discipline over emotion wins every time: the Stockdale paradox

Summary

Admiral James Stockdale spent seven years as a POW in Vietnam. he came home and gave us the Stockdale paradox: confront the brutal facts, never lose faith in the outcome. but the part most people skip is how he got there.

Stockdale studied stoicism at Stanford before he was ever shot down. when his plane went down he had thirty seconds to decide who he was about to become. he later said he was leaving the world he knew and entering the world of Epictetus. the philosophy he chose in peacetime is what kept him alive in captivity.

the move is simple, the work is not:

1. train before the crisis. the hard thing you choose today, on a Tuesday when nothing is wrong, becomes the reserve you draw on when everything goes wrong.
2. discipline over emotion. you don’t get to feel like doing it. you do it because of who it makes you.
3. push against your own desire. every day, find the thing you don’t want to do, and do that one first.

the punchline: you have no idea which small hard thing today will be the thing that saves you later. so do them all. become a better human one rep at a time.

Transcript

why we must keep doing hard things

The reason we have to continue to do hard things throughout our lives is because we never know which hard thing that we’re doing is ultimately going to shape our future. So today I’m going to be talking about the story of Admiral James Stockdale. A lot of people have heard of Stockdale. He was shot down on September 9th, 1965 leading a strike over North Vietnam. He was h held a prisoner of war for over 7 years. He was tortured repeatedly and he ultimately got through it through disciplined thinking.

Thinking that was eventually named the Stockdale paradox in which he was not overly pessimistic or overly optimistic. He was really just focused on the facts and moving forward.

the story of admiral james stockdale

He found that the people who are too pessimistic would die of a broken heart and the people who are too optimistic would die of the same reason because ultimately they were not focused on what was in front of them. So today I’m going to be looking at his story through a different lens than just talking about the torture he went through or how long he was in captivity or all of the amazing things that he did, the standards that he held himself to.

Because often times when we hear about these people, we look at them as if they are these fictitious heroes who were born to do the amazing thing that they did. But I don’t think that’s the case at all with Stockdale. So I am going to take my experience as a military officer and tell you what I think happened and how he ended up getting through this. So going back to kind of his backstory. So Stockdale was a kid from Illinois.

He grew up in the depression and there’s nothing really special about his background. I do think people growing up in the depression may be a little bit harder than kids these days, but he worked hard. He made it to the Naval Academy and he became a pilot. Now, by age 37, he was a commander. Um, and he was on track for high command. Like, you could tell just by looking at his career, and that’s what I was looking at um in researching Stockdale, he wanted to he wanted to be a high ranking official.

Um, and the Navy ultimately selected him for uh to go to Stanford to get a masters in international relations. Now, if you don’t know a lot about the military, there are a lot of programs out there like this. Um the military really uh favors people with more education. So you come in as an officer, you need a college degree to become an officer and then that continued education through graduate level programs is what keeps you bumping you up in rank.

Uh and the fact that he had master and international relations in all honesty, it just shows me that he was headed in that direction. And so he kept going that way. I you know just me looking at his uh career from a bird’s eye view you could tell he wanted to be a high ranking official and but here’s the thing like a fighter pilot someone who sitting who has to sit in a class and learn like this is ultimately not a fun thing for a dude who wants to be in combat a guy who came in was a test pilot all these things he didn’t want to do these things but also at the same time he wasn’t going to slack right so he wasn’t going to halfass anything so while at Stanford he took some philosophy courses during his getting his masters in international relations and it introduced him to stoicism.

So why he selected this, we don’t know. We don’t know what the big why behind it.

his education, stoicism, and disciplined thinking

But he specifically latched on to Epictitus, you know, who was a crippled Roman slave who wrote about suffering and control. No better teacher for what Stockdale was about to experience. But ultimately this was his selection and he nerded out on it, right? He had a mentor who guided him through this thing and this is what he wanted to do. And so he was going through his education. And the hard thing that he selected was going through philosophy courses and actually trying hard.

Like he was actually going through the philosophy courses and putting in an effort. And then after he did that, 3 years later, he’s back in the cockpit where he wants to be and he’s leading a strike over North Vietnam when his A4 Skyhawk takes fire and he ejects. And there’s a very famous quote about Stocktdale and it goes like this. As he’s falling through the sky, his thought was, “I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictitus.”

the moment he was shot down and his decision in midair

That is what he said he was thinking as he was ejecting from his aircraft. Now, if you just think about that for a moment, how incredible it would be to have that level of awareness to be like, “Wow, old life is gone.” You know, like what I have been doing all this time is gone. Like I’m entering in a different world. And so somewhere between the missile strike and hitting the ground, he made a decision. He was going for disciplined thinking.

And that’s what was going to get him through this. Not blind optimism, not pessimism, but just disciplined thinking. So what ne happened next is really brutal. He beat his own face with a stool cuz he didn’t want to be used as propaganda. He’s one of the highest ranking naval officers to be captured. And so they con repeatedly wanted to use him in their propaganda films and things that they were trying to create. So he beat his face with a stool.

So he couldn’t do that. They tortured him repeatedly. He spent months in leg irons, solitary confinement, the list goes on and on. But he maintained a routine each and every single day. He would pace the cell. He would do push-ups. He would communicate through tapping code on the wall. He would do all of these things to stay mentally engaged. And he often times was reciting Epictitus during torture. And he just decided that this is what he was going to do.

