You may be saying, “Well that sounds nice but how do I really do it? How do I say ‘no’ to the UPS guy?” There are many ways but they all begin with awareness. It may sound obvious but if you are not aware of the negative thoughts that are making you miserable and affecting your performance, then there is nothing you can do about them. If you are feeling unhappy about something, ask yourself, “Why am I unhappy?” Don’t assume the obvious. What proof do you have for the negative thoughts and feelings that you are experiencing? If you discover that they actually have no basis in reality then use your will to stop them. The thought that is bothering you the most is usually not the first one that you had. It’s actually thought number thirty-six. The first thought wasn’t a good one but if you had stopped there all would be well. It’s when you allow thought number one to lead you to thought number two which leads you to thought number three and so on until you finally are being crushed by thought number thirty-six.
The key is to stop that first thought before you begin to build on it. One technique you can use is called “thought stopping.” As soon as you become aware of the negative thought that you want to get rid of, yell “STOP!” Don’t yell it out-loud or people will think you’re crazy, but in your mind, yell, “STOP!” Literally, you’ve got to yell “STOP!” in your mind like you mean it, as if somebody you love was crossing a busy street and was about to get hit by a car. As soon as you yell “STOP!” refocus on whatever you were doing before the thought came into your mind. Focus on the details of whatever you’re doing at the time even if it seems trivial. If you are stretching, focus on stretching. Pay attention to the feeling of each muscle as you stretch it. If the negative thought comes back say, “STOP!” and refocus. Your commitment must be absolute. If the negative thought were to come back one million times you would be willing to say, “STOP!” one million and one times. You may be thinking, “I have so many of them that all I will be doing is repeating STOP! STOP! STOP! in my head forever.” Try it. You’ll soon discover that it will not require “forever,” only the resolve to go there if needed. Eventually you will notice that you are not saying, “STOP!” very often, if at all. This is because you are no longer having the negative thoughts. Your mind has said, “I get it. I’m not letting those negative thoughts in anymore.”
Generally, it is the voluntary things that may be the most difficult for you to change, in part, because you don’t have to change them. No one is going to “make” you do the thing. That is why the hardest part about losing weight is not the physical exercise but the mental exercise. It is the exercise of your will that determines if the pounds stay or go. You might say something like, “I know I shouldn’t eat this or that but…” “I know that carrying around too much weight isn’t good for my heart but…” If your will is flabby, you will be flabby. You will not exercise and eat reasonably. It’s January 1st and you pledge to make a change stating, “I am going to lose 25lbs. this year!” If you look below the surface, you will see that it was more of a like than a will to lose a few pounds. What you really meant was, “I would like to look good, or I would like people to think well of me, or I would like to be more athletic” but it really wasn’t a commitment to anything. The comfort, satisfaction, and taste of food is far more pleasurable than the discomfort of moving and exercising. So why do it? Knowledge informs you that it is the right thing to do. Reason tells you that the relationship between your weight and health is real. Oh, but the poor old will. The problem is that you are waiting for the exercising of your will to feel like the pleasure that food gives you. Probably not going to happen, unless there was a strong enough reason. Can you clearly state your purpose, the basis for your decision? Is there something of substance to it? Is there a sufficiently compelling reason that will enable you to persevere to the end? If so, you will easily lose the weight.
About 15 years ago, I decided to give up chocolate and Coca-Cola for Lent. I loved chocolate. This was of course before I learned the real meaning of love. In reality, I just liked it a lot. Whole bags of chocolate doughnuts, Milky Way bars, chocolate milk—you name it and I ate it. Finally, I decided to give up chocolate and Coke, it seemed like my will flicked a switch in my mind. I didn’t have the least desire for either of them, and I still don’t. It’s not that hard for me because I decided to make it my little personal sacrifice for God and I made an absolute total commitment to it. I never regret it and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I share this with you to show why something like losing weight is really not that hard if your reason is powerful enough and your will is ready to act. You are in control, it is up to you. Losing weight—and a host of other challenges—is something that you can control. It’s up to you.
But what about the situations that are thrust upon you? The ones that you have not chosen and suddenly find yourself immersed in? These seem to be difficult and upsetting to deal with because you are not in control of the situation. Or are you? Your mind never stops working. You are always in control of how you will deal with the vagaries of life whether you have chosen to be in them or not. You may not like where you find yourself but it’s like the rain. It’s raining, what are you going to do? It may be of benefit and some comfort to know how others have dealt with extreme situations that they would never have chosen for themselves. Based on what they knew, using their reason, their will became the difference between life and death.
Admiral James Stockdale spent about seven years in a prison camp during the Vietnam War, euphemistically called the Hanoi Hilton. He and the other prisoners were frequently tortured and forced to live in the most brutal conditions imaginable. In an interview with Jim Collins, the Admiral said, “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.”
