Welcome to Darren Daly on demand, your most trusted resource to help you become better every day.

Here's your success mentor, Darren Hardy.

This morning, I want to remind you of a story.

It comes out of Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, and it teaches us an important lesson on how to think about and deal with great difficulty,

particularly during a crisis, one you don't know if it will end or when it will end or what life

will be like after it ever ends. The story is about Admiral Jim Stockdale. Stockdale was the highest

ranking U.S. military officer in the Hanoi Helton Prisoner of War

camp.

This was during the height of the Vietnam War.

Stockdale was tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment.

Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner rights with no set release date and with no certainty of survival.

He didn't know if he would ever see his family again. Yet he remained a steadfast leader,

even while in prison, with the other inmates. He did everything he could to create conditions

that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken.

This, while fighting the internal war against his captors.

You see, they were attempting to use the prisoners, particularly the American prisoners, for propaganda.

At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately

disfiguring himself so he could not be used as an example of a well-treated prisoner.

He communicated secret intelligence information through letters with his wife. He knew

full well. If he was discovered, it would mean more torture and perhaps even death.

He instituted an elaborate internal communication system with the other prisoners.

And this was designed to reduce their sense of isolation,

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