<div class="bbWrapper"><blockquote data-attributes="member: 55234" data-quote="Antifragile" data-source="post: 986924"
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Stockdale Paradox: “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.”
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 5905" data-quote="MTF" data-source="post: 986929"
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What a coincidence! I'm now writing about it for my new project. Also, it's good to add this for context (from Ross Edgley's The Art of Resilience):
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I have a lot to say about this.<br />
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This phenomenon can be seen anywhere from Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" to a Greek guy who cured his cancer without any treatment whatsoever and even to my own life.<br />
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Let's start with Viktor Frankl. Enslaved in a nazi concentration camp during WW2, Viktor Frankl was an aspiring psychotherapist that, unfortunately, got all of his work destroyed upon entering the camp.<br />
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His wife and sister were sent off to another camp. And though he knew there was next to no chance they were kept alive (women were almost always executed along the way to the camps due to not being very useful with hard labor) he kept "talking" to them in his head which gave him strength. And even though he was not disillusioned with his circumstances, he FULLY expected to get out of there when the war is over.<br />
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Long story short, Viktor Frankl's cell mate was very optimistic after having a, what he perceived to be, prophetic dream where Germany surrendered on March 31,1941. Throughout the whole of March his cellmate looked better, felt better, and outworked everyone else on the train tracks. However, on March 30th, and with no sign of a possible surrender, Viktor Frankl explains that his cellmate became numb. Pale. Defeated. In fact, he could barely say a word.<br />
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On that night, his cellmate died. And while the official cause was dysentery, Viktor Frankl urges his readers to understand that it wasn't dysentery that killed him but him losing all hope, and his whole immune system and body shutting down from the extreme depression that ensued.<br />
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Viktor Frankl wrote that he saw this a lot throughout his time in the nazi camp. Praying, hopeful people dying - whether from disease or getting randomly picked out to be burned alive. But those that somehow seemed to dodge all of the bullets were those that weren't just optimistic or hopeful, they fully EXPECTED to get out of there. As in, they visualized their life after getting out and all the things they would do.<br />
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Most of the prisoners simply gave up on the future. "My family is dead, I'm about to die for sure. God, what did we do to deserve this?" plus a ton of grieving over the good old days when they were free. This lead to then dying from, what I believe is now officially called a "broken heart".<br />
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Viktor Frankl didn't grieve much over the past. He accepted reality and his situation in stride. And most importantly - he envisioned a future out of the concentration camp, which gave him purpose. Meaning.<br />
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Because without meaning in your life and something driving you forward, your body begins to crumble.<br />
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You can see this with old couples.One dies from ill health then the other much healthier one dies shortly after, too. It's not a coincidence.<br />
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And the religious people that seemingly miraculously recover from terminal cancer (as rare as they are)? Those people are the ones that truly believe in God. They believe in God so much, in fact, that as soon as they go to church, light a candle, and ask God for healing, they EXPECT with every fiber of their being that they will be cured. And they never waiver from that belief. And people have gone into remission by doing this, sometimes for life.<br />
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On the other hand, most people "turn" religious when they're desperate. They don't EXPECT but they hope that their prayers will be heard and that God will help them.But they're filled with doubt. Usually, those people die.<br />
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If you guys find this as fascinating as I do, I can share the story of the Greek dude. It's a wild one.</div>
