The Stockdale Paradox

Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking US military officer in the "Hanoi Hilton" prisoner-of-war camp during the Vietnam War. During his imprisonment, he set up a system of communication between soldiers to prevent difficulties from isolation, a way to endure torture and give as little intelligence as possible and overall tried to keep everyone physically and mentally intact to survive the whole ordeal, all the while continuing to fight the war internally.

In a book "Good to Great" he shared his story to the author, and after hearing his story, wrote this conclusion.

"Life is unfair - sometimes to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. We will all experience disappointments and crushing events somewhere along the way, setbacks for which there is no "reason," no one to blame. It might be disease... injury... accident... losing a loved on... getting swept away in a political shakeup... getting shot down over Vietnam and thrown into POW camp for 8 years. What separates people... is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. In wrestling with life's challenges, the Stockdale Paradox has proved powerful for coming back from difficulties not weakened, but stronger - not just for me, but for all those who've learned the lessen and tried to apply it."

Also to quote, the Stockdale paradox was defined as:

"Retain faith that you will prevail in the end regardless of difficulty AND confront the brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

In admiral Stockdale's interview, he said the ones who didn't make it out were the optimists. The one's who thought they'd be out by Christmas, or by Easter. That those were disappointed and died of a broken heart.

I think that's some pretty deep stuff [for lack of better terms]. To have a goal in mind, and to believe in victory, despite the reality of the situation. I think that's the key part here. It's not so much faith by itself, but faith despite knowing reality. There are times when you can have faith under any circumstance, but it's attributed to ignorance and denial of truth. In such times, unable to live with reality, one relies on faith, but breaks apart because they were no longer grounded.

I think a lot of us live like this. We say 'if only' we finish high school or 'if only' we graduate college. If only I got married. If only I became CEO of a large company. If only I [fill in the blank]. And as time goes, some are achieved and some are not. For each item that is not achieved, you slowly degenerate and step back from your objectives. You lose hope, because you've defined your failures absolutely, and while this isn't a total loss, for you who perceives it that way, it is a loss.

How do you view life? Is it a timeline of events that happen when you expect it to? Or is it a journey that's not exactly set, but still contains all the things you strive for? Lately, I've been setting up my timeline as if i had the perfect timing for everything in life. In two months, I will have achieved x. By the end of the year, I will have achieved y. Of course, I still set goals and deadlines for myself, but I wonder if I should reconsider the expectations that come with it.

I hope I look fit this summer. I hope I finally make that connection by the end of the year. I hope my investment in the market returns me a certain percentage by 2nd quarter of next year. These are my goals, but not so much set in stone, since if I don't reach it by then, then I must press on and have faith that it's not that much further away. That my good fight was not so much in vain, and that success was just a little more longer.

It was similar to the book I mentioned. I started reading it this past January. I read about 95% of it by mid-February, but because of the appendix [60 pages long!] I thought I had quite a long ways to go. I used to read a page or two here and there over the course of the next 6 weeks. Last week, I had 3 more pages to go thinking I had about 65. I told myself how it's going to take me forever at this rate. I should try to commit more to it and finish it.

I sat down today to finish it, and 2 pages later, realized I finished the book. Dumbfounded as I was, I flipped back to my favorite parts, and the Stockdale Paradox came up. I was a 5~15 minute read away from finishing the book a couple months ago. Who knew? =)

I've got goals in life, as I am sure you do. In unfavorable conditions, you lose hope, or get depressed if you're in it too long. You motivate yourself by setting deadlines and assuming you'll be out of that unfavorable condition within a set time that seems reasonable. In the end, unless you've lucked out, you will be setting yourself up for disappointment. Granted, people get worn down when they're trying to climb up, or get out of any situation they don't like, it's better to deal with the hard facts while still keeping hope.

This goes back to the excerpt I posted above, on how life is unfair. Sometimes you just deal with the burn and hang on. It hurts, and there might be no emotional release as there is nothing to blame. But we're people. We're resilient beings capable of incredible endurance, especially when empowered by the slightest bit of hope.

In the Hanoi Hilton situation, the prisoners would wash the floor with mops in a rhythm that tapped the floor. The rhythm was the coded communication that admiral Stockdale taught all the prisoners. The tapping consistently spread the message every single day to all prisoners saying "we love you."

You're not a POW as you read this blog. You're free to exercise your right to be great, and even though it may take many years before you see a glimpse of your greatness, who knows, maybe you're just a few pages away?