And this happened for seven years. So his uh approach became now what we know as the Stockdale paradox where it’s not about being optimistic or pessimistic. I kind of went over that.

daily habits and mental resilience in captivity

So anyway, going back to his selection, like I said, maybe growing up in the depression hardened him to some degree, but at the end of the day, he decided to take a course in philosophy during his international relations master’s degree. And that is ultimately what I think saved his life. And would we even know who Admiral Stockdale was today if he hadn’t take those philosophy courses? Or better yet, if he had not taken them seriously? Like I said, this was a guy, this was a fighter pilot who wanted to fly.

He was wanted to be on the fast track for higher command. I don’t know how interested he was in actually taking these courses, but something about stoicism landed with him. So, he took the courses and he took them seriously and he could have just skated through. He could have just passed. Look, I’ve seen this over and over again as a military officer. Um, when we’re forced to go through continuing education, yeah, a lot of us will take it seriously, but ultimately there are a lot of guys who are just trying to get through it.

They just want to push through, check the box so they can get the next rank. And he was not that guy because when the missiles came, he didn’t have time to learn stoicism. He either had it or he didn’t. And it and he had it because years earlier, even in what was probably an easy class, he did the work. He engaged with material. He let it stick. Stockdale is the perfect example of one of my favorite quotes from Cynica.

If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes. Stockdale trained before the crisis. Not with survival school, not with seer training, with philosophy class. That probably seemed like the easiest option on the course list.

why studying philosophy saved his life

So why do hard things? because you learn about yourself in the process and you never know what small uncomfortable choice you make today becomes what saves your life tomorrow. The reason I wanted to point this out and look at it through a different lens with Stockdale is he could have picked easy, right? He could have ignored taking any hard classes. He could have ignored paying attention and just gotten the grades. And if we go back to our lives, we have a lot of easy buttons that we’re hitting, a lot of boxes that we’re checking when ultimately we should be choosing hard because you never know when the hard things are going to end up shaping your life in the future.

what “train before the crisis” really means

So each and every single day, you have a choice to hit snooze on the alarm clock or get up and do the thing. Each and every single day you have a choice on how you’re going to approach your work. Are you going to approach your work as a professional who’s there to try hard to put in the effort, go the extra inch, the extra mile, whatever it is? Are you going to be that person or are you just checking the box in your career?

You’re just collecting the paycheck or you’re an entrepreneur who’s just checking the box today. You’re not really investing in your team. You’re not putting in the effort to really grow the business or the company. are just going through the motions and complaining about the results that you’re not getting.

bringing the lesson home…choosing hard daily

Ultimately, we have to choose these hard things over and over again because when we choose the hard things, it shapes who we are. So, my challenge to you this week, write down which hard thing that you’re doing. One of my uh favorite things, journal entries each and every single day when you wake up, what hard thing will I do this day? and write it down. What’s the hard thing that you’re going to do? Now, the hard thing, my definition of hard thing from my book, Killing C Comfort is pushing forward against your own desire.

And then I added doing that daily over decades. So, it’s best to put this in one singular direction. So, for instance, if my hard thing pushing forward against my own desire is to do a workout today, I’m going to go work out, right? I’m going to do that thing, but it’s going to be a workout every single day, daily over decades. That’s where I’m going to see the most monumental progress if I am invested in that one thing for a very long period of time.

But if your one thing is just trying to shape who you are as a person, doing any hard thing, even if they’re all different each and every single day, that is a practice in and of itself that will shape who you are. And it’ll shape you into a person who can do harder things and can tackle challenges when they come and to be more resilient. So if every day you wrote that down, what hard thing will I do this day?

And you think, okay, what’s the hard thing? It’s like, well, I need to push forward against my own desire.

defining the “hard thing” for yourself

There’s something I don’t want to do. I don’t want to, as an entrepreneur, go do that marketing event or that marketing effort. I don’t want to go sell my product. I don’t have difficult conversation with one of my team members. Or maybe in parenting, I don’t want to have to take the iPad away from my kid. I don’t want to have to focus a little bit more. I don’t want to have to get off my phone.

I don’t want to have to do X, Y, and Z or in fitness. I don’t want to have to wake up early. I don’t want to have to put forth the effort. I don’t want to have to do high intensity.

pushing against your own desire

I don’t want to have to lift the heavy weight. There are all these decisions. There are so many things that we don’t want to do because human nature in and of itself is lazy. We are lazy by design. We were created this way. Homeostasis, whatever you want to call it. The reason we don’t want to do things is because that is how we are wired. So every day we have to push forward against our own desire.

That’s the only practice that I think that you need to shape who you are in the future. who is a better person, who can handle hard things, who can grow their business, who can grow their mind and grow themselves into a better human being. So, if you take anything away from this, it’s do hard things because you never know which hard thing is going to ultimately shape your life. Stockdale decided he was going to take a philosophy class and in this philosophy class, he decided he was actually going to put in some effort and learn what Epic Tetus had to say.

It got him through seven years of what I can only imagine is hell on earth.

how daily difficulty shapes future strength

You might not be faced with such a crazy circumstance, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t choose hard things each and every single day because it’s going to harden your mind and it’s going to make you a better human. Try harder.