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I was re listening to one of jocko's books. It was the leadership strategy and tactics. And
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he was talking about,
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he talks about a lot of cool stuff in that book, but one thing that I wanted to talk about today was he was talking about detaching. And so all
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he if you read any of his books, he goes through like stories from when he was in the military. And so this particular story about when he was learning
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about detaching from the situation, so you can kind of see things a little better. I
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think he was on a training mission, and he said that everybody on the team was
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looking down their rifles and like scanning for targets and shit, and even the even the leader of the platoon, or I don't know what it was, even the
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leader, the person in charge, was also doing that. So everybody had this field of view that was pretty narrow, and they were all scanning for targets,
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and
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Jocko, in his head, was waiting for an order. So he was watching everybody scan for targets and waiting for an order to come in, and
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the order didn't come. You waited a little longer, the order didn't come. So, long story short, he ended up
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putting his rifle in high port, which my understanding is like when you point the barrel up to the sky, so it's in a safe direction, and then
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doing that. And I think he said he took a step back, like a physical step back, so he could really see everything that was going on,
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and so no longer does he have that really narrow field of view. Now he has a full, you know, 360 or 180 or whatever he was looking at. He had a much
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better view of the situation, and he saw pretty clearly what call needed to happen. So he made the call and what he learned from that was sometimes
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you have to detach from the situation in order to really be able to see what's going on.
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So when I was listening to that, and I'm thinking about it on the level of kind of talking about this information with my team, because I'm trying to bring up
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some new leaders, and
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I think, I think the ability to detach and look at the whole situation is a vital skill, and it's something that I forget to practice all the time.
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And
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so I remembered a scenario, pretty much like most of this year, I failed to detach, and
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I caused myself a lot more stress than I would have had I had I kind of had the
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had that top of mind, and been able to do that. So
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one of the examples is,
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is so I think it was towards the beginning of the year I started
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how much detail I should get into with this. That's
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so I was looking at profits. And a lot of the profits was,
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what we had determined was, we're putting too much into marketing.
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You know, the percentage of our income was too much of the too high of a percentage was going towards marketing. And I believe in marketing, and I believe in
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the power of it, but I think some of the strategies where we're using were ineffective or not as effective as they should have been. So it was sort of
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eating up the profit. So I was, I was implementing some strategies where I was reducing the ad spend and trying to
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to make up for that in other areas. And
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so, you know, we're incrementally reducing the ad spend, and I'm trying to do other things. So we're testing, and unless you hit the thing
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right the very first time, which is rare, you're going to have, like, some kind of grace period, or some kind of lull, or something in sales, where you're
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you're taking marketing spend away, but and so less money is coming in. So
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even though I was like, completely aware that that's what I was doing,
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I still was like, super focused on the daily sales and those numbers going down. And then I kept kind of doing what I was doing, and the numbers got down
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to where it was like,
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you know, it was not going to be sustainable moving forward. So I was really starting to panic,
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and because I was so focused on that one thing, I mean, obviously I was, I was focused on other things, trying to come up with new strategies and
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everything. But I had so much focus on the fact that the numbers were going down.
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It was almost as if I forgot that the numbers were going down as a result of an action that I was taking. So my mind was going into all these different places,
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like, Oh, shit. What if, like, you know, something's happening and, you know, this bad economy is starting to catch up to us, or, you know, maybe I made a bad
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move somewhere else, like not thinking about the marketing ad ad spend going down, which is would make perfect sense that, you know, less money would come
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in as you're trying to figure things out. So I spent a good part of the year super stressed out and really panicking about,
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you know, the business, because we weren't really bringing in enough
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at the at the rate that that we were going. So I was, like, really worried, you know. And then, you know, I made some moves and and figured some shit
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out and, and then now we're, you know, even though the marketing spend has been reduced, we're making more than we ever have. So like, I figured some shit
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out.
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And so by figuring some shit out, my mind, like, I'm not gonna take credit and say that I I purposely detached, because that's not what happened. What
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happened was I was testing things, and something that I tested worked, which led to some other things working, and so on and so forth. And ended up kind
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of getting some things figured out. So then the sales were back, not only back to where I wanted them, but they were much higher. So
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my Jesus Christ, this turn is the worst. So my stress levels went down because,
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because the problem that I was focusing on was was no longer the problem, you know,
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and so I inadvertently detached and realized I was like, I've been stressing about this this whole time, and I was stressing about the wrong shit, like I
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was, I was sitting here worried that all these other outside circumstances were happening, and that's why the sales went down. But it was my own actions
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of intentionally reducing that ad spend which was what resulted in that so
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I could have saved myself so much stress had I just really thought about this detach and really look at what's going on. And started really running
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numbers like, what I'm doing now. So like, I have like ways of tracking and seeing, like, how much
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I don't know I'm getting too in the weeds here, but I just have a much better way of looking and analytically seeing like, this is how much is going out, this
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is how much is coming in. This is working. This is not working, and things like that. Now I'm more detached and am able to see the whole big picture
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and so, so then another, another thing, like just in my overall life, just like my mental health and stuff. I've also kind of felt like I've been, like, sort
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of operating at a lower frequency than I want, I want to be, you know, like I'm I'm more unhappy and more stressed out. I signed up for stress. I'm not
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saying stress is bad. It's just, you know, it's kind of part of the game in some, some way.
