Paradoxes and Puzzles: How Can Hope Function Best?

Viktor E. Frankl - in his seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning - tells the story of a well-known composer and librettist whose death illustrated a mechanism of hope. One day the man gushed to Viktor that he had dreamt he would be free of the Nazi concentration camp. “When?” asked Frankl. “On March 30th, 1945” whispered back his friend.

He died on March 31st.

Cause? The death of hope in Frankl’s estimation. The loss of his hope triggered a deadly weakening of his immune system, and the man ultimately fell to the ravages of typhus.

In this particular concentration camp, the death rate between Christmas 1944, and the New Year of 1945, saw a tangible increase of deaths “…beyond all previous experience.” As the war appeared to approach an end – and yet still did not - hope was extinguished, leaving in its wake a devastation of despair and death.

In a similar vein, Jim Collins in his own seminal work on great businesses - Good To Great – writes about the Stockdale paradox. Jim Stockdale was an admiral in the United States Navy who was held captive in Vietnam for 8 years. During his time in captivity, he recognized the same tendency amongst the inmates that Frankl emphasized…

Hope is a dangerous companion when it comes with a date attached.

Stockdale observed that the prisoners who decided “I will be free by Christmas” and yet lived on past that Xmas, while still in prison, also plunged into despair. The hope that had energized their action, now snarled back in unrequited loss. It didn’t work to have a purpose over which you ultimately had no control.

Make your purpose inner, not outer: make it independent of your circumstances.

An outer purpose hands over too much responsibility to circumstances. Instead, become the giver of gifts. Make your purpose inner: independent of the outer circumstances that swirl about you in unexpected and uncontrollable ways.

Jim Collin’s team discovered the same thing back in 2001 when they examined 11 companies who exemplified extraordinary performance. These were companies - like Walgreens, Gillett and even Phillip Morris! – who evolved from modestly “good” companies, to “great” companies in terms of their ability to grow, make profits and beat their competitors by an order of magnitude.

In all these different cases one thing stood out – each company realistically, even brutally, recognized the truth of their situation, and found a purpose, a meaning for themselves. This purpose, and the values that supported it, came before they began creating any specific goals. In the 60 Day ATSuccess program, we follow this same approach.

In this we hear echoes of Alexander – using his voice, watching in the mirror, trying to figure out what was going on. All FM knew is that he wanted to find a way out…

Can your purpose, your why, live forever as an enduring absolute?

As Frankl expresses it so eloquently…

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

When you tell you Self “that by such and such a time, I am going to have this or that” you give hope an end-by date. It sets the stage for your disappointment. In ATSuccess no teacher progresses at the same rate, but those who are clear on their meaning usually accelerate the furthest.

I have also learnt this lesson many times in BodyChance myself…

Years ago, I kept wishing to put together an online course to study FM’s four books. I would push for it, then get depressed whenever my plans failed. I could not get it off the ground. So I let it go.

I kept my intention alive, not my expectations.

Then one day, Yasuhiro appeared. He was a Japanese high school teacher who loved writing manuals. He was also a fluent reader of English, loved BodyChance, and ended up translating three of Alexander’s books. Today he runs BodyChance’s book course. At any one time, we have between 60 ~ 70 people studying FM's books online, including those not even enrolled in any of our other programs.

My dream came true, but not on a time line or with an agenda I could have predicted.

It’s an odd space – to wish for something without the clarity of how you will achieve it. This is the puzzling paradoxical state that teachers inhabit when they first join ATSuccess. They start with why. What is my passion, my purpose? Not with how. It seems to be the opposite of how to be successful – to search for meaning first, to know the why before the how.

Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”

I think this is the most productive place for teachers of Alexander's discovery to occupy. It’s certainly true while teaching the work – you never know how you will teach this person, you only know what, and why.

You occupy this weird quantum land, where nothing is quite what it seems.

You are not a therapist, nor entirely an educator either. Your mission is mysterious – neither religious, nor entirely secular. Neither preacher, nor entirely teacher. Neither rehabilitative, nor entirely educational. Neither mental, nor entirely physical. Neither mystical, nor entirely logical. And so it goes on – paradoxes and puzzles. This is the stuff our work is made of, as we are made of. In the light of this – how do you carry on?

By knowing why: your purpose. By knowing who: your benefactors.

But how? Not just yet.

Wait.