Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL commander, says something that I have found increasingly profound the older I get: "If you're emotionally attached to a plan or an idea, you might miss the better one."
When I first encountered this idea, I didn't think it had much merit. Sure, detaching is helpful when it comes to little things like losing your temper or managing basic emotions, but surely this doesn't hold true for the big stuff. How can I detach from the emotion I feel when losing a loved one? How can I detach from the outcome of my business when it's severely struggling or even failing?
Not only is detachment important when it comes to the big things, it's infinitely more important. Jordan Peterson wrote in his book 12 Rules for Life: "Aim to be the person at your father's funeral that everyone, in their grief and misery, can rely on." This is what healthy detachment looks like. It doesn't mean you shouldn't feel emotions or grief. But it does mean that you have enough inner strength to lead and support others while still processing your own emotions. You are able to see and feel your emotions, but more importantly, take a step back, analyze the situation, and make rational, logical decisions because others are relying on you to do so.
Emotions are tricky. Feeling them, and not suppressing or ignoring them, is very important to being emotionally healthy. The key is to not allow emotions to be the supreme good in our lives. Our emotions are not calling the shots. Sure, they can have a seat at the table, but when it comes to making decisions about how we show up in the world, they are not the decision maker. Detachment means that we can see our emotions from the outside — the ability to zoom out and make decisions not based on emotion, but based on what is right and true. To think strategically in the face of chaos.
Detachment From Outcomes
Detachment goes beyond simply detaching from emotions. To truly embrace healthy detachment, you must also detach from outcomes, even when it comes to really important things. Detachment from outcomes is a bit counterintuitive. If you have put your heart and soul into something, it seems almost impossible to detach from the outcome.
Imagine you're an elite-level high school sprinter, specializing in the 100m. It's your senior year, and in the last three seasons you've been beaten in the state final by the same competitor. This year, he has graduated. This is your time. You work harder than you've ever worked. Your times have significantly improved. You've truly put your heart and soul into this endeavor and couldn't be more prepared. The day of the race comes and you're more confident than ever. When the gun goes off, you run the race of your life, breaking your personal record and setting a new state record. The only problem is, someone else also broke the state record — by a millisecond faster than you. You look over and see the other runner celebrating, and the feeling of defeat is devastating. By almost every measure you had an incredibly successful season, but fell short of your goal of winning the state title.
Now imagine that you are the parent of this runner. What would your perspective be? Obviously you were rooting for your son and wanted him to win. But now that he's fallen just short of his goal, how do you feel? Any good parent would feel extraordinarily proud. The work he put in, the dedication, the sacrifice, and seeing him run the best race of his life when it mattered most would bring an overwhelming sense of joy. Sure, you feel the disappointment your son is feeling. But you are proud, because you, more than your son, can see the massive amount of success wrapped around this perceived failure, while your son can only see the tiny speck of failure within a sea of success.
This is the difference between the person who is detached from outcomes and the person who is consumed by outcomes. It's not that you aren't disappointed things didn't work out. It's that you are removed enough from the emotion of a given outcome to understand there was nothing more you could have done to change it. You did everything in your power leading up to the outcome, and you are not going to allow something out of your control to rob your peace. You understand that you can only control what you can control, and everything that happens after that is no reflection on you.
You will find much peace in this approach, as long as you are doing everything in your power to influence the outcomes you want. If the runner had consistently slacked off on training because he thought he had the race in the bag, then got beat while not performing to his full potential, there would be little peace in that. Peace remains when we know we have done everything in our power. When we know we've given it everything, there's nothing to regret. There's nothing to second-guess.
