Confront the brutal facts - Yet never lose faith
Facts are better than dreams. Breakthrough results come about by a series of good decisions, diligently executed and accumulated one on top of another.
Of course, no one will have a perfect track record. But on the whole, aim to make more good decisions than bad ones.
You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.
Continually refine the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality.
You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
When facing brutal facts, how to not de-motivate people? Don’t hold out false hopes - soon to be swept away by events.
There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. - Winston S Churchill, The Hing of Fate
Good decision-making is about vision. But it is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and the brutal facts confronted.
There is a difference between the opportunity to “have your say” and the opportunity “to be heard”. You and the people around you need to cultivate a culture where the truth is heard. Conduct atopsies without blame. We should almost never need to assign blame but need only to search for understanding and learning.
By confronting the brutal facts, you will find yourself stronger and more resilient, not weaker and more dispirited. There is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.”
You can be sure that there will be adversity along the way to greatness. You need to aim to respond with the powerful psychological duality. On the one hand, accept the brutal facts of reality. On the other hand, maintain an unwavering faith in the endgame, and a commitment to prevail despite the brutal facts.
Life is unfair - sometimes to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. We will all experience disappointments and crushing events somewhere along the way, setbacks for which there is no “reason”, no one to blame. It might be disease; it might be injury; it might be an accident; it might be losing a loved one; it might be getting swept away in a political shake-up; it might be getting shot down over Vietnam and thrown into a POW camp for eight years. What separates people, Admiral Stockdale teaches us, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. In wrestling with life’s challenges, the ability to deal with this paradox proves powerful for coming back from difficulties not weakened, but stronger.
Strip away noise and clutter and just focus on the few things that would have the greatest impact.
If we are able to adopt this dual pattern, we will dramatically increase the odds of making a series of good decisions and ultimately discovering a simple, yet deeply insightful, concept for making the really big choices. And once we have that simple, unifying concept, we will be very close to making a sustained transition to breakthrough results.
Book recommendations
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“In Love and War”, the book Admiral Jim Stockdale and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during the eight years during which he was held prisoner-of-war.
Author: “Who didn’t make it out?”
Admiral Stockdale: “Oh, that’s easy. The optimists.”
Author: “The optimists? I don’t understand.”
Admiral Stockdale: “The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We are 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. 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. We’re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!”
The paradox
You must retain unwavering faith that you would not just survive, but prevail in the end and you must also become relentlessly disciplined at confronting the most brutal facts of your current reality. Never let one side overshadow the other.