Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Motivation Monday: How the Stockdale Paradox Can Change Your Life

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my workout app stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple store with a four-star average, and it helps you get more out of your training in several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation. It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts, as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It's free to download too. So if you want to check it out, then head over to www.getstackedapp.com or just hit the iOS app store

and search for stacked workout and you will find All righty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show. Good morning, good morning. Mike here from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. It is Monday, and that means it's time for some motivation, starting of course with a quote. And this time, I'm going to go with an old German proverb in light of the fact that I am learning German, which I should have done a long time ago. I've been with a German woman since I was 17 years old. So it's about time. Although in my defense, I did give it a run years ago.

I went through Michael Thomas and Pimsleur, which are just audio only programs, which I was doing when I was driving and doing my cardio, walking my dogs and so forth. And I was curious if audio only could get me to at least functional fluency. And the conclusion at the end of it was not so much. You really have to give it sit down time. And I now know you have to give it flashcard time. That's very important, especially for vocabulary building. Anyway, let's get to the proverb. And in German, it is anfangen ist leicht, beharen eine Kunst. In English, to begin is easy, to persist is an art. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of

word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. As the highest ranking officer in the Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war camp during the height of the Vietnam War, Jim Stockdale knew he was not getting out anytime soon. Instead, he was tortured regularly and he had no prisoner's rights, he had no release date, or really any reason to believe that he would live long enough to see his family or his country again. he would live long enough to see his family or his country again. Despite all this, though, Stockdale refused to give in. He did everything he could to keep his fellow prisoners alive. And he also worked tirelessly to stymie his captors' attempts at using him and his comrades

for propaganda, even going as far as disfiguring himself so he couldn't be held up as an example of a well-treated prisoner. Stockdale encoded intelligence messages into letters to his wife, risking brutal torture and death. He devised guidelines for dealing with torture that increased his fellow soldiers' odds of survival, as well as a Morse code-like system of communication using taps to ease the isolation anxiety among the men, using taps to ease the isolation anxiety among the men, just to name a few of the things that Stockdale did while imprisoned. And when it was all said and done, Jim Stockdale spent eight years in captivity. And after his release, following the American withdrawal from the war, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Now, it's hard to imagine, even for a moment,

what Stockdale's experience must have been like. How in the hell did he not just collapse into a completely catatonic state? How did he find the strength to stand up every day and continue to work against the enemy? What was the secret of his unbreakable will? Where did his hope come from? Well, as quoted from the fantastic book, Good to Great, here is the answer in his own words, quote, I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect I would not trade. This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in 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. Now, Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, he called this mentality the Stockdale paradox, the belief that you will prevail in the end, harmoniously coexisting with the willingness to face the darkest facets of your current circumstances. Now, when Stockdale was asked about the people who didn't make it, his reply was very interesting. He said, quote, the optimists. That's right. He said that the optimists were the ones that didn't make it. He said that they were the ones who said, we're going to be out by Christmas and Christmas would come and Christmas would go. They then say, we're going to be out by Easter and Easter would come

and Easter would go and then Thanksgiving And then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. Now, I think that this message is powerful because what it says is that hope is vital, but unbridled optimism, especially when it borders on delusion, can be very dangerous. Winston Churchill knew this as well, which is why he created the statistical office early in the war. And he assigned it a very specific job. He wanted it to feed him unfiltered facts and data about the conflict, no matter how disturbing. Churchill said that he had no need for cheering dreams because facts are better than dreams. And he said this at a time when the Nazi blitzkrieg was stampeding through Europe,

a dark time, a bleak time, especially for Britain. And Churchill ended up relying very heavily on this department throughout the entire war, and he could not have made the decisions he made without the willingness to face things as they were, not as he wished they were. Now, while it's doubtful that we'll ever have to face personal hardships like Stockdale's or carry burdens as heavy as Churchill's, we can count on this. We are going to have to deal with shitty situations that we feel are unfair or maybe even unbearable. We're going to suffer setbacks. We're going to suffer disappointments. And how we deal with these inevitable difficulties is going to define who we really are as people. Are we going

to be like the unfortunate optimists that succumbed in Hanoi, unwilling to see the forest for the trees? Or are we going to be like the stoical Stockdale, never giving up, but also never giving into fantasies of imminent bliss? Are we going to sit in our hands with our heads in the sand or are we going to never stop working toward our goals while also maintaining full awareness of what really lies ahead, of how much work lies ahead, of where we are versus where we want to be. fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mikeatmuscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out.

All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in, so instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my workout app, Stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple store with a four star average. And it helps you get more out of your training in several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your

workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation. It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts, as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It's free to download too. So if you want to check it out, then head over to www.getstackedapp.com or just hit the iOS app store and search for stacked workout and you will find it.