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But I felt like, you know, there was just a lot more than than should have been happening in terms of just my own mental state. So
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it's real easy to, like, look outside of yourself and be like, Oh, well, you know, the economy is fucked up, like the world is just kind of weird. At least our
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country is super weird right now. There's just a lot of like, strange stuff happening that I don't really quite understand. And,
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you know, and then now we're an election kind of cycle, so like, everybody's fucking acting like weirdos.
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I don't know if weird is the right word, but just, you know,
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there's like, a heightened fucking fuckery going on. I don't know how I want to explain it. I don't want to get too far into all this shit, but it was,
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it's easy to look outside of you and be like this is all happening, and that's that's why I'm stressed out, or that's why my frequency is not as high as I
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want it to be. But that's not,
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that's not. I don't find that to be a reasonable thing, because no matter what's happening around you, it doesn't mean you have to allow that to to change
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your mindset, and it changed the way that you feel or
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affect your mental health. It doesn't have to, and you can look to lots of different people, like
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Viktor Frankl was in a concentration camp, and he was able to maintain.
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Mindset that he wanted to have, like, obviously he was suffering and he saw this stuff happening. But, you know, he's the guy that has that phrase between stimulus
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and response lies, what is it? Shit between stimulus and response lies a space, and within that space is your ability to respond, or something
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along those lines. But basically what it means is like something happens. And for in his case, all this crazy shit is happening because he's in a concentration
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camp. He's seeing people dying all around him. That's the stimulus. And then that space between that stimulus and his response, that's where his
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freedom is. He he gets to decide how that's going to affect him.
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And I can't think of a much worse existence than to be in that, you know, and somebody like Epictetus,
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one of the most well known Stoic philosophers, and talks about
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things like, you know, things that are beyond your control don't have the ability to affect, like, how you think and your freedom inside your own
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mind. And he was a slave during all of that, most of the time or not. I don't know how long he was a slave for, but he was a slave from when, I think it was,
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from when he was a kid until he was
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quite a bit older. I wish I should know this, but either way, he was able to maintain these stoic philosophy, these stoic virtues, while being a
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slave. So
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what that tells me is that you know, you could be in this terrible situation. And it doesn't necessarily mean it has to affect what's going on in
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your own mind. Like, obviously there's certain things you know that are happening, like you could physically be detained or beaten, or all these kind of
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things. But the way that these guys who were going through some horrible things we're talking about. It is like, you know, those things don't have the
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power to affect my mind. That's my that's under my control. And so when I'm sitting here worried about my own shit, which is obviously no nowhere near
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in the same fucking universe as the shit that those guys were going through,
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I was finding it easy to put it on outside circumstances, and I took the time to detach and think like, well, what am I doing that's potentially causing
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this lower frequency that I don't want to be in? And it was pretty easy to see that it was like, I wasn't, I wasn't doing all of the things that I know
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help me be at a higher frequency and like that's taking care of your mind, body and your spirit, or your soul, or whatever you believe in is. And so what are
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those things that I that I used to do, that I'm no longer doing? And
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it's three things, well, not no longer, but not doing them with the consistency that I think I should be. So the three things are
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reading, meditating and working out, and then, you know, there's other stuff that goes along with it, like eating well, and,
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you know, doing what I need to do at my business and stuff like that. But
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so I made a commitment that every day I'm going to read 10 pages, I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes, and I'm going to do some kind of intense workout for
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at least 15 minutes. And I know 15 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, but
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I am more looking at and 10 minutes of meditation isn't a lot either, but I'm looking at gaining these habits again, so I'm not going to go, Okay, I
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only really read 10 pages a day. I think that's perfectly fine, so that's not going to change. But I would prefer to meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, and I'd
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prefer to work out maybe a little bit longer, but I
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just want to get those habits going again. And so I started doing that, and I started putting that on my power list as three items that go on there
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every day I have to do these three things. These are the three things I have to do.
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And as soon as I started doing that with some regularity, I started feeling better, because
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even though the effects of those actions maybe take some time to really settle in,
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the fact that I was back on track with the things that I know I need to do to to help
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that was enough to really start to clear up a lot of my
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a lot of my issues in my head that I was having so
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So I guess the overall topic of the conversation here is,
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you know, anything that's going on in your life, in your business, at work, or whatever, if you take the time to detach and step back and.
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At everything
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and really look at like, what are you doing that's causing any of this stuff, even if it is totally outside of your control, you know where what's your part?
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Instead of, like, blaming on other shit, if you detach and really look at what your part is, there's likely a lot of different moves you can make
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that are gonna at least start getting you in a better path. So,
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yeah, that's it. Alright. I'm at work. I gotta go. I will see you next time.
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All right,
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appreciate each and every one of you guys who are supporting the cause and continue to spread the love and yeah, stay up.