Jocko Willink Shares His Super Power: Detachment | Jocko Willink & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | >> Being able to take a step back, detach, and see the bigger picture to me is the true
00:00:07.440 | superpower of life, of life, and it's a lot harder than it sounds.
00:00:14.360 | And you know, this goes back to when you start talking about people that are having, going
00:00:20.560 | through struggles in life, right?
00:00:22.820 | And I've described this before as, you know, if I'm looking at you and you're in a bad
00:00:28.800 | state, right, you're depressed, you're sad, you're moping around, you're not getting anything
00:00:33.540 | done.
00:00:35.540 | And I'm looking at you from the outside, and I'm thinking, for me, I see this storm cloud
00:00:40.520 | around your head, right?
00:00:41.560 | I see the storm cloud around your head, and you're in there.
00:00:46.560 | And all you see, no matter what direction you look, is storm.
00:00:50.720 | All you see is darkness.
00:00:52.520 | I'm outside, and I'm looking, I'm like, "Hey, man, this guy's got a great education.
00:00:55.480 | He's healthy.
00:00:56.480 | He's got a good team around him.
00:00:58.040 | Like he's got all these things going for him."
00:00:59.760 | But you, in that state, you literally cannot see anything but the darkness of the storm.
00:01:07.960 | And that's what's so scary about when people enter that mode, is you can look, I can look
00:01:14.280 | at it from the outside and be like, "Andrew, you just got to move like four feet forward,
00:01:18.800 | and you're going to be through this thing."
00:01:20.720 | And yet you might hear me say that, and you go, "No, Jocko, I'm looking ahead.
00:01:24.000 | There's nothing but darkness."
00:01:26.100 | So helping people move forward, take action, and be able to get that perspective, detach,
00:01:32.320 | and get outside themselves, get outside their own heads.
00:01:35.000 | You know, Tim Ferriss said, "Get out of your head.
00:01:37.240 | Get into your body."
00:01:38.240 | That's one way to do it.
00:01:39.520 | Take action.
00:01:40.520 | Go do things.
00:01:41.520 | But it's very scary, and I'm sure you've had this experience where you're talking to someone
00:01:45.560 | that you know, and they're bogged down in whatever problem it is, whatever stress they're
00:01:52.200 | under, and you're looking at them going, "Hey, man, it's going to be okay."
00:01:57.480 | You can clearly see that whatever is bothering them and dragging them down, you can clearly
00:02:03.520 | see...
00:02:04.520 | You know, a lot of times it's a relationship, right?
00:02:06.880 | The girl, the guy, they got dumped, and you go, "Hey, man, that person was a disaster
00:02:11.120 | anyways.
00:02:12.120 | You're better off without them."
00:02:13.120 | And they cannot compute that.
00:02:15.160 | They are stuck there.
00:02:16.440 | Or maybe it's the school that they didn't get into, or the job that they didn't get,
00:02:20.280 | and they get so wrapped up in that, they can't get out of that storm.
00:02:24.840 | And it's such a helpless feeling to sit there and tell someone, "Hey, you just move a little
00:02:34.320 | bit towards me, and you're going to get out of this storm."
00:02:37.640 | And it's so much easier said than done.
00:02:41.760 | And that's why trying to engage with people and trying to give people that superpower
00:02:45.280 | of detachment where they can take a step back and say, "You know what?
00:02:48.040 | You're right, man.
00:02:49.040 | That girl, she wasn't who I really thought she was.
00:02:52.560 | I should move on."
00:02:53.560 | Yes.
00:02:54.640 | But easier said than done, and that's one of the biggest challenges I think that we
00:03:00.200 | have as friends and in parents and teammates is helping people learn to detach, learn to
00:03:10.000 | see the bigger picture, learn to see that the problem that you have that your whole
00:03:14.720 | world is actually not that big of a deal.
00:03:18.080 | You know what I wrote?
00:03:19.080 | I've written a bunch of kids' books, and one of the things that triggered me to write
00:03:22.080 | kids' books is realizing that, you know, one day my daughter came home.
00:03:27.240 | It's my oldest daughter.
00:03:29.360 | And she came home from school, and she's like, she says, "I'm stupid."
