do I outsource it to somebody else?" What are
00:01:30.320 | some tools for detachment? Yeah. This is one of those situations where you and I had a discussion
00:01:35.040 | about the science and the practical application aligned. So, my original experience with
00:01:42.640 | detachment was, and this is one of those moments where, you know, I said a lot of times things are
00:01:47.680 | just small moments over time and you make a little adjustment. This is one of those moments in my
00:01:52.240 | life, and I wrote about leadership strategy and tactics where I recognized in a moment what
00:02:00.320 | detachment was and how helpful it was. I'm on an oil rig doing a training mission. My whole platoon
00:02:08.400 | is in a skirmish line looking at a large area of the oil rig that we're supposed to be clearing.
00:02:14.720 | Again, this is not combat. This is in the 90s. There's nothing going on. We're just doing
00:02:17.760 | training. And I'm standing in this skirmish line. And by the way, I'm the youngest and most junior
00:02:23.120 | guy in my platoon. And I'm standing there looking down the sight of my weapon, and I'm waiting for
00:02:28.320 | someone to make a call and tell us what to do. And I wait for five seconds, and I wait for 10
00:02:33.440 | seconds, and I wait for 20 seconds, and no one's saying anything. And we're waiting for a leader
00:02:38.560 | in my platoon to make a call to tell us what to do, tell me what to do. And finally, after like 30
00:02:45.120 | seconds, which seems like an eternity, I can't take it anymore. And so I take a step like a
00:02:51.520 | foot, a one-foot step, 12 inches. I take a step off the skirmish line. I look to my left. I look
00:02:58.400 | to my right. And what I see is every other guy in my platoon is staring down their weapon, staring
00:03:03.760 | down the sight of their weapon, which means their field of view is tiny. It's like a 20-degree field
00:03:10.000 | of view. You're looking down the scope of your weapon or the sight of your weapon. And that's
00:03:14.000 | how big their field of view is. I'm looking. I'm thinking, "Oh, there's my platoon commander. He's
00:03:18.320 | looking down the scope, the sight of his weapon. There's my platoon chief. He's looking down the
00:03:21.680 | sight of his weapon. There's my leading petty officer. He's looking down the sight of his
00:03:24.080 | weapon. There's my assistant platoon commander. He's looking down the..." So everyone in the
00:03:27.200 | platoon is looking down the sight of their weapon, which means they all have a very narrow
00:03:32.880 | field of vision. Well, when I take a step back and look to my left and look to my right, guess
00:03:37.840 | what kind of field of vision I got? I got a massive one. I can see the whole scene and I can see
00:03:42.560 | exactly what it is we need to do. And at that moment, look, as a new guy, you need to keep your
00:03:48.480 | mouth shut. You don't say anything. And I'm thinking, "Well, but no one else is saying anything."
00:03:54.080 | So I muster up all the courage I can and I open my mouth and I say, "Hold left, clear right,"
00:04:00.960 | which is a basic tactical call. This is not a patent level genius maneuver. It's just a normal
00:04:08.640 | call to make in a situation that we were in. I say, "Hold left, clear right." And I'm expecting
00:04:13.600 | to get kind of slapped, told, "Shut up, new guy." But instead, everyone just repeats the call,
00:04:17.760 | "Hold left, clear right. Hold left, clear right." And we execute the maneuver and we finish the
00:04:21.840 | clearance of this oil rig and we'll get done. We get to the top of the oil rig, which means we
00:04:26.880 | cleared the whole thing. We're on the helo deck at the top and we go into a debrief. And now I'm
00:04:31.120 | expecting, okay, now I'm going to get told, "Hey, what were you doing? You need to keep your mouth
00:04:34.880 | shut." And instead, the platoon chief goes, "Hey, Jonko, good call on the cellar deck down there."
00:04:41.200 | And I was kind of like, "Yeah, that's right." But then I thought to myself, "Hold on a second.
00:04:46.480 | Why, if I'm the youngest, most junior guy in this platoon, why was I able to see what we needed to
00:04:52.480 | do and make that call? Why did that just happen?" And then I realized it was because I took a step
00:04:58.400 | back, to use your term, I broadened my field of view, which allowed me to think more clearly.
00:05:06.240 | Because instead of being hyper-focused and narrowly focused, I broadened my range of vision.
00:05:10.800 | I took a breath before I made my call. I had to take a nice breath to speak clearly.
00:05:18.000 | And I realized that taking a step back and detaching, I got to see infinitely more than
00:05:25.360 | even the most experienced guys in my platoon. And I started doing it all the time. And I started
00:05:31.200 | doing it in land warfare. I started doing it in urban combat. I started doing it in all these
00:05:35.760 | tactical training scenarios. These are just training. This is the nineties. I started doing
00:05:38.960 | these training scenarios. And it always allowed me to see what we needed to do.
