PNTV: Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James Stockdale

Hey, this is Brian with a quick note. Before we jump into today's show, if you haven't signed up for the Optymyze Premium membership yet, A, what are you waiting for? And B, you can now get the first 30 days of optimizing for free. Just cruise on over to Optimize me and sign up. Over 10,000 people now start their days with Optymyze so they can actualize their potential, including best selling authors, leading entrepreneurs, and even NCAA championship teams, two of them. So again, 30 days of free optimizing at Optimize Me. If you're already a member, thanks for your support. Now for the show. You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James Stockdale. Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot. No subtitle necessary for this one. James Stockdale is an American hero. He was the commanding officer in a North Vietnamese prison where he spent eight years during the Vietnam War, four of those years in solitary confinement, tortured a number of times, came home crippled. He also earned the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest honor in the US Just an extraordinary guy. We covered him in another episode on Courage Under Fire, which was a speech that he gave that was made into a little book. It's actually one of the speeches that's included in this book as well. There are a ton of different speeches that he gave toward the end of his life that the dominant theme is on heroism, on moral purpose, on using your will to overcome challenges and obstacles. And he grounds his wisdom primarily in Epictetus and Charityian. So he was an up and coming Navy pilot in his late 30s. He went to Stanford for a master's in international relations. He finished that program six months early and. And he had time to go study some philosophy, wound up meeting a professor at Stanford, a guy named Rhinelander, who became his mentor. And as his kind of parting gift to Stockdale, he gave him a copy of the Enchiridion. And that Enchiridion, Epictetus Stoic wisdom became his guidebook, his handbook, which is what the insuredian literally means. His handbook, or at hand, which is a distillation of Epictetus wisdom. And as he ejected from his plane after being shot down, he had 30 seconds between the time that he was shot down and the time he landed. And he said, I'm leaving the modern world of technology and I'm entering the world of Epictetus. And he used that stoic wisdom to guide him through his heroic journey leading those prisoners for those eight years. Incredible story, philosopher's note, bunch of big ideas. Let's look at five of them now. So the first big idea, again, the dominant theme throughout the book is heroism driven by a deep, deep moral purpose. And he says that the most important thing that we need to keep in mind is the very simple fact that ultimately we are our brother's keeper. He said that's what helped him endure the pain and the struggle of being in prison for that period of time. And everyone who was there with him, you know, unbelievable torture and all these things. And what they used to get through that was taking care of the individual on the other side of their cell. They couldn't talk, but they figured out a way to communicate via tapping, develop their own communication structure and their own organization. But ultimately, it was all about being their brother's keeper. They were committed to something bigger than themselves. He says that's virtuous. Rather than saying, what's in it for me? Right? He didn't say, what's in it for me now. He said, how do I play this role that's been given me as well as I possibly can? How do I serve my brother next to me as profoundly as I can? And he juxtaposes that virtue of serving being your brother's keeper with the vice of asking the question, what's in it for me? Always asking the question, what's in it for me? What's in it for me? He says, look, we need to move beyond that and transcend basic game theory and all the extrinsic motivation that exists in our culture today, and be noble, be heroic, be the protector of our brother. And as we talked about in Natural Born Heroes, when the Greeks came up with the word hero, they didn't say a hero means or comes from the root of it's slaying bad guys or something like that. It's. It was protector. The ancient Greek word hero literally means protector. You are your brother's keeper. Powerful stuff. Keep that in mind. Then the obvious practical application is, are you asking yourself, what's in it for me? What's in it for me? How do I create my ideal life? What's in it for me? More than. Or to the exclusion of, how can I help? How can I truly be of service? How do I give myself most fully to the world? And starting with literally, perhaps my brother, my family, my community, et cetera. Excuse me. The second big idea is integrity. Integrity. He says, the Word integrity means to be complete, to be whole. And we have this idea that. And to juxtapose that with to be out of integrity literally means to disintegrate. You are either integrated, you are a complete whole, or you're disintegrating. There's all these parts that don't quite fit together. And he says that typically we think that being in integrity means being serious. He says, actually, people who are in integrity are easygoing, they have a good sense of humor, they have a tranquility and a sense of delight with life. That comes because they aren't wasting all of their energy in anxiety trying to be something that they're not. They figured out who they are, they figured out what's important to them, and they're living in integrity with those values. They. They have a deep yes to their priorities. They can say no to the stuff that isn't resonant, and that gives them a sense of delight with life. He says they ride the crest of that delight with life. There's a true joy and a tranquility that comes from that deep sense of wholeness, of completeness, which begs the question, what's important to you? What are your values? What are your ideals? And are you living in. In integrity with them, or are you disintegrating? You're going to know by the sense of joy and delight and tranquility that you feel, because when you're out of integrity, it's when you feel less stable than when you are aligned. So figure out how you. Plus 1% and get a little bit more in integrity starting today. And remember, that's a choice by choice, by choice. Opportunity to chisel your character. In a micro class recently we talked about Jim Rohn's idea that the word character comes from. I think it's the Latin for chisel. A chisel is used to hammer through