Collins went on to write in Good to Great what he described as the Stockdale Paradox. He uncovered a surprising twist about those who survived the experience. He learned that the prisoners with the most positive attitudes frequently did not survive. Admiral Stockdale explained to him that the optimists believed the next big holiday would mark the date of their return to the United States and their families. They would be continually crushed by disappointment when the date came and went. They would say, “We’re going to be home by Easter.” But Easter came and went with no release. Then it would be by Thanksgiving and when it passed without relief, it would be by Christmas. With each setback the positive prisoners began to fall into despair and eventually succumbed to the inhuman conditions and, as Admiral Stockdale described it, they died of a broken heart.
Collins pointed out that the optimists failed to confront reality, the truth about their situation. They had hoped that the external situation they found themselves in would somehow get better and finally come to an end. When faced with the reality that they were not going home, they couldn’t bear it. Collins notes that Admiral Stockdale and the prisoners who survived had a different outlook. They confronted the brutal facts about their life and chose to do what they could to make it better. They never gave up hope and willed themselves to persevere no matter what happened to them. Collins, who coined the term Stockdale Paradox, described it as, the absolute unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and the discipline, the will, to confront the brutal facts, whatever they might be.
This unwavering faith, acceptance of the harshest realities and the decision to act, were the essential features of those who survived some of the most harrowing experiences ever. Steven Callahan was an avid sailor, architect, and inventor. He set out from the Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, to sail over three thousand nautical miles across the Atlantic Ocean to the Bahamas. One night, about a week into his journey, he encountered some bad weather and his twenty-one foot sail boat was severely damaged, possibly by a whale. He barely had time to collect a few supplies and inflate the rubber raft before his boat went down. Knowing that no
one was expecting to hear from him for several weeks he was on his own and alone.
The waves were so large that he was in constant danger of being capsized. After a few days his meager supplies were exhausted and he was left with a spear gun, a sleeping bag, two balloon like devices called solar stills for condensing sea water into fresh water, navigational charts, a survival book, and a few flares. He was an experienced seaman and managed to do fairly well for the first week or so. But after three or four weeks he was really suffering. The solar stills when they worked provided very little drinkable water. The rubber raft was slowly deteriorating and required constant bailing and attention. He had to continually use the inadequate hand pump to try and keep it inflated and several times had to apply a patch in the middle of a storm. The spear gun had broken and he had to try and reach over the side and spear the fish that came along side by hand. He was developing sores from constant immersion in the salt water. Throughout the day large fish would slam into the bottom of the thin rubber floor, preventing him from resting and bruising his body. Sharks circled the raft. He barely slept. Remarkably, he never gave up. He resolved to do everything that he could to survive. He confronted the brutal facts but had faith that he would make it.
The conditions worsened! He was fighting to stay lucid. He was having trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. Despite the mental and physical torture, he willed himself on. He caught birds that landed on the raft with his bare hands and ate them raw. He was so desperate that he once grabbed the tail of a six foot shark as it swam along the side and pulled it into the fragile rubber raft. He stabbed it repeatedly trying to kill it without puncturing the raft. One thing after another, it just seemed to get worse and worse but he never gave up.
With the last shred of his will he kept repairing and innovating. He never surrendered to death although at times it seemed like the easiest thing to do. When he was lucid he acted upon his reason. With Herculean effort he did the next small thing, and then the next, and then the next. Despite the disappoint of ships passing by without noticing his little floating speck on the waves, he went on. Finally, after seventy-six days alone at sea he spotted land and was rescued by a small fishing boat.
Steven Callahan survived because he had confronted the brutal facts one at a time but never allowed despair to win out. And there have been many others like him who have done the same kind of thing in even more desperate situations.
Poon Lim, a twenty-five year old Chinese second steward aboard a British merchant vessel which was torpedoed by a German U-boat during the second world war, survived the torment and suffering for a record one-hundred and thirty-three days on a life raft. Three Mexican fisherman drifted over five thousand miles from Mexico to Australia, sometimes eating only twice in a month. They survived, by catching and eating what they could and by reading and praying from their bible, in an open boat for almost ten months! The stories go on and on but the common denominator is that they all accepted the harsh realities of their situations with an unwavering faith that they would persevere to the end. You are no different. You can do the same thing in your life when confronted with the most difficult circumstances. The only question is will you?
Most likely your chance will not come on the high seas. It is more likely to come in the small day to day challenges of everyday life. For many athletes, it may come in the simple execution of a routine practice session.
