November 8, 2021

Tom’s Blog: Persevering

Central, Clinical Partners, Rural Health

I looked up the word “persevere” recently after witnessing so many of you persist under the conditions we find ourselves in today. I was surprised by the definition at first and yet it suits you in this moment. To persevere means to maintain a purpose in spite of difficulty, obstacles or discouragement. To continue steadfastly.

We didn’t sign up for this. We didn’t see it coming.
And yet we persevere. 

Thankfully, we have the support of many others even though there must be times when it feels like you are alone. You are not. Look at the miracles coming out of the Labor Pool, for instance. All you have to do is ask Dr. John Hering at Monticello about that. Or listen to Dr. Ulrika Wigert who gives thanks to the hospitalists and surgeons she can call to talk through care scenarios. Dr. Deb Peterson says what we all feel when she praises the nurses who are truly remarkable.

What we are going through is hard, no doubt. As many have heard me say, I am reminded of Admiral Jim Stockdale who was the highest-ranking officer and prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. He survived repeated torture and an eight-year imprisonment with no certainty that he would survive to see his family again. 

The Stockdale Paradox

When the author Jim Collins interviewed Admiral Stockdale, he asked him simply how he dealt with the situation he lived through. Stockdale’s reply, “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

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.

Admiral Jim Stockdale

As Jim Collins relays it in From Good to Great, there was a long pause before Stockdale said, “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.”

And that has become known as the Stockdale Paradox: To maintain unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and to have the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality. 

Though the circumstances may be different, too many of you have likely had an experience similar to the one relayed by Dr. Josie Syverson at Benson. With the Emergency Room filling up on a recent night and patients in need of care, she and her nurses called 30 or more hospitals but with no luck. I could hear in her account how they faced the reality of their situation — steadfastly and with compassion. No one slept that night. All they could do was give pain medicines, fluids, and antibiotics. And hold the hands of their patients, which they did. 

I could hear the moral dilemma they faced and the heartbreak they felt. If you listen to Dr. Syverson’s voice, you’ll also hear her faith that we will prevail. 

And we will. 

~ Tom