Today we're going to talk about keeping your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground.

Simultaneously managing the big picture and the small stuff.

Non-stop belief that things will work, that there's an answer, that you're ultimately going to get there and that you won't quit

until you do, while also being brutally honest with the facts on the floor, the reality around you.

A lot of times I think there's a tendency to conflate positivity with a detachment from reality.

But they're very different things.

You need them both for success to unfold.

You need the big picture and you need the minutia, the steps, the little things that add up

over time.

In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins calls this the Stockdale principle.

Or Admiral Stockdale, I think at the time the commander Stockdale was shot down during Vietnam. He was prisoner of war for over seven years in Vietnam.

And it was just obviously a brutal experience.

And, you know, one of the things that helped him survive was being painfully pragmatic while also knowing in his soul,

right, with every ounce of his being that he would ultimately get out, that the men he cared

about and helped so much would ultimately get out.

And so when Jim Collins is interviewing him, he says, Admiral Stockdale, what differentiated

the ones that made it and the ones that didn't?

And the answer is incredibly surprising.

He says, optimism.

Because surprising. He says optimism. Because the people that were overly optimistic said, we'll get out

by Christmas. And Christmas comes and they don't get out. And then they say, okay, we'll find

we'll be out. We'll see our families by Easter. And Easter comes and they're still there.

...