How The Stockdale Principle Can Help Overcome Adversity
“Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them…What, then, is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens.”
I woke up slightly disturbed. My heart was beating faster than usual. I sat up in bed trying to understand why. Then the dream came to me.
I was sat in a horse-driven carriage going so fast that I was bouncing up and down on the bare wooden seat of the carriage. But here’s the thing; there was no horse. I was sat in a horseless carriage going at 60mph in a deserted European village going through a paved narrow street. It must have been some time in the 18 century. I could see on my left, big wooden doors that were marked with large red-painted crosses. Lying on the cobble-stone road all around me were dead bodies on the ground. As I got out of the village and into the countryside, the horse magically appeared. I was holding the reins controlling the horse and carriage. At first, it was fast but with each gallop, the pace slowed down, until at the end the horse stopped in front of a stream. I saw my face change from a worried, freakish frenzy to a more serene and thoughtful look.
What to make of it? Obviously, living through the pandemic of COVID-19 played a big role in the dream. However, when I thought more about the vividness of the details, there was more to it than just that. Why was the carriage horseless until I was safe and out of the danger zone?
The Stockdale Paradox
This is a concept popularized by Jim Collins, the great business management guru, in his book Good to Great.
James Stockdale was one of the highest-ranking naval officers to be captured during the Vietnam War. He spent seven-plus years as a POW in Hanoi. He was regularly tortured, kept in solitary confinement and had his legs in iron cuffs. His chances of getting out were slim, to say the least.
However, being the leader of the other soldiers in capture meant he wanted to stay alive not just for himself but also for the rest. He found a way to get through his hell by balancing reality with faith; the reality that he might be killed at any moment and the faith that one day he would get out alive.
Stockdale explained this idea as the following: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
The contradictory idea is a great lesson for all of us who must balance both life’s trials with an optimistic outlook that things will work out at the end. The paradox flies in the face of unbridled optimism, positive and self-help movement who want us to believe that we can will anything we want into existence.
In a discussion with Collins for his book, Stockdale speaks about how the optimists fared in camp. The dialogue goes:
“Who didn’t make it out?” “Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists”. “The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier. “The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
We all want success without failure. We all want gold at the end of the rainbow. However, in desiring only the perfect results, we often blind ourselves to the harsh realities that await us.
The paradox teaches us that life is not binary; either we are happy or miserable. Life is not that we either live happily ever after or we suffer through miserable defeat. It’s not about choosing sides.
Conversely, it’s all about embracing both feelings even if they oppose each other. It’s about realising that both feelings are necessary and reliant on each other for us to achieve our goal; to be content; to reach our own Nirvana.
In this age of wanting instant results, the ‘Stockdale Paradox’ emphasises that we must learn how to hold both pain and joy, successes and failures, and embrace uncertainty. If our faith remains unwavering and we are willing to put in the work, then we will prevail eventually.
Stockdale was freed alive at the end whilst countless others died from hopelessness. This was because he learned to balance both hope and reality at the same time.
In my dream, the horse signifies the faith within me. When I was in the midst of the plague-struck village, I felt helpless, fearful and lacked faith. The horse simply disappeared.
Yet, when I managed to get out of the turmoil of the village and into the countryside, I’d controlled my ‘monkey-mind’ and looked at the reality—that things will be okay if only I persevere and do the work—then the horse magically appeared.
It’s in balancing these two mindsets that we can make our faith work. We thus become realistic optimists that not only survive but thrive in our perplexing world.