PNTV: Courage Under Fire by James Stockdale (#187)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another powerful book, Courage Under Fire by James Stockdale, testing Epictetus doctrines in a laboratory of human behavior. It's a tiny book, 21 pages. It's actually the transcript of a speech that Stockdale delivered in 1993. Amazingly powerful. So James Stockdale, philosophers know, with a bunch of big ideas. We'll cover these five, but first, James Stockdale was shot down at the beginning of the Vietnam War. He had studied philosophy as a graduate student at Stanford while still in the Navy. He was a 40 year old or something, pilot, and he shot down. And he says he had 30 seconds left of freedom before he was going to land, get beaten and be tortured. He said to himself, five years at least, that he was going to spend in a prison camp. And he said, I'm leaving the world of technology and I'm entering the world of Epictetus. And he used that experience as an opportunity to test Epictetus philosophy. And the cornerstone of Epictetus philosophy is that a wise person has two files in their mind, one for things that they can control and two, for things that they can't control. And the wise person, the stoic philosopher, does not put their attention on the things they cannot control. They do not complain about those things. They put all of their attention on the things within their control. Their thoughts, their behaviors, their responses to what's happening. Extraordinarily powerful. And Stockdale was in this prison camp for seven years, seven and a half years, in solitary confinement for four years, in leg irons for two years, and was tortured 15 times. He was the commanding officer, the senior officer, and therefore the commanding officer of this group of Americans started at 50 or so when he was there, 400 people at the end of the war. Extraordinary story, but let's look at some of the ideas of how he integrated Epictetus wisdom. So I mentioned the fact that the primary idea here is that there are things within your control. There are things that are not in your control. We need to pay attention to the things that are within our control. Stockdale quotes Epictetus, who tells us, you're going to have your hands full if you just focus on your own thoughts and behaviors. That's more than enough to keep you busy. Start there, focus there. And it's similar to what Viktor Frankl said when he was in the concentration camps of World War II. He said, Anything can be taken from an individual, but their own choice, their freedom to choose, a response to what's happening to them. Extraordinarily powerful idea. Now, the first idea, when Stockdale. It's called the Stockdale Paradox, when Stockdale was in that 30 seconds before he landed, he was able to see that he wasn't going to get out of there quickly. Five years at the least is what he said. That was a good guess. Wound up being seven and a half years. Now, Jim Collins interviewed Stockdale for his book Good to Great Business Book Classic. And he talked about what was it that allowed you to endure and what was it about the people who. Who didn't make it through? And Stockdale said the people who didn't make it through were the ones who were too optimistic. They were the ones who said, oh, we're going to get out of here by Christmas. Then Christmas would come. Weren't out, we'll get out by Easter. Easter would come. They weren't free by Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving would come. Christmas would come again. Easter would come again. They gave up. And he said they died of a broken heart. He said he did not lose his faith, that he would eventually be free, and that this event would form him in a way that would shape the rest of his life. He had an unequivocal resolve in that he knew that to be true. And he simultaneously confronted the brutal facts of his current reality, which were he wasn't going to get out anytime soon. So that's the Stockdale Paradox, that we need to have realistic optimism. We need to believe that ultimately we can bring our visions and our dreams to life. In this case, for him, it was his freedom, and we need to be willing to confront the harsh truths of our current reality. Too often, we have a naively optimistic idea where we ignore our current reality, and then we think we're going to achieve something in an amazingly quick period of time. Then when we don't, we. We get frustrated and burned out. We get a little excited again, and then we set unrealistic goals again, we ignore reality again, and we go through that pattern. Then we give up. We become helpless. A much more effective way to go about doing it is to practice realistic optimism, where you have an unbending belief that over the long run, you will do what it takes to succeed. But you don't delude yourself by ignoring current reality and thinking you're going to change things with one secret and snap of your fingers. That's the Stockdale paradox. Second big idea is amazing. Epictetus tells us that we do not choose the part that we play in life, that it's as if we're in a play and there's a playwright or an author or a director who's telling us, okay, you're going to play this role. And Epictetus says, look, there's someone bigger than you who's choosing what role you're going to play, but play that role well. He says, if it's a poor man, play the role of a poor man well. If it's a magistrate, play that role well. Whatever it is, play the role well. Stockdale says that when he was in that 30 seconds, he decided that this was his mission, to lead these men to navigate this experience with as much grace and courage and poise as possible, that that was the part that he was being asked to play. He didn't want to play it. He didn't consciously choose to be a prisoner of war. But when he was chosen to be in that role, he determined to follow the stoic ideal of playing that part as well as he possibly could. So with us, we often talk about what's our purpose, what do we want to do, how do we craft that, how do we uncover what our destiny is? And we can give our gifts and greatest service to the world. All that's awesome. And. And it would behoove us to look at whatever role we have