00:03:33.480 | I said, "What do you mean you're stupid?"
00:03:35.480 | She said, "I'm stupid.
00:03:36.480 | I'm dumb.
00:03:37.480 | Why do you think that?"
00:03:38.480 | You know, whatever grade it is when you're supposed to know your times tables.
00:03:40.320 | "I don't know my times tables."
00:03:42.120 | I said, "Oh, well, how much have you studied?"
00:03:46.120 | And she kind of gave me the confused look.
00:03:48.560 | "What do you mean studied?"
00:03:50.800 | I said, "Have you studied yet?
00:03:52.840 | Have you made flashcards to learn them?"
00:03:55.920 | And she didn't.
00:03:56.920 | She hadn't.
00:03:57.920 | She thought she should just know them.
00:03:58.920 | From, you know, the teacher went over what they are, now she should know them like some
00:04:01.680 | other kids in the class did.
00:04:04.740 | And so I'm sitting there going, "Oh, yeah, cool, we'll just, you know, we'll make some
00:04:07.360 | flashcards."
00:04:08.360 | And she made flashcards, and she learned her times tables in 45 minutes, and we were good.
00:04:11.940 | But what struck me was, to me, I was like, "Oh, no big deal."
00:04:16.360 | To her, it was her whole life.
00:04:18.780 | And then I got to see that with my other kids.
00:04:20.140 | You know, somebody said something to them in the recess yard, and I'm like, "Oh, screw
00:04:23.940 | that kid.
00:04:24.940 | They don't know what they're...
00:04:25.940 | Don't worry about them."
00:04:26.940 | But when you're...
00:04:29.540 | That's their whole world.
00:04:31.360 | And that, unfortunately, doesn't only apply to kids.
00:04:35.100 | It applies to adults as well.
00:04:37.140 | And they get this problem in their world that seems so insurmountable and so massive because
00:04:45.340 | that little ecosystem that they're stuck in is their world.
00:04:49.120 | And they run into this problem in that, and it's disruptive in that world, and they don't
00:04:53.820 | know how to get out of it.
00:04:54.820 | You know, I did a podcast talking about these ecosystems that people get into, right?
00:04:59.100 | And there's all these ecosystems.
00:05:00.100 | You're in an ecosystem.
00:05:01.500 | We're both in a shared ecosystem of podcasting.
00:05:04.940 | And we could be like, "Oh, my gosh.
00:05:07.820 | You know, Lex just came out with a new podcast, and it's been the biggest success.
00:05:13.100 | And what can I do to catch up with Lex?"
00:05:16.500 | And all of a sudden, I could get really...
00:05:17.820 | You could get really...
00:05:18.820 | We could be bothered by that and think, "Man, I'm a failure."
00:05:21.940 | Meanwhile, there's people that don't listen to podcasts.
00:05:24.860 | There's people that don't even know what a podcast is, and yet it's our whole world if
00:05:29.360 | we let it be.
00:05:30.360 | You're in the academic world.
00:05:32.660 | You go...
00:05:33.660 | You're a professor at Stanford, which is a big deal in that world.
00:05:39.740 | I know people that don't give a rat's ass.
00:05:42.540 | They couldn't...
00:05:43.540 | They don't know where Stanford is.
00:05:44.740 | I get that all the time.
00:05:45.740 | They don't know where Stanford is.
00:05:46.740 | It's no big deal.
00:05:47.740 | In the SEAL teams, same thing.
00:05:49.100 | Somebody has a problem in the SEAL teams, and they think, "This is the whole world,
00:05:53.520 | and I blew it."
00:05:55.460 | And now, what are they gonna do?
00:05:56.940 | When you're facing a significant problem in life, a relationship, a problem with a job,
00:06:02.140 | you gotta remember that you're in one ecosystem.
00:06:04.500 | And if you step outside of that ecosystem, no one really cares.
00:06:08.220 | And you could go move into a whole totally different ecosystem and find happiness there,
00:06:13.260 | but at least utilize that to get out of that storm cloud that you're in, and you're gonna
00:06:18.620 | find that there's plenty of light out there in the world.
00:06:21.260 | Move towards that, and it's gonna be a much better situation.
00:06:24.180 | Thank you.