Surrender and the Stockdale Paradox by Polly McGee
“The Stockdale Paradox was named after Admiral Jim Stockdale, who spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He was tortured more than twenty times during his imprisonment from 1965 to 1973. In addition to fighting to stay alive, he worked every day to help the other prisoners survive the physical and emotional torment. When asked ho didn’t make it out, Stockdale replied, “Oh, that’s easy. The optimists.” Stockdale explained that the optimists would believe they’d be out by Christmas, and Christmas would come and go. Then they would believe they’d be out by Easter, and that date would come and go. And the years would tick by like that. “They died of a broken heart.” Dr Brené Brown, Dare to Lead.
Let’s be clear. I’m an optimist, on the really high side, that glass is full and it is about to fill your glass too. My optimism is built on two things: an expansive secular embrace of spirituality where I train myself through meditation and yoga practice to be present, grateful and accepting of what is; and some practical realism - in all situations I like to get some facts, do some self-reflection, add courage over comfort, and then optimistically deal in the now.
It is a deeply embedded framework for my view of the world, underpinned by my two core values: spirituality and curiosity. It doesn’t stop me from being a human hot mess at times, and also allows me to be curious and crash and burn, knowing there is a place to come home to time and again to rest, recover and rise.
In Dare to Lead where the quote above is drawn from, Brené is using the Stockdale Paradox to explain her approach to what she calls gritty faith and gritty facts. You need enough information to make good informed decisions no matter how difficult, the gritty facts, and then you can have gritty faith – a faith or belief in the capacity to prevail in the most horrific circumstances, without ignoring the facts.
COVID-19 is demanding that as humans we face the things we fear most in a cluster – uncertainty, sickness, failure, inability to provide for our families, isolation and that most feared and unspoken thing: death, of ourselves and our loved ones. We couldn’t have asked for a more potent mix to ignite the most primal response of our brains into pure survival mode.
A large part of my spiritual practice, drawn from the teachers and texts I hold as a pathway to truth is the idea of surrender. It’s an uncomfortable term in our action bias oriented world where we are applauded when we strive and crush and control. We surrender as losing in the binary of us and them. I see surrender as a merging with what is. Right now, with the constant war and battle analogies about COVID-19, we imagine we are locked in a very mortal combat with an unseen enemy.
What we are actually locked in with is the same mortal combat that exists every day – our survival. The fear of losing that battle we bury deeply under attachment and numbing and busyness and fear and shame. COVID-19 which is now surfaced and has a clearer more defined identity for us to fight against along with others, it is a way to unite, rather than rumble with our fear of death of ourselves and others alone.
Surrender is an antidote to fear and anxiety. Surrender is a thing of purpose. It’s a necessary thing, and not in the least theoretical or academic. It’s a practice, you have to do it consciously and you need do it all the time. It’s a spiritual neural pathway building exercise of taking yourself out of the equation as the doer, the fighter, the fixer, to move into becoming a part of something greater that you don't have any control over, without needed to know what the ultimate outcome is, just being present to what is right now, and what you can know, do and exercise any kind of influence over. Which is (spoiler alert) very little.
Surrendering can be done in collapse – in a place of fear, exhaustion, exasperation, anger or despair, or it can be done in grace when you are ready to release. It doesn't matter how you get there, but you will have a moment where you clearly hand over the illusion of your perceived hand in everything, and your attachment your own beliefs of how and why things exist as anything more than a story you tell yourself.
As we are all very bad at being in that place, that is why it is a practice, like coming back to the breath with meditation, or whatever, coming back from thinking about the past or the future, injustice and unfairness of what the virus has done to you or your business, to just being still and complete exactly how you need to be right now.
The question to come back to at all times when struggling with surrender, is ‘what do I need to know or be right now.’ Then listen for what your intuitive mind tells you, and obey - you are surrendering to your own higher self, or true nature. You are asking your intuition to guide you, and in doing so are surrendering to not knowing the answers from your logical rational delusional mind that is driven by ego, fear, shame and desire, but from your spiritual heart that knows what you truly need and how to respond.
Every time you feel anxiety, or panic, or anger, or the need to strive, or be something else, or do more, or please more, just stop, become the observer, know that you are holding too tightly to an action bias to fix and control. Stop, take a long breath, surrender to your own divinity and completeness. We are all in this together, we are all suffering together.
We are seeing and experiencing an ineffable moment where nothing makes any sense, so meaning making needs to come from beyond our logical and rational mind. When you move from operating from the familiar place of logic and reason to surrendering to the present of chaos, this is where the agile magic happens, where you can reframe your response. In surrender, your key power tools are curiosity, I wonder what if? Its anti-gravity, quantum physics and connectivity, creating news ways of being and doing outside of all of the structures that have held us for so long. Plus it is much less tiring to step out of combat into just being.
In Stockdale’s Paradox, the ones who didn’t make it out were the ones who clung to a linear view of time and a fixed outcome, rather than surrendering to just getting through each day. His experience, like these, were unprecedented times. We need to be present to the gritty facts that there will be loss, there will be changes to our lives we never expected. And in the paradox of gritty faith that we are people and a species and a planet will survive, we can wonder what new greatness, humanity, business opportunities and collaborations may emerge?