Resilience Advice: The Philosophy That Helps Me When Times Are Tough

Transcript

Hi there, this is Blair from BravaTrak.

I've been thinking further about resilience and the ability to cope with the challenges and hardships in our lives, which we all face from time to time, and perhaps even more so during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One philosophy that's helped me is something called the 'Stockdale Paradox', which was presented in Jim Collins' book, 'Good to Great'.

The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest ranking United States military officer in the 'Hanoi Hilton' prisoner of war camp, during the height of the Vietnam war. Tortured over 20 times during his 8 year imprisonment, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner's rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again.

Advice The Stoic Philosophers Gave For Building Resilience

Stockdale credited Stoic philosophy for helping him cope. "I never lost faith in the end of the story", he told Collins. "I never doubted not only that I would get out, but that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life.”

“But this is the very important lesson", he continued. "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail 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."

As Ryan Holiday writes in his Daily Stoic email, Stockdale reminds us that for everything outside of our control, we retain at the core of our being an incredible power. The power to choose what we do with what happens to us. The power to decide what role an event will play in our lives. The power to write the end of our own story.

Accept with complete honesty the perils of the obstacle in front of you. Remain convinced that it's possible to survive. That not only will you survive, but you will also turn this into the best thing that ever happened to you. You have to face it. You have to see the reality. And then you have to get to work.

That's my take. What do you think?