When Vice Admiral James Stockdale was shot down over Vietnam, he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. He spent nearly eight years being tortured and subjected to unimaginable loneliness and terror. He had little choice in the fact that he was shot down or that he was taken prisoner. When asked how he made it out alive, he said: 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.
What Stockdale told himself—and what helped him endure this terrible ordeal and others—was that he possessed an incredible power. He could decide how he was going to use this experience in the rest of his life, however short or long it would be.
Teach them that. Teach them to see hardship as fuel. Teach them to see an opportunity where others see an obstacle. Teach them that despite everything outside their control, they retain an incredible power: the power to choose what they do with what happens to them. They get to decide what role an event will play in their life. They have the power to write the end of their own story.