At a time when so many of us are frustrated, disheartened, and uncertain about the future, I think we’d do well to take some advice from James Stockdale. Shot down over Vietnam in 1965, Stockdale spent eight years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton where he was repeatedly isolated, tortured, and starved. It is hard to image how anybody could survive that kind of suffering, much less emerge to thrive. But he did, and he has a relatively simple explanation of how - the Stockdale Paradox.
Popularized by famous business author Jim Collins, as a characteristic of great businesses, the Stockdale Paradox is essentially a combination of realism and resolve. You might call it hopeful pragmatism - the ability to face the brutal facts of your current reality while maintaining an unshakeable belief that you will prevail in the end. You can never lose hope, but you can never lose touch. And this is exactly what we need right now.
Pessimism is clearly not the answer. It never is. But, pure optimism isn’t either. In Stockdale’s own words:
“Oh, it’s easy. I can tell you who didn’t make it out. It was the optimists. They were the ones who always said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ Christmas would come and it would go. And there would be another Christmas. And they died of a broken heart.”
This is an extremely difficult period for all of us and we can’t simply wish it away and convince ourselves that it’ll be over after the election, or after the holidays, or at any arbitrary point on the calendar. We have to face the challenges of 2020, and fight. And we have to do so knowing that we’ll figure it out and make it through. This isn’t paradoxical at all. It’s the way that tough people have been solving problems forever.
It is easy to feel like we have to fall into one of two camps (We’re Screwed OR We’re Fine), but we don’t. The truth is, we’re not screwed AND we’re not fine. We are in the middle of a bad situation. It hurts. And we don’t know when it will be over. But we will work our way out of it.
If the current moment has you feeling beat down, go easy on yourself, we are all going to have our low points. Maybe just keep Stockdale in mind. Shrink the world down a bit. Identify what is within your control. Acknowledge that times are hard, take it one day at a time, and keep moving forward.