now, whatever part we are playing now, and play that as well as we possibly can, whether that's in our professional lives or in our personal lives. As a parent, if you've been chosen to be a father or a mother, play that role well, period. It's an amazing stoic ideal. And whatever you're doing creatively and professionally, play this current role as well as you can. It's a huge idea. That's our second one. The third idea is a good one, hospital lectures. So Epictetus, apparently, Stockdale tells us, once got frustrated with his teachers, his faculty. He had a philosophical school that the wealthy would send their 20 something year old men, young men, to be taught on the rigors of stoic philosophy. Amazing idea. Now he had teachers, Epictetus did, and he once gave a lecture to his faculty saying, quit softening this wisdom. Quit pretending like it's going to be easy to live these ideals. He said that the philosopher's lecture room should be more like a hospital than anything else. People should leave in pain, he said. We should be so clear about the challenges, the stark reality that they're going to face and the level of character they're going to need to develop that. It's as if they went and just had surgery performed on them and they're in pain when they leave It's a really powerful idea. And of course, Stockdale looked at his prison as a laboratory for these ideas. But we want to embrace the fact that this isn't all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns and butterflies. We need to be willing to do the hard work to grow as human beings so we can express ourselves most fully, be willing to do surgery on ourselves in the hospital rooms of our own lives. It's a really powerful idea. In the note, I talk about Jim Rohn, and he tells us, look, a lot of people are more excited about talking about what they want to create than actually doing the work. But ultimately, we're going to need to pay the price. And we're going to pay the price either in our discipline, day in and day out, by doing the little things well, which you pay in ounces, or you're going to pay it at the end of your life in regret because you didn't have the discipline day in and day out, at the end of your life, you're going to look back and go, what did I do? And the weight of that is tons, ounces, moment to moment to moment, tons at the end of our lives. So we're going to need to pay the price. Let's approach these philosophical lectures as a hospital. It's an amazing concept. Not a spa. You're not leaving feeling all pampered, at least not all the time. You're leaving in pain, sometimes realizing, wow, I've got some work to do. Fourth big idea here is emotions. Stockdale tells us that Epictetus tells us that we ultimately have control of our emotions, and we need to exercise that. They don't just come out of nowhere and take us over. And so in the note, I talk about Richie Davidson. We're going to do an episode on his work soon. Richie Davidson is the leading scientist studying emotions, particularly the neuroscience of emotions. And what he describes is there are three different types of emotions, really. One is a state, an emotional state that lasts a few seconds. It's often triggered from external stimuli. Lasts a few seconds. Now, if that endures, it becomes a mood. A mood can last hours or days. If the mood endures, it becomes a traitor. Emotional state, emotional mood, emotional trait. Now, to bring that to Epictetus, we may have a flash of fear. When Stockdale was brought into interrogations every day by gunpoint, literally, he had a chant, he said, a mantra, really, of conquering fear, not allowing fear and guilt to take over his consciousness. So that state, that little fleeting feeling of emotional fear, he disciplined himself to not let it become a mood and not let the mood become a trait. We need to step in between that little flash and spark and it kindling into a wildfire every single time. Exercise our will, control our emotions. It's a big idea. Fifth big idea is how we wrap up the note here and how he ends his speech in his book, which is Henley's poem Invictus. I read it here because it's so good. But he tells a story about just some crazy stuff that he went through. And he was returning from solitary confinement when he was going to kill himself, literally slit his wrists in protest to his captors wanting to parade him around. He said, you're not going to do that. You're not going to use me in that way. And he was willing to sacrifice his life. They found him, resuscitated him. Months later, he came out of solitary confinement and his friend heard him walking. Couldn't see him, but he knew his walk by sound because he limped. He had his leg bashed in when he landed, bashed in by the group that found him, and he had a permanent limp. So anyway, he gets to his cell and he sees a little sign from this guy who's imprisoned with him that basically tells him there's a note waiting for him. He goes and picks up the note, which is on a low quality worn out paper towel. And on this note, with a rat pellet, his friend wrote the final verse of Ernest Henley's poem Invictus. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. Incredibly inspiring demonstration of that being the captain of our soul, the master of our fate. Let's see how we can step into the challenges we have. Embrace some of this stoic wisdom, control your emotions, be willing to perform the surgery, play our parts well. Wherever you are in your life, play that part well. Serve those around you as profoundly as you can. And remember the Stockdale paradox. That we don't want to have naive optimism. We want to have grounded, realistic, functional optimism. Never doubt your ability to create the life that you want to create. And be really honest about where you are right now and the challenges you're going to face. And the fact that you're not going to change decades of behavior or overnight. It's going to take you time, diligently, patiently, persistently. That paradox is the essence of greatness and the essence of creating the excellence we want to in our lives. So there you go. I hope you enjoyed and I very much look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.