“The safest place in a bad storm is the hard truth”.
Admiral Stockdale
Stockdale’s Paradox/Polarity of Reality and Faith is wisdom for our times. Hopefully, the piece below taken from Good-to-Great (plus some additional resources is useful for you.
COLLINS: I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”
STOCKDALE: “Oh, that’s easy, the optimists.”
COLLINS: “The optimists? I don’t understand.”
STOCKDALE: “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. This is a very important lesson. 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.”
Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest-ranking United States military office in the “Hanoi Hilton” POW in Vietnam War. He was tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, and lived out the war without: prisoner’s rights, a set release date, and zero certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. At the same time he increased the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken he fought an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda — deliberately disfiguring himself (he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor), so that he could not be put on videotape as an example of a “well-treated prisoner.”
He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture (no one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a step-wise system–-after x minutes, you can say certain things–-that gave the men milestones to survive toward). He instituted an elaborate internal communications system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create. At one point, during an imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code, swish-swashing out “We love you” to Stockdale, on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
How on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?”
“I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect, I would not trade.”
Additional Resources:
Stress-focused Polarity Map
Care for Parts AND Care for the Collective
Information Accuracy AND Response Implementation
Science Focus AND Social Focus
And, the one that’s touched me most is:
Physical/Social Distance AND Emotional Connection
Well Being “Multarity”? — HERE YOU GO!
MORE CLIFF’S NOTES RESOURCES FOR LEVERAGING OUR GLOBAL POLARITIES
RESOURCES ON POLARITY FROM THE CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