very tough granite or marble. We need to chisel our character choice by choice. By choice, we get more or less in integrity. Third big idea is soul, endurance. He talks about the ancient Greeks and the Stoics quite a bit throughout this book. And he says that the closest that. I think it was Plato and Socrates. The closest that Socrates ever came to defining courage was in a dialogue with the general under whom he served in one of the wars, one of the Greek wars. And that general said that courage is endurance of the soul. Endurance of the soul. Isn't that a beautiful phrase? And one of the other underlying themes of the book is the idea that life isn't fair. We have this idea that If I just do this and this and this, then everything's going to turn out the way I want. And he says, you know, sorry to break the news, but life isn't fair. It's not how it works. What you need is not the idea that if you do this and this and this, then everything will wind out perfectly just the way you want. But what you need is soul endurance. You need the ability to be invincible, which is our next big idea, by being able to see what's within your control and what's outside of your control. So as he was floating into what became this prison camp, he knew he was going to be there for five years at least. He wound up being there for eight years. But he also knew he was going to do everything he could to lead well and to serve with honor and to get out. And he used Epictetus wisdom. The cornerstone of Epictetus wisdom is this. It's the idea that some things are within your control and some things are outside of your control. The wise person is the one who can differentiate the two and then choose to make all the things that are not within his control inconsequential. Essentially, don't even think about them in an attached sense, right? Spend all of your energy on that which is within your control. And Stockdale says that's the invincible one. The invincible one who is the one who doesn't let anything that happens to him that's outside of his or her control affect him. Incredibly high standard. What this means is, he says, look, the things that are outside of your control include things like your station in life, right? You have an influence on what you're able to achieve in your life, but you don't have absolute control over that. Your reputation, that's other people's opinions of you. You don't have absolute control over that. It's as fickle as your station, he says, your health, your stat, influence it. But you don't have absolute control. Your life, your death, these things you don't have control over. Now, he says the unthoughtful try to control those and get stressed about those things, whether they're going the way they want or not. He says the invincible one, the Wise One, is the one who puts all of their attention on what's within our control. What's within our control, he says, our moral purpose, our will, whether we choose to respond nobly or not, whether we choose to be good or to be evil. That, and essentially that alone is what's within our control. We do our best, and we forget the rest, that's the essence of the invincible one. Easier said than done, but a powerful idea. A little mundane thing that I do throughout the day is if something happens, I immediately go through the little filter in my mind. Is there anything I can do about that or not? If there's nothing I can do about it, it makes absolutely no sense to get upset about it. Then the only logical question is, well, what's the optimal response? Practicing that. I'm far from perfect on that, but it's been amazing to practice that over the last X years and get pretty good at being able to decide, well, that has nothing to do with me, or it's outside of my control. I'm going to focus here. Choose the most optimal response. Excited to continue to cultivate that. Cultivating some invincibility in service to being my brother's keeper, literally and figuratively. Fifth big idea is adversity. He says, you want to separate his words, the heroes from the bums. Introduce adversity. Adversity is the crucible in which we figure out what we're really made of. And he says that we need to embrace adversity. We talk about this again and again and again, and that the greatest potential within us is only unleashed in that adversity. We talked about it in Ryan Holiday's the Obstacle is the way Kelly McGonigal talks about it in the Upside of Stress, that stress, when perceived as a positive event, is a positive event. It catalyzes our growth in meaningful ways. Orson Sweatt Martin, in his book An Iron Will, talks about the fact that there is no Lincoln without the Civil War. It took the horrific challenges of the Civil War to bring out and bring forth the best that was within Lincoln. So we need to reorient our relationship to challenges, to adversity. And remember, as I say all the time, quoting Nassim Taleb's wisdom, the wind extinguishes a candle and fuels a fire. Adversity fuels our potential if we allow it, if we step up and give our best and truly commit to being a hero in our own lives, to be committed to something bigger than ourselves, our brother's keeper, to live with total integrity. Stephen Covey says the only goal worthy of us is total integrity. He also says that's an impossible standard. You're never going to hit total integrity. Yet that's what we want to go for. It's that guiding star that we talked about in conquering Perfectionism 101 that we want to aim toward, knowing it's an asymptote we're never going to quite hit it yet. That's our standard. Remember, courage equals soul endurance. Life happens, we do our best. Things go our way or they don't go our way. The best among us, the heroes among us have the most courage, have the most soul endurance, which was one of the most prized qualities in ancient Greek culture and should be in ours. And then being invincible. You want to be invincible? Focus on what's within your control. Your response to any given situation, your moral purpose, your your will, your choice, moment to moment to moment to be your best to plus 1% your own optimization and actualization in service to the world. That is a quick look at this great book. Super inspiring human being. Hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Isn't it a bit odd we went from math to science to history to but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me, connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book and into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101 meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient Wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.