Transcription
This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 36. Echo Charles here, sitting with me, still not 100% sure what's going on. We're still—we—we have to maintain the underground, as you may have heard on the last version of this. We have—is it a war? There have been warlike moves been made, symptoms—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, DracoUnderground.com, if you want to support, we appreciate it.
I was thinking the other day, as I observed emotions—negative emotions being evoked in an individual—anger, type frustration—and I—I just wanted to talk a little bit about controlling your emotions. And I think I—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 making Country Fest—those kind of things. I've been controlling those emotions for long enough that 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. I'm not saying emotions are bad. Emotions are good; emotions make us human; emotions are part of life; they—in fact, 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 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—first reports are almost always wrong. What do you mean, what you're hearing—like in your head or like 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 saying 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 gonna get some report that comes in, and people are—it—someone's panicking; it's gonna 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. Because when you send me a report back from the battlefield and you just got your—your OverWatch position just got shot up, you're freaking heated. "We just got shot up." Okay, 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 going to come my way is going to mitigate some of the problem, just by nature.
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. 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 through mentally. And for me, things never seem catastrophic to me—ever. I was almost—ever right. Look, can you have a cat—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 non-origin factory, thank God—but there was a massive, massive explosion in a mill. And I've 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 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 going to 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, 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 catastrophicness of the situation. By the way, if it's catastrophic, guess what? It doesn't matter. You—you've already missed it; 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, because those emotions aren't going to help me make decisions.
My viewpoint is that if I lose my temper, it's weak. And seeing leaders—when I was a kid in the SEAL Teams—seeing a leader lose their temper 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. 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. [Applause] 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, because once I give away my position, now you know where I'm at, and I can't move anymore. So when someone would come with some idea to me or come on some attack to me—attack me about something—you'd never be able to tell that I was even remotely frustrated by it or anger or whatever. I'm just sort of like, "Hey, give me some details on that," not—you know—look, do I do some reflect and diminish? Yes, I don't—I just act like Mr. Robot? No. I'm not saying act like a robot, 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 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 gonna throw things off.
Here's a great example: when Mark Lee got killed, when Mark Lee got killed, Ryan Jobe got horribly wounded, and that was with late platoon—Charlie platoon—on the other side of Ramadi. Seth had his platoon, and they had a—an operation for that night, and I talked to Seth, and I was like, "Hey, man, you're good to go for tonight," meaning he was thinking—like—hey, I was thinking—he was thinking, "Hey, you're gonna stand down, because we had a guy—you know, Mark's—Mark got killed. Where are we going to stand down for a couple days? Are you guys going to come over here? We're gonna do a service form, like—what are we gonna do?" And I—I just said, "Hey, man, you're good to go for tonight. You can go and conduct your operation." And Seth—like—sent me—uh, there's this thing called Webby, which is like a way of communicating—it's basically like—like—um—like a little chat room—and he's like, "Hey, negative on the mission tonight." And I was like, "No, hey, you're good to go, man. You can—you're cleared hot; like you can go." And he's like, "Uh, negative on the mission." And so I was like, "No, bro, I got—like you got authorized; we're good. I—I talked up the chain of command; we can still execute this thing." And he called me; he was like, "Bro, we're not going out." And I was like—I was like, "You can go." If he goes, "Hey, man, if I take the guys out right now, it's gonna get bad," and I knew exactly what he was talking about. No, we just had—we just lost one of our guys; you put the boys out, and they're gonna—they're gonna—they're—they're gonna be too emotional. So I had to take the emotions of the situation into account. And if you don't take the emotions into account, then you can end up in a bad situation as well. So it's not that emotions should be ignored; it's not that emotion—it's not that you shouldn't be emotional, but you need to have control over your emotions. That doesn't mean you shut them out; it means you have control over them, and you—and you account for them, and you put them in the calculus with other people and with yourself. That's what I got.
It's good. Yep. You know, when people lose—and you talk about this—where it's like it feels powerful, you know—like when—if I get mad—and that's when you think about it—and tell me—tell me if you'd regard this the same way—the same thing—you know—like name-dropping, right? It's one of those things where if you do it—you know—of course, I'm—I'm achieving my goal of letting these people know I'm important for associating with this person—but when someone else does it, it's kind of—"Call you freaking name-dropper"—so obvious, right? Isn't that like when people like have outraged—like anger outbursts—isn't it kind of the same thing? Because like when someone else is doing it, you're like, "Bro, this guy's freaking flying off the handle," like a—but when you're doing it, you're like—they're probably thinking like—"Oh—oh, that guy's freaking losing it right now, man. This is heavy," you know—like kind of a thing. Yeah, I—I think you're right, but also there's also—there's also people that lose their mind, and they're not thinking anything. They literally are freaking losing their mind. And—and that's the worst, right? Hey, if you're like doing a little calculation and acting mad to try and intimidate or trying to whatever—that's one thing. It always feels like that's part of the equation. I don't know, maybe I'm around the wrong people, but—but—but yes, that—I think it's a scale; I think it's a continuum, right? Because there are some people—let's face it—you've seen some people in your life that have completely lost their mind, and the loss of temper, and there—you can't stop them; they're going crazy; you can't hold them back, or you have to hold them back.
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 JockoUnderground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms, so we are not subject to their control, and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us, strengthen this Legion of Troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JockoUnderground.com. It costs eight dollars and eighteen cents a month, and if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance@JockoUnderground.com, and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized Underground.