We’ve come out of a long stretch of winter cold, and just when you think things can’t get any more bleak, it starts to get a little warmer, there are buds on the branches and flowers poking up through the melting snow. It gets me excited thinking about all the new projects I want to tackle, the changes I want to make, the improvements I’m planning to make my life perfect!
Whoa . . . slow down. That kind of energy is definitely exciting, but getting too fired up like that can also be a surefire path to frustration and disappointment. I don’t want to sound like a downer, but I do want to talk about how we need to temper our re-emerging Spring energy with a dose of patience and realism so that we can commit to making true, lasting change in our lives.
I’ll tell you what prompted me to share this line of thought. My man Jonathan (he always rolls his eyes when I call him that) and I love to start the morning with a cup of coffee and some conversation. Most days, we barely have time to give each other a hug and say, “have a good one!” But some mornings we can sit for a few minutes, sip our java and talk about life; he was a philosophy major in undergrad so he can, by his own admission, get “too deep for his own good” but I know now to keep him in check. ;-)
Anyway, the other morning I was talking about the excitement of Spring, and how optimistic I was feeling about the time ahead. That’s when he got all chin-scratchy and said, “I read an interesting essay once by a fighter pilot who was a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. He had a fascinating take on the concept of optimism.”
Okay, Mr. Heavy, let’s talk about POW’s on this beautiful Spring morning. This was what he shared: The author of this essay lived, along with other POWs, in unimaginable misery, but many of them found ways to maintain a strong mindset to survive. After he made it back home, that pilot was asked what traits the prisoners who survived tended to share, and who among them had the most difficult time. The pilot very candidly said the prisoners who were in the worst shape were “The Optimists.”
That sounds completely counter-intuitive. Doesn’t a positive attitude help get you through tough times? Perhaps, but in this case, and in many far less terrible situations, that mindset sets unrealistic expectations and can compound disappointment. The pilot noted that it was always the guys saying “We’ll be out by Thanksgiving!” or “We’ll be home by Christmas!” who suffered the most crushing (and sadly, often fatal) heartbreak when their cheery predictions didn’t come true.
So, who endured? According to that pilot, it was “The Realists,” the airmen in that camp who had accepted where they were and dedicated themselves to getting through every day, little by little. Yes, they held on to a shred of hope that they would get home someday, but they didn’t create an unrealistic goal that would be devastating if not achieved. The realists kept going, one step at a time, one day at a time, determined to survive and simply believing that they would be home at some point, in some way. That pilot was emphatic: the optimists actually made it worse for themselves in an already horrible scenario. The realists -- and he was chief among them -- found a way to keep going day after day.
If you think what Jay shared is dark, I’ll be the first to agree with you! But it is a very powerful example of a mindset that gets you through tough times, moves you down a path to realistic progress, and can get you where you want to go. Are you going to reach your goal today? Tomorrow? Next week? Why put that kind of pressure on yourself? Yes, have faith, but know that getting where you want to be, becoming who you want to be, is a long and patient process.
Set your goal, focus on working toward it in a small way every day, and when you achieve it, you achieve it. That’s the Spring mindset I think all of us should consider. Let’s not worry about when we’ll get there. Let’s concentrate on how we keep working towards it, a little bit every day. Let’s keep it real, so we can keep moving forward!
NOTE: There are still more than 1,500 Americans missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. You can make a donation to the National League of POW/MIA families here.