Some ways that detachment can become part of your strategic tool set in dealing with stressful situations and making life decisions.

According to Meriam Webster the definition of “Detach” is; to separate especially from a larger mass and usually without violence or damage.

Jocko Willink cites “Detachment” often on his podcast when he’s discussing how he led his team of Navy Seals in Iraq. Remaining emotionally attached to something or someone can cloud our judgement. Often we will accept certain things to get what we want, just because we want it.

Have you thought about how it’s so much easier to give others advice but extremely difficult to follow your own advice yourself? Emotion, ego and all the different types of Biases we may be experiencing can and will cloud your judgement. It’s easier to give advice to others because you are not emotionally invested in the outcome.

‘’When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.’’
Dale Carnegie

If you can operate from a strategic position instead of one of emotional response you will have a huge advantage over most of the people you will ever deal with.

A tactic that Jocko will use when he’s making a decision is to “detach”. He will try to remove himself from the situation by imagining himself as a third party, a bystander so that he can work to see thing without any emotional bias. This approach can be a super-power when you are reviewing past actions and decisions.

Look at a situation as if it was someone else.
What advice would you give them.
Detach from yourself.

The Observer
Do whatever you need to do to be able to observe a situation instead of participating in it. It may be that you need to take a deep breath and center yourself, that’s okay. It may be that you need some time, so tell the other people involved that you need a few and then go and actively think about things.

This is the easy part. The hard part is knowing you need to take that step back so you can detach. It’s like the story about slowly boiling a frog:

If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.

We have to consciously work on what it takes to have some level of self awareness. You need to develop your own set of personal red flags to let you know that you need to detach.

The Thinker
When you are able to successfully detach from a situation on whatever level you can see things more clearly and make strategic informed decisions about what reaction or move you want to make. However it is not just optimal to use the method of detachment to control your emotions. Jocko coaches us to learn to use detachment as part of our creative process. If you can detach from the expected outcomes you have in a thing, you can see it from different angles that you previously could not see it in.

“Don’t cling to a mistake — Just because you spent a lot of your time making it”

Sometimes when we want something bad enough we will overlook most of the shortcomings in others or sacrifices we will wind up making to get the things we want. When we have an emotional investment in something or someone we want things to work out, so we accept changes we would not normally accept. We let people cross boundaries we would not normally let them cross when all things are equal in the end.

I have personally experienced this type of scenario in a business relatio

Send us Fan Mail