Let’s say you go to practice one day and you just can’t seem to get anything right; you’re off, really off. You try to console yourself with, “Well, I should just pack it in today, maybe I need some rest or something. I’ll come back in a couple of days and see if I can put it together then.” This is exactly what happened one day while I was coaching one of my high jumpers. Greg was an outstanding athlete and had at the time a personal best jump of 7’3”. One day he came out to practice and I set the crossbar at six feet for him to begin his warm-up. His first few jumps looked terrible, like he couldn’t jump at all. He was hitting the bar hard, landing on top of it, and even after seven or eight more jumps there was little change. This was from someone who had jumped over seven feet! He was very frustrated and getting angrier by the minute and I could tell that he was ready to throw in the towel. My first thought was, “Maybe he’s just tired today and needs a rest.” I was on the verge of saying, “Let’s call it a day and go again early next week,” when it came to me to try something different. I asked him, “Are you willing to keep going?” Although his body language said no, he unenthusiastically managed to say, “Okay.” I said, “Let’s go back to basics and see if we can progress up to a full jump.” I knew it sounded like baby steps for some novice jumper, but he agreed to do it. I told him to begin by taking approaches without a jump, working on being smooth and relaxed. After a few of those, I told him to work on the last three steps before lift-off. The approaches were looking good, his rhythm had returned.
Next, I told him to add a pop-up at the end of the approach, where he jumped straight up without trying to go over the bar. Soon they were looking sharp. Finally, he took his first jump and cleared the six foot bar by about six inches. He continued to work on bar clearance technique as I raised the bar after each successful attempt. Eventually I moved it up to 7’2”, a height that he had never gotten over in practice and only one inch below his personal best, and he cleared it! This day that started out so terribly, with everyone ready to go home and wait for another day, ended up becoming the best day of his life!
Greg had felt like quitting, but he didn’t. His will refused to give in to those feelings that said, “I’m off today. I need a rest. I can’t be expected to be on all the time.” He had reasoned that my judgment in assessing his ability was usually right. So despite his initial feelings of defeat he trusted what he knew to be true and acted accordingly. When you find yourself really off for whatever reason, try going back to the basics. Do step one several times until it is right, then add step two to step one. Then add step three. Eventually when you put the whole thing together, you are back in the groove, 1-2-3! Next time you’re struggling with something at work or play, try it, you may be shocked to find that your best day ever was hiding there all along!
You have read that by the light of reason your will seeks the good. Until now I have only offered ways for you to see how it affects you personally. The good your will hopes to accomplish is more than your own good. Often the choices you make, and the resolutions to carry them out, significantly influence those around you.
Very often after a game, athletes line up to shake hands. I always assumed the reason had something to do with sportsmanship but if you watch closely you would be hard pressed to see it. From my earliest recollections, my dad always told me that when you shake hands with someone that you look the person in the eye, firmly shake his or her hand, and say something positive. He was right as usual and I have never forgotten it.
However, most athletes at the end of a competition walk down the line, the losers usually depressed and crestfallen, and the winners often happy for themselves and distractedly looking past their opponents for supporters in the stands. Sometimes it appears that members of both teams are walking down the line as quickly as possible to get the painful or inconvenient demonstration of sportsmanship over with as soon as possible.
Here is an opportunity to exercise your will and affect others in a positive way. Next time you line up to shake hands at the end of the game, look each player in the eye, firmly shake their hand, and say something like, “Good game, well played, or good job out there.” Be sure to do it in a way that each of the players knows that you are acknowledging them individually by saying something directly to each one. In doing so you will be accomplishing two things; first, it’s the right thing to do, and secondly, you may influence other players, competitors as well as teammates, to become better people by emulating you. It would be wonderful to see the post game ritual become what it was intended to be, a virtuous act.
Although relationships with teamma
tes and those you love involve much more than a handshake, the same firm resolve of your will to do what is good, especially for them, is essential. Sometimes people think of relationships including marriage as a 50/50 effort like a business partnership, “You do your part and I’ll do my part.” That rarely works or endures. Imagine looking at two yard sticks lying on a table, each representing the commitment that you and your spouse have for each other. Often without realizing it, a marriage starts off with the two yards sticks lying end to end. It looks good, tip to tip. “See how close we are, inseparable!” you say. But in reality this is like the 50/50 model of “I’ll do this and you will do that.” As long as the tips are touching the relationship will work well. However, this will rarely be the case since neither of you is perfect and one or both of you will at times not be able to give your hundred percent to the other. In other words, the tip of one yard stick pulls away from the other and is no longer able to reach it. As soon as that happens the tips of the yard sticks are no longer touching and neither will the two of you. Instead of lying tip to tip, imagine the same two yards sticks lying side by side so that the entire thirty-six inches of one is next to the entire thirty-six inches of the other. This is the 100/100 model, where each spouse makes the commitment to give all to the other without counting the cost.
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