After the crisis, will you be looking for merit or fault?
LIFE can change in the blink of an eye. Since I spoke last week about the importance of cultivating realistic optimism – especially during these times – I have had several messages asking about it. What does this even mean? And does it really work?
Well, I guess it is the ability to acknowledge your situation, to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
How to temper your optimism with a dose of reality.
One example is Admiral Jim Stockdale. Stockdale spent eight years in a prisoner of war camp during the Vietnam War. He could be tortured at any time and had no idea whether he would ever get out of the camp. In other words, he had absolutely no control of what might happen to him. The only thing he could control was his mind.
To survive in a situation like this is beyond belief. To have the mental strength to face each day, always holding on to the hope that he would get out alive and return home, is something we can all learn from.
When he was asked who didn’t make it, he replied: the optimists.
But surely, I hear you ask, staying optimistic would give us the best chance to get through any situation especially one has hard as a POW camp?
Not exactly. I quickly learned this lesson in 2016 – when I was lying paralysed. Holding on to the notion that I would move only set me up for a massive psychological crash a year later that resulted in me not wanting to live anymore.
I had been optimistic alright – OVER-optimistic.
This is where realistic optimism comes in. Or as it is known in psychology, the Stockdale Paradox.
It tells you to accept your situation by facing the facts – no matter how brutal they may be.
You must balance optimism with a sense of realism and hold on to the absolute faith and hope that you will pull through no matter what.
So when I mentioned about trying to cultivate realistic optimism, what I really want to do is encourage you to become more familiar with the characteristic of hope.
Hope can fuel our minds and bodies to face any reality that life may throw at us. It is one of the key weapons in our armoury as we set about tackling life’s obstacles.
Stockdale had an abundance of hope to survive his own challenges. He managed to cultivate realistic optimism through hope to help him get through the worst ordeals any human could face.
Closer to home, there is someone who has become a friend of mine as a result of that changing moment, that moment when you realise your life will never go back to normal. His name is Ed Jackson and he is a former professional rugby