Jocko Underground: The Truth About Controlling Your Emotions. How to Balance Your Crazy Life.

The True Importance of Controlling emotions. Value of pull-ups. Balancing Your Life. How to deal with Self Doubt Managing the hierarchy. Working in an environment filled with slackers... again. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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 36. Echo Charles here, sitting with me.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Still not 100% sure what's going on. We're still, we have to maintain the underground. As you may have heard on the last version of this, we have.

• 0:23Jocko Willink?

  Is it a war? There have been warlike moves been made. They're symptomatic. Symptomatic of war. So that is why we have the Underground Podcast. We have experienced some acts, some offensive activities from some groups that control some large media areas. That's why we have this Jocko Underground Podcast. So jacoun underground.com. If you want to support,

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  we appreciate it.

• 0:59Jocko Willink?

  I was thinking the other day, as I observed emotions, negative emotions being evoked in an individual.

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  Anger type frustration. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  controlling your emotions. And I think I, I do control my emotions. And I would say that I have been controlling my emotions for long enough now that it is not a big challenge for me to control my emotions. And specifically, I'm, I'm talking about anger, frustration, things are going to make you lash out, things are going to make you clench your fists, those kinds of things. I've been controlling those emotions for long enough that.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  I I've got some methodology behind it. I also got to see many times people. And I still get to see people that lose their emotional control. They get angry. Look, people get sad sometimes. And you know, just to start this thing off, I'm not saying emotions are bad. That's not what I'm saying. Before you freak out.

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying emotions are bad. Emotions are good. Emotions make us human. Emotions are part of life. They affect in many ways. They are life. So I'm not saying emotions are bad, but allowing emotions to dictate the way you're going to behave. Allowing emotions to make to drive your decision-making process is not going to help you. So here's a couple of things that I have in mind that kind of flow through my mind when some when things are happening that could cause emotions. And basically, I barely even get a little blip on the radar. I get a little blip and it's already I go into this mode that I'm about to talk about. The first one, I automatically think, hey, whatever I'm hearing right now is probably wrong. The reason I know that is because on the battlefield, first reports are

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  first reports are almost always wrong.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  What do you mean what you're hearing like in your head or like whatever?

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  Whatever, whatever input. Yes, I guess whatever stimulus is hitting me that's about to make me angry. I feel that little blip. Whatever I'm seeing is probably not right. Whatever someone's telling me, whatever I'm hearing, whatever I'm seeing. It's probably not right. It looks bad, but it's probably not that bad. The reason I know that is because on the battlefield, you're going to get some report that comes in. And people are it. Someone's panicking. It's going to sound horrible. And it's probably not accurate. Doesn't mean you dismiss it, but you don't get emotional. You don't get emotional because you're dealing with some other people's emotions. Cause when you send me a back a report back from the battlefield.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  And you just got your, your, your Overwatch position just got shot up. You're freaking heated. We just got shot up.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  Do I immediately send the QRF? The Quick Reaction Force? No. I go, hey Roger, give me a little bit more detail, what's happening? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna not get emotional. The reason I'm not going to get emotional is because I can almost guarantee you that the continued amplifying information that's gonna come my way is going to mitigate some of the problem just by nature.

• 4:25Jocko Willink?

  The second thing that I kind of think about is whatever is happening right now, whatever I'm hearing, whatever I'm seeing is not final.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  A lot of people jump to the conclusion of whatever's happening right now is the, is the ultimate atrocity situation, the disaster, the catastrophic scenario, that's what people immediately go to mentally. And for me,

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  things never seem catastrophic to me.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  Ever, I was, almost ever, right? Look, can you have a cata, I'll tell you, uh, there was an explosion up in Maine, up in Farmington, Maine, at one of the factories up there, not a, not an origin factory, thank God. But there was a massive, massive explosion in a mill. And I talked to Pete, Pete like called me and he, he's like, dude, this thing is gone. Like the factory's gone and I just knew, so something like that, I know immediately, this is a catastrophic situation. Whoever was in there is dead. This is horrible. And

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  so, but, but that's very rare. You know, even in my, in my military career, like, hey, this is what happened. With a vehicle gets hit with an IED, okay. There's a chance it's catastrophic, for sure. But if my immediate response is emotional, when chances are, okay, we're gonna get more information, we're gonna find out exactly what happened, my emotional response is not going to help me make good decisions. So, so I don't think catastrophic out of the gate.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  Because that doesn't help me process what's happening. Doesn't mean I dismiss it and think it couldn't be catastrophic, but I don't focus on the catastrophic-ness of the situation. By the way, if it's catastrophic, guess what? It doesn't matter. You've already missed. It's already gone. It's already catastrophic. So you can't, you can't take that back. So getting emotional about something that you can't take back is not going to help you move forward right now. Cause those emotions aren't going to help me make decisions. My viewpoint is that if I lose my temper, it's weak. And I, seeing leaders, when I was a kid in the SEAL teams, seeing a leader lose their temper

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  and just looking at them in a, you know, like a demeaning way of patheticness, like, wait a second, you're getting mad. That's what's happening. You're gonna yell and scream. And I, I just remember seeing that throughout my career, but especially when I was young, I see some leader yell and scream and just think, this person is an idiot. So I'm never gonna do that. I'm never gonna yell and scream. So that's another thing I kind of run through my mental checklist. I don't want to. I don't want to give you control, by the way, Echo, over what I'm doing, over what I'm thinking, over my emotional state.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  So you come in and you say something and I don't want to give you control over my mental state. So this is another little mental check. I say, wait a second, am I really gonna let Echo make me fly off the handle right now? That's where I'm at? No, I'm not gonna do that. That's a bad move. It's kind of a pathetic move. So we're not doing it. It doesn't help for me to give away my position. Leadership strategy and tactics. What gives away my position? My emotions. You come in and you say, I don't like the way this plan is looking. And I immediately get mad. I'm giving away my position. I don't want to give away my position.

• 8:23Jocko Willink?

  Because once I give away my position, now you know where I'm at and I can't move anymore. So when someone will come with some idea to me.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  Or come on some attack to me, attack me about something. You would never be able to tell that I was even remotely frustrated by it or angry or whatever. I'm just sort of like, eh, give me some details on that.

• 8:48Jocko Willink?

  Not, you know, look, do I do some reflective diminish? Yes, I don't, I just act like Mr. Robot. No, and I'm not saying act like a robot.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  But I'm not going to get overly emotional in these situations. And so, so the, I guess those are kind of some things that go through my mind that have been going through my mind for a long time. Starting when I was a young SEAL, realizing that watching a leader lose his mind and get all mad and realizing how weak and pathetic that was and how this and how the level of respect would go down.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  Made me realize getting emotional is not good. Now, like I said before, this doesn't mean that you don't have emotions and it doesn't mean this is even more important. Doesn't mean that you don't put emotions into the calculus of what's happening. Because if you're getting emotional about something. And I say, don't, I don't take that into account. I, I'm going to throw things off. Here's a great example.

• 9:47Jocko Willink?

  That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  Go to JacoUnderground.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 doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  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 jocko underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.