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

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Don't Confuse Your Thoughts for Your FeelingsFinancially improving as a single parent.Improving relationships when you're on The Spectrum.How to network with good people.Getting over past trauma to excel in life.Being more concise to improve being the leader.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Janko Underground podcast number 98 sitting with Echo Charles. 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. Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell quote.

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 the 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 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 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.

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 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 yeah but there still is an underlying solid form behind the painting that you need to pay attention to and and so I think what the important part the part that

jams us up is when as Thomas Holt put it 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 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 going to 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. The feeling can make you feel a certain way. Do you see what I'm saying? The logic can make you feel a certain way

and the feeling makes you feel a certain way. How do you discern what it is? So it's tricky. I mean, emotions are, the things I'm looking at, emotions are subjective. Emotions are a little bit unpredictable. Emotions, feelings are not rooted in logic. 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 my ego. Let me rephrase those, right? When I'm happy, it's because my ego just got, you know, to be 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 the negative feelings almost always Ego or often ego rooted and here's what I started to pay attention to the language that you utilize and the language that people utilize when they're expressing their feelings 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 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 floating around. And you can't really get that rope around it. It doesn't really hang on.

You've heard me talk about the explanation effort meter. Yeah. 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 telling you, but you're just looking at me and shaking your head. Like, I don't get it. Mm-hmm. There's a good chance that the thing that I'm,

the thing that I want to do is not logical, but emotional. Yeah. 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. 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. 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 saying, well, 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

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 use an emotional language and you don't get it and you continue to not get it the person that 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. Now here's a little bit of a what could help this.

Because obviously this is this case for detachment, right? If you actually write down what you're talking about, like some of these people that are going completely freaking psycho on Twitter, 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 from the social media, from the Twitter perspective,

I've seen iterative or iterations of arguments between conservative and liberal sides. And they do not have the same basic, truths about whatever they're discussing like with 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 though the meaning award is this yeah the facts are this there's no farmers almanac you remember that thing well no I don't remember farmers 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 yeah like

And you go to that thing and it tells you. 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's going to be, right? Of course. So you can refer to the tide chart and then there's no discussion. Oh, oh, at 1004, 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 what time the sun goes. The sun goes down. That's what it is.

So I can say, hey, we should go surfing at this time. And you say, why? And I said, because the tide is good. You say, prove it. I pulled the tide chart. I show it. You go, oh, yeah, okay, cool. Let's go at that time.

The problem is they're looking at two different tide charts. And they're believing the tide chart that they're looking at. So if you want to try and to. some of the things that you're thinking about and try and identify if you're having an emotional or a feeling 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

So 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. But it's very bizarre. You know, that's another one is, you know, diet. You know, you and I could say find plenty of information online to support a literal all meat diet and a literal all vegan diet. Yeah. We could find scientific litter, the whole nine yards. We could find pro and we could find con on both those diets. So you better try and use your logic because it's real easy.

People get emotion about those two things all the time. Oh, yeah. Even the idea of using your logic a lot of times is an emotional response. Or 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 facts and opinions, emotions from logic, or the skill of differentiating is a thing.

Because it's not just like, it's not self-evident a lot of the time. But here's the problem with data. You can take data and just manipulate it. That's my whole point. Exactly right. It doesn't mean anything. And the same thing. And now people are like, hey, follow the science or whatever.

Whoa, the facts are 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 the facts are like the facts are. 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 the thing. So it doesn't paint an accurate picture a lot of the time. That's like kind of the issue. And you can make it paint what you want. What you want. Yeah. So if you have a deliberate intention to paint, oh, yeah, you can.

It's like making a recipe of a cake or something. You can make it taste a certain way. You make it taste salty because there's salt in cake. You can make it taste salty. There's there. There's cookies there. I heard. I don't know.

I never made it. The facts, bro. 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 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 conclusion not the conclusion exactly right

a conclusion oh yeah and then to know whether or not the conclusion is accurate you got to do some a weird crazy investigation so it's like you know it's easy 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 for lack of a better term self-serving i don't mean it in a bad way i mean self-sure it's personal you know very personal very subjective very personal um 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 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 jaco underground podcast so if you want to continue to listen go to jocco underground dot 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 are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors.

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