Jocko Underground: Don't Confuse Your Thoughts for Your Feelings

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 98, sitting with Echo Charles.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  There's a quote I'm going to read. "The problem isn't that Johnny can't read, the problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is. He confuses thinking with feeling."

• 0:22Jocko Willink?

  Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell quote.

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  And it's, I believe, to be a good warning. A good heads up. Thinking your feeling is your thinking. Right? Thinking what you're feeling is what you're thinking when it's not. This is a very, very important thing to pay attention to in life. Because it's not thinking. It's just feeling. Now, listen. Feelings definitely have an impact on what's going on in the world and definitely what's going on in your world and definitely what's going on in your head.

• 0:59Jocko Willink?

  Happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, fear, surprise, disgust, excitement, anxiety, confusion, jealousy, guilt, shame, pride, regret, relief, contempt, hope, despair, compassion, pity. I mean, the list goes on and on.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  And because of that, and in a leadership situation, you have to put emotions into the calculus of the decisions that you're making. If you know everyone's sad, you've got to pay attention to that. If you know everyone's angry, you've got to pay attention to that. If you know that a decision that you're going to make is going to make people excited, you've got to put that in the calculus. If you know it's going to make them frustrated, you've got to put that in the calculus. So you've got to, and I haven't quite figured, I haven't quite figured out exactly how to explain this.

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  In a way, I think that feelings are, you need to look at them through the lens that they're kind of this. My analogy for today, I'll get better, is that they're sort of like the surface paint. Like they're sort of the covering of what's actually happening.

• 2:20Jocko Willink?

  And, and so that means that they don't, they have, they, they do change the appearance, right? They change the appearance of what the plan is, they change the appearance of what the idea is, they change the appearance of what the relationship is. But there, there still is an underlying solid form behind the, the painting that you need to pay attention to. And, and so I think what the important part, the part that jams us up

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  is when, as Thomas Sowell put it, um, we confuse feelings with thought, right? We confuse emotion with logic. I think that's where we make mistakes. I think that's where people make mistakes. So being able to pay attention to and assess whether that thing, that unidentified object

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  inside your brain, trying to identify whether it's a logical thought or whether it's an emotion is a good skill set to have. How are you gonna discern whether this thing in your head, which is making you feel a certain way, is leaning you in one direction or another direction? Is it a thought that's based on logic or is it a feeling that's based on emotion? The logic can make you feel a certain way.

• 3:47Jocko Willink?

  The feeling can make you feel a certain way. What, but you see what I'm saying? The, the logic can make you feel a certain way and the feeling makes you feel a certain way. What, how do you discern what it is?

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  So it's, it's tricky. I mean, emotions are, the things I'm looking at, emotions are subjective.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  Emotions are a little bit unpredictable.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  Emotions, feelings are not rooted in logic.

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  And I think if you pull the string on a lot of emotions, especially negative emotions, they're rooted in ego. Actually, I think positive emotions are too. Like when you're happy, what's making you happy? It's because I got this or I got that. When you're excited, it's because I get to do this or I get to do that. But when you're jealous, oh, it's because I, my ego. Let me rephrase those, right? When I'm happy, it's because my ego just got, you know, to be on the, on the podium. When I'm excited, it's because my ego gets to prove to echo that I was, you know, oh, I tapped out echo. That's right. That's my ego. Feels good. Got to prove. So the happy feelings, the good feelings can be ego related, often are.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  The negative feelings, almost always ego, or often ego rooted. And here's what I started to pay attention to.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  The language that you utilize and the language that people utilize when they're

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  expressing their feelings,

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  I think is one of the easier things to identify for yourself. So if you are trying to explain something and the way you're explaining it is kind of, people aren't getting it. It's kind of incoherent. They can't make sense of it. It's confusing. There's a decent chance that that might be an emotional thing that you're trying to explain because it's a lot harder to explain emotions. There's nothing to tie it to. Emotions are floating around. They're up there. They're right. You can't just tie, you can't tie a point to it. You can't say, well, it's because of this thing over here because that thing, when you try to tie to it, it's, it's floating around and you can't really get that rope around it. It doesn't really hang on.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  Have you, you've heard me talk about the explanation effort meter? This is a classic, right? If it's really hard for me to explain to you why I want to use this plan or why I want to go in this direction and I'm getting more, I'm telling you, but you're just looking at me and shaking your head like I don't get it.

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  There's a good chance that the thing that I'm,

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  the thing that I want to do is not logical but emotional.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  So if you find yourself using language or having a hard time explaining, or your language becomes emotional, right? Because that definitely happens. I mean, it's so clear, so clear. If I'm getting emotional when I'm describing something, and they just don't understand, and I'm getting frustrated, oh, those are all things that this may be emotional for me. Isn't it weird how some things are just triggering emotions for people? We're seeing it all the time with politics right now. All, I mean, people are completely irrational. They're going 100% off of feelings. You can't even, barely have a logical conversation these days with another human being.

• 7:20Jocko Willink?

  But if you want to assess yourself to make sure that you don't confuse thought with feeling, think about the language that you are using or trying to use. Now, you compare that with the other side. If you've got an actual logical thought, this is a thought that is objective. It kind of stands on its own. It's, there's some kind of, it's systematic, right? It's consistent. Regardless of what angle you look at it from, you can still kind of nod your head and say, well, that, yeah, that makes sense. But again, when we get to the language, the language is sensible, the language is clear, the language is concise usually, the language is coherent,

• 8:04Jocko Willink?

  and the language is understood. So when I'm trying to explain something that's logical to echo, you nod your head and think, well, yeah, I guess that does make sense. If I'm trying to explain something to you who used emotional language, and you don't get it, and you continue to not get it, the person, the thing I should watch out for is the fact that I'm very likely confusing my thought with my feelings. And that's going to be a problem.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  Now here's a little bit of a what what could help this because obviously this is a case for detachment. Right. If you if you actually write down what you're talking about, like some of these people that are going completely freaking psycho on Twitter.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 8:50Jocko Willink?

