MENTAL TOUGHNESS IS PERSEVERANCE

James Stockdale was a Navy Pilot shot down over enemy territory during the Vietnam War. Imprisoned by the Vietcong for nearly eight years, he and his fellow prisoners were tortured on a regular basis and denied medical care and adequate food and water. After his release in 1973, he was awarded 26 personal combat decorations for his extraordinary bravery.

In an interview with Jim Collins, Stockdale was asked about his heroic survival. During the exchange, the conversation turned toward the many POWs who never survived their imprisonment. He was asked, “Who didn't make it out of Vietnam?” Stockdale replied, “Oh, that's easy, the optimists. 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're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. They died of a broken heart.”

Stockdale then added, “This is an 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.”4

Mental toughness is not a shallow optimism that enables short-lived endurance by promising everything will be okay. It’s not the watered down pabulum that we often hear in modern-day, feel good sermons describing a make-believe-god who solves all your problems and heals all your pain. Be wary of those who tell you to “just believe and God will give you what you need.” That’s not faith. Faith is not holding onto a hope that you will eventually get what you want. Faith is not what happens when the bills are paid and all the sicknesses are healed. Thank God when that happens, but that’s not faith. True faith is mental toughness.

True faith is perseverance. It’s a toughness that refuses to quit. True faith is not getting God to give you what you want, it’s trusting God and remaining steadfast in your devotion to Him when you don’t get what you want. It’s persevering in your conviction that God is good and will cause all the pain, all the loss, all the hardship that you’re facing to somehow work together for the good and you will prevail in the end as a better, more empowered, more effective human being.

This is why the Apostle Paul wrote “…we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). Hope is the expectation of good. But hope is more than an intellectual notion. True hope comes from character—character forged through perseverance in tribulation. It’s the ability to push through the pain and maintain an attitude that what you’re facing is making you stronger, taking you deeper, and that you’re going to come back from this event, not weaker, but stronger, better, wiser, more capable, and positioned for the next level—even though you may not get the thing you want.

Just like Stockdale and his fellow POWs, we will all find ourselves in seasons of despair, even agony. Life will throw disappointments at us. Crushing events will come for which there are no explanations or justification. It may be injury, disease, loss or death, but what separates those who become paralyzed from those who go to the next level is how they face the adversity. The key is not having some shallow hope that everything will be okay. The key is a biblical hope that says it may not be okay, but I know God is in control and has a greater purpose that will take me—or those around me—higher.

This is exactly what we see in Paul’s example of perseverance. He had been imprisoned numerous times, scourged numerous times, three timees beaten with rods, stoned, left for dead, and three times ship-wrecked. He goes on to state: “…in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness” (2 Corinthians 11:26-27). And if that is not enough, God gave him a “thorn in the flesh…a messenger of Satan” to torment him and keep him humble (2 Corinthians 12:7).

Without question, these conditions would have ruined the best of us, but Paul in a profound demonstration of mental toughness and hopeful perseverance declared, “…we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

Paul’s hope came from the conviction that there was purpose in his pain. He knew that his tribulation was producing something deep within his character. He knew more perils would come, he knew the messenger of Satan would greet him again in the morning—his hope was not that the hardship would cease. His hope was that every time he suffered, it would make him stronger, better, deeper and more useful to God. And that hope gave him the ability to persevere—to be tough, mentally.

For more practical advice on “Mental Toughness,” check out my newest book, Upward: Taking Your Life to the Next Level.

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