Son,
17 feb 2022 will be milestone date for your me.
Why - not important - read on…
Stockdale Paradox was made famous by Jim Collins in his book “From Good to Great”
What is Stockdale Paradox?
Son, as we grow up we want things to workout for ourselves. we want to have a sense of achievement, however trivial it is for others. We want to be happy in our little
successes.
Useless management gurus will tell you visualize your ideal state.
I used to believe in it, but alas, when the reality bit me in the backside, I realized that
all such positive visualization puts you in a bio bubble which will leave you weak and numb
What I realized son, is that confronting the entire brevity of the incident was the best thing I did. I laid out in no uncertain words that, such dastardly acts which lacks shred of integrity are taboo for me and is poison ivy for the great place of worship.
All pretenders, who used to make tall statements, suddenly started acting in way they don’t know me. The people for whom I went out of my way to help refuse to answer my messages.
Maybe I wasn’t paying attention to counterbalancing my optimism without guarding myself against hypocrisy and petty school boy politics.
My current existence is absolutely miserable and quite frankly hopeless.
Now, I started thinking, how bad can it get. As long as I have my hands and feet, I will
put food on the plate for you my dear , that’s a promise. I am not gonna lose faith.
You are my reason to go on, fight and slay the red dragons who are waiting to have your favorite witch for tea 😋.
When the the going gets tough, the tough get going.
All of a sudden a few angels are showing up with intent to help, and I am thankful for that.
This in itself is a paradox and hence the term.
In the world of business leadership and management, this duality helps to guard against the repeated onslaught of disappointments that are bound to come our way.
I leave you with the most impactful lines from Man’s search for meaning.
The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year’s, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience. In his opinion, the explanation for this increase did not lie in the harder working conditions or the deterioration of our food supplies or a change of wealth or new epidemics. It was simply that the majority of the prisoners had lived in the naive hope that they would be home again by Christmas. As the time drew near and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a dangerous influence on their powers of resistance and a great number of them died.