“Retain the faith that you will prevail in the end regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your reality–whatever they might be.” – The Stockdale Paradox
The Stockdale Paradox was developed by author Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great. He had the privilege of meeting Admiral Stockdale and learning about his survival as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He faced torture in a POW camp for 8 years. When Jim Collins asked Stockdale who did not survive the camp, he quickly replied that the optimists did not survive. This greatly surprised Collins.
Stockdale then explained that the optimists always tied their faith to a hope that they would get out of the camp by a certain date. But when those dates did not come to fruition over and over again, they lost hope. Stockdale survived by retaining his faith that he would prevail and also taking what control he had to confront his reality. How could he thwart his enemy? How could he support his fellow prisoners of war to survive? His account is written in his book, In Love and War.
The Stockdale Paradox is an important principle lived by successful leaders. In fact, Jim Collins found it to be a defining factor of the good-to-great companies he researched in his book. I believe that there is a mindset behind the Stockdale Paradox that you can learn to apply.
Internal vs. External Control
Applying the Stockdale Paradox rests upon what you view as your locus of control. An optimist who puts hope only in a date is functioning by external control. They hope that some future date will save them. Sometimes we are in circumstances out of our control, like a POW, but there are still ways that we can have internal control. What can we learn? How can we make a difference? We choose to exert what power we can instead of falling into a victim mindset (loss of power) or being an optimist (giving power to an event).
Then there are times when we could impact the circumstances but choose to give the circumstances too much power over our lives. We may be facing a challenge and think that once we get through the event it will all be better, but then we find ourselves in another similar challenge and the cycle starts all over. We may have a faulty mindset and habit that keep us in an unhealthy pattern; however, we keep pointing to the external circumstance (the symptom) as being the problem. We blame the external controlling us instead of us taking internal control.
With this I can give an example from my own life. In high school, I put a tremendous amount of stress on myself to do every activity, get good grades, and to perform well. My hope was that if I just get through high school then the stress would end. However, as I entered college, I found the same stress coming back. I realized that to think, “If I just get through college and the stress would go away,” was repeating a pattern. After college, there would be another new challenge. Instead I had to change my mindset. I had to look internally and find my faulty mindset. I had to find truth and then take risks to change base on that clarity. The great thing about the process is that it helped me to become more of who I truly am meant to be.
Is your locus of control external or internal? Do you believe that things will get better, but then don’t confront reality? As an organization, do you blame circumstances but keep facing the same problems? Be realistic about circumstances, but don’t let them dictate who you are. Hope lies in who we are and who we are becoming. Circumstances are just a part of the process.