The Optimists Died First
Last week I wrote about the shoulder injury that took three specialists and six weeks to diagnose.
What I didn't mention is what came next.
Brachial neuritis typically takes between one and three years to recover from. One year is the best case scenario if everything goes perfectly. Three years is typical if there are hurdles along the way.
Mine took ten months.
And it wasn't because of the rehab itself, though I did it every single day, starting with static holds to rebuild nerve function and moving into very light weights to start rebuilding muscle function and strength.
It also wasn't the discipline around it, though that mattered too - the sleep, the diet, continuing to train my lower body while my upper body was recovering.
The thing that actually did it was that I never set a date.
There's a concept Jim Collins named in "Good to Great" called the Stockdale Paradox.
Admiral James Stockdale was the highest-ranking US officer held in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. Eight years. Tortured more than twenty times. No release date, no rights, no certainty he'd survive.
Collins asked him who didn't make it out.
"The optimists." Stockdale said.
They were the ones who said we'll be out by Christmas. Christmas came and went. Then Easter. Then Christmas again.
Stockdale's approach was the opposite, and it sounds contradictory until you sit with it...
Unwavering faith that you will prevail, combined with the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality.
Both. At the same time.
The optimists had the faith. What killed them was the deadline attached to it.
For me that meant never deciding when I'd be recovered.
A year, fine.
Three years, also fine.
And at the same time, complete honesty about where I was. The lowest point was picking up a three kilogram dumbbell 3 months into my rehab and not being able to press it overhead. The photo at the top of this email was that exact moment. I didn't dress that up. It was humiliating, and it was the truth.
Faith in the outcome. Brutal honesty about the present.
Because every deadline you invent is a chance to fail. And when one passes, it doesn't just cost you the date - it chips away at the belief underneath.
Enough of those and the faith goes with them.
The time was going to pass anyway. I was going to do the work anyway.
The date was never doing anything except setting me up to be disappointed.
So if you're in the middle of something long right now - a recovery, a build, a rebuild - keep the faith.
Just stop putting a date on it.
Because the work doesn’t care what you think the deadline is... and neither does the outcome.
If you know someone who would benefit from reading this, please forward it to them. It may change the trajectory of their life for the better, and the catalyst could be you.