00:05:45.280 | And then I started doing it like when I was having conversations with people and having
00:05:50.800 | a conversation with my platoon chief. And I can see that he's starting to turn a little red in
00:05:54.080 | the face. And we're about to argue about something. I said, "Oh, wait a second. I'm
00:05:57.760 | taking a step back. Look, he's getting mad right now. And he's the platoon chief.
00:06:00.800 | You better just deescalate this thing real quick." And I'd say, "Hey, you know what, chief? That
00:06:06.400 | sounds good. Let me go take a look, re-look at the plan or whatever." And so I started to do this
00:06:12.400 | kind of with my normal life was to not get wrapped up in my own emotions, not get wrapped up in the
00:06:20.000 | gunfight that was happening right in front of my face, not to get wrapped up in the details of what
00:06:24.880 | was going on, but instead take a step back, detach, look around, and then you can make a
00:06:32.560 | much, much better decision. And it's not – it's exponential. You – if you're looking down the
00:06:40.000 | sights of your weapon and you take a step back and you look around, it's exponential how much
00:06:46.320 | more you can see. Now, listen, if you are the only person in a gunfight, it's going to be harder for
00:06:50.320 | you to do that because you've got to be focused on whatever you're shooting at. But when you have
00:06:53.920 | 16 guys or 20 guys, they're all looking in the same direction, it's very easy to be the guy that
00:06:58.320 | goes, "I'm going to take a step back," look around, make a call. So when you talk about the mechanics,
00:07:05.600 | when I teach this to people now, the mechanics of it, take a step back. Literally, you're – you
00:07:12.560 | know, you and I are at a meeting, there's a bunch of people, this starts to get heated argument,
00:07:16.320 | I will literally push my chair back away from the table, change my perspective, open,
00:07:22.960 | widen my field of view. The other thing – the other thing like on the – in the SEAL teams,
00:07:28.720 | you don't want to – you don't want to sound panicked on the radio for a couple of reasons.
00:07:34.640 | Number one, because when you panic on the radio, it's going to cause other people to panic. Number
00:07:37.760 | two, if you panic on the radio and you sound panicked, everyone's going to make fun of you.
00:07:40.960 | So you – you know, when you get back from the mission, everyone's going to go, "Yeah,
00:07:43.680 | you sounded like a baby out there." So what would I do before I would key up my radio?
00:07:50.000 | Take a breath. And so here I'm manually slowing down my breath, I'm broadening my field of view.
00:07:57.040 | So if you're in a meeting or you're in a – you know, you're at the – at the supermarket parking
00:08:02.560 | lot and someone starts to yell at you, take a step back, take a breath, broaden your field of view,
00:08:09.680 | detach from those emotions that you're having, and make some space. And that's – that's how
00:08:16.240 | I go through the mechanics of detachment. Now, I can tell you right now, I mean, when you – when
00:08:22.160 | you do this all the time, which I kind of do this all the time, I don't – I don't really have to,
00:08:26.800 | like, step back. But when you're starting to be able to try and do this, absolutely,
00:08:30.640 | make a – and I'll tell you, here's another, like, weird little nuanced thing.
00:08:33.760 | Lift your chin up and put your hands down. Now, this is not in a combat situation, not in a fight,
00:08:42.720 | but here's the thing. When – when – when I get defensive, what am I going to do? I'm going to
00:08:48.320 | raise my hands up and put my chin down. That's like a fighting mode. So if you and I are having
00:08:51.840 | a discussion and I'm starting to get heated and I'm starting to, like, oh, he's not listening to
00:08:55.600 | me, instead of me putting my chin down and – and putting my hands, like, up – up to where I can
00:09:01.840 | put them in your face a little bit, no. I'm actually going to take a step back. I'm going to
00:09:04.720 | say, put my chin up. It changes my perspective a little bit more. It changes my visual perspective,
00:09:10.080 | just by changing the angle of my head. Take a step back. Put my hands down. I'm not being
00:09:14.560 | in a defensive mode. I actually want to hear what you have to say. And if I start listening to what
00:09:19.760 | you have to say and not talking, it's very hard to be detached when you're talking. It's another
00:09:24.640 | key component. You want to detach, shut your mouth. So I'm in meetings, you know, I'm in a
00:09:30.400 | bunch of different companies. I'm running a – I have a bunch of – I own a bunch of different
00:09:34.080 | companies. I'm in a meeting in my companies. I'm not the one that's doing all the talking. In fact,
00:09:38.640 | I'm doing mostly listening. When I'm in task unit bruiser, my task unit, I'm not sitting there
00:09:44.080 | giving the entire brief. No, I'm letting the platoon chief and the platoon commanders give
00:09:48.480 | those briefs. And that way I'm detached. I'm listening to what they have to say. I'm more
00:09:54.160 | capable of seeing what holes there are in their plans by not moving my mouth, not talking. I'm
00:10:02.480 | listening. So those are some of the methodologies that I use and that I advise people to use in
00:10:08.160 | order to effectively start down the pathway of being able to detach in various scenarios.