  If they were to write down their side of the quote unquote argument. They would probably start to realize, oh, I'm just really emotional about this thing. Although what's interesting right now is

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  from the social media, from the Twitter perspective. I've seen iterative or iterations of arguments between

• 9:20Jocko Willink?

  conservative and liberal sides. And they do not have the same basic truths about whatever they're discussing, like you name it. There they they do not have they. There is no, you know, a dictionary that they're pulling out and says, yep, the meaning of word is this. The the facts are this. There's no farmer's almanac. You remember that thing?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Well, no, I don't remember.

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  There's like back in the day, there was like the farmer's almanac and it would tell you like, hey, the moon rises on this time. Like, can you go to that thing and it tells you?

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  It tells you it's like the tide charts, right? You know what a tide chart is. You know, we used to have those in Hawaii. You just want to know where the tide is going to be, right?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  So you can refer to the tide chart and then you there's no discussion. Oh, oh, at at 10:04, the tide is a negative point one. Cool. Facts. Facts. There's no discussion about it. The tide chart tells you what time the sun goes up. Tide tells you it tells you what time the sun goes down. That's what it is. So I can say, hey, we should go surfing at this time. And and you say, why? And I said, because the tide is good. You say, prove it. I pulled the tide chart. I show it to you. Yeah, okay, cool. Let's go at that time. The problem is they're looking at two different tide charts. And they they're they're believing the tide chart that they're looking at. So.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  If you want to try and detach some of the things that you're thinking about and try and identify if you're having an emotional

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  or a feeling

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  versus a thought, a logical thought, it's a good idea to try and write them down. My warning is you might say, well, you know, let's talk about facts then. And then you can pull out facts that are cherry picked based on whatever. And they might be just complete lies. So

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  that being said, it's a good, if you pulled a string on where your quote, facts came from, that might help you as well.

• 11:37Jocko Willink?

  But it's very bizarre. You know, that's another one is a, you know, diet. You know, you and I could say, find plenty of

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  information online to support a literal all meat diet and a literal all vegan diet. We could find scientific litter, the whole nine yards.

• 12:03Jocko Willink?

  We could find pro and we could find con on both those diets.

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  So

• 12:10Jocko Willink?

  you better try and use your logic because it's real easy. People get emotional about those two things all the time.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Even the idea of using your logic, a lot of times is an emotional response. Or

• 12:26Speaker 01

  all the cliche, follow the science. There's the facts. Look into the facts and all that stuff or whatever. So the facts, man, it's, it's, it's really interesting. My opinion, my feeling. It's interesting that how as an adult, you start to realize these things you learn when you're in elementary school or whatever. Like the difference between facts and opinion. So like, Okay, so data, right? Data is like the smallest like element of information kind of a thing. And then it's like how to read the data is a skill in and of itself, you know? It's like differentiating uh facts and opinions, emotions from logic or the skill of differentiating is a thing. Cause it's not just like, it's not self-evident a lot of the time.

• 13:07Jocko Willink?

  But here's the problem with data. You can take data and just manipulate it.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  That's my whole point. Exactly right. And the same thing. And now people are like, hey, follow the science or whatever. Whoa, the facts of this. So the fact is like, okay, this guy went in, was at this place at this time and went this place at this time. You know, like facts are like the facts or whatever. The problem comes when there's two different facts or whatever. A if someone's lying or inaccurate or whatever, that's one thing. But it's when everyone takes like a hundred facts. And then comes to a conclusion that's different because they emphasize this fact more, they exaggerate this one, they leave out those, you know, kind of a thing. So it doesn't paint an accurate picture a lot of the time. That's like kind of the issue.

• 13:49Jocko Willink?

  And you can make it paint what you want.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  What you want. Yeah. So if you have, if you have a deliberate intention to paint, oh yeah, you can. It's like making, it's like making a recipe of a cake or something. You can make it taste a certain way. You make it take salty. Cause there's salt in cake. You can make it taste salty. There's cookies there.

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  I heard. Let's get to the facts, bro.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  But either way, I'm just saying that's the way it sorts itself out. So the facts are the facts. People sometimes and I even full grown adults on TV, positions of power, they'll say like, hey, they'll, they'll use facts or, or leave out facts or exaggerate facts or whatever to come to a conclusion. And they'll say that the conclusion is the fact. That's what they'll do. They'll jam it up. So if you don't know the difference between, oh no, that's just a conclusion. It's not a fact.

• 14:40Jocko Willink?

  A conclusion, not the conclusion.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  A conclusion.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. And then to, to know whether or not the conclusion is accurate, you gotta do some weird, crazy investigation. So it's like, you know, it's easy to, to pull that off a lot of the time, especially like on a TV scenario or something like that. Where it'd be like, hey, here's a conclusion, you know? But either way, the um, the feelings and, and thoughts is like uh, the thoughts is, or the feelings is the real personal. It's personal. It's attached as opposed to detached, right? So it's like the personal.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  For lack of a better term, self-serving. I don't mean it in a bad way. I mean self-serve is personal, you know, very personal, very subjective, very personal. And then the thoughts is like, it's the detached perspective. It's impersonal. It's not personal. It is, or it isn't, you know, kind of a thing. And let's put this stuff together. That's the thinking process, you know, put it all together.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  And I, and I think that there's a lot of people right now that are confusing their thoughts. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacood underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are

• 16:09Jocko Willink?

  doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacood underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance at jacood underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.