(From Thursday, September 4, 1986, Kansas City Times, "Inside Business" section -- given me by Dad in 1986). ======================================================================= Keeping a Positive Attitude is the Only Way to Survive ------- - -------- -------- -- --- ---- --- -- ------- by J. Charles Plumb, guest columnist +-----------------------------------------------+ | Mr. Plumb, a former prisoner of war, is a | | motivational speaker for trade associations | | and companies. | +-----------------------------------------------+ I was alone in a Communist prisoner of war camp in Hanoi, North Vietnam. I had just gone through the most traumatic experience of my life: ejecting from a damaged fighter jet, parachuting into a rice paddy, and being captured and tortured by the Com- munist North Vietnamese. I was surviving on rice, about 1,000 calories a day, not counting the larvae, weevils and bugs. Needless to say, my "self-talk" was primarily self-pity. After many weeks of solitary confinement, I finally made contact with another prisoner of war, a fellow fighter pilot. Tugging on a wire, using a very rudi- mentary and cumbersome code, he asked, "How ya doin', buddy?" "I'm doing terrible ... , buddy," I tugged. "My president sent me over here to fight his dirty Vietman War. Now I'm paying the price for his politics. "Congress appropriated the money for that airplane. Let those warmongers come over here and sit in this prison camp for a while. It's their fault, not mine. "And then there is the idiot mechanic that worked on that airplane. He must have left out a transistor, because I sure didn't see that missile coming. Anyway, I am the victim of circumstances beyond my control, and I am left to die here because somebody else screwed up. I don't like it!" "Do you want to know your biggest problem?" he sent back in code. "You mean that I've got bigger problems than the ones I know about?" I asked him. "It sure sounds like it, pal," he explained, "and it can be fatal if you don't get some attention. Many of our fellow pilots have already died from this dis- ease, and you could, too." "What's the name of the disease?" I asked. "Maybe I know something about it." "Around here it is just called 'prison thinking,'" he replied, "and nearly everyone gets it at first." Navy Lt. Cmdr. Bob Shumaker explained to me that prison thinking was a disease of the mind and that no one was immune, not even a Midwest businessman. The first symptom is self-pity. You begin to feel sorry for yourself, being shot down and captured. You go into the "woe-is-me" mode of life. "I do the best job I can in this company, but nobody cares." The second stage of prison thinking is blaming others for your conditions. Blame the president; it's his dirty war. Blame your manager; he's the one that made that rotten policy. Blame Congress; those law- makers appropriated the money. Blame your wife; buy- ing that car was her idea. Blame the mechanic; he put your airplane together. Blame the cop who gave you the ticket; he should be out catching robbers. The third and final stage of the disease is nega- tive role-playing. You see yourself as a loser. "Everyone nows what a POW is supposed to be like," Cmdr. Shumaker said. "We've read the books and seen the movies. We know that to be authentic, you must get dirty, ragged and bearded, cuss a lot, damn your God, atrophy and die ... if you can. That's the def- inition. "I'll tell you this," he said, "if you feel sorry for yourself and blame everyone else; if you feel you have lost all control of your destiny, that you are no longer the master of your fate, captain of your soul; if you play the role of the poor dejected POW wallow- ing in your own misery, you may have a terminal case of prison thinking. Save yourself some pain and cash in your chips early, because you are not marching out of here with the rest of us." His lesson was a bitter pill to swallow, but his diagnosis was correct. And I validated his philoso- phy every day for the next 2,103 days in that POW camp. I continue to see this principle validated in business from chief executive officer to custodian, in our private lives from the schoolroom to the bed- room. I see small-business owners who think that there is no more "American Dream" because of govern- ment and economic constraints. I see salespeople who wallow in self-pity because they have had another door slammed in their face. I see single parents who play negative roles with a "What can you expect?" at- titude. As sluggish as the economy will ever be, as loud as our kids scream, as gloomy as the sky looks, as bad as our situation gets, it will always respond to some good old-fashioned positive thinking. Challenges are all around us. The cop-out is to bend to the pressures through self-pity, blame somebody else for our problems and play the role of the poor helpless businessman in a tough economy. The antidote for this disease is accountability. Making the decision to keep control of your self-talk and not surround yourself with an emotional prison wall, breaking down the blocks of your mental confine- ment and taking control of your destiny. It's risky business, to be sure. And it isn't easy, but the re- wards are renewed freedom and self-control. Whether you are trying to survive in a tough com- petitive business climate in Kansas City, or whether you are in a prison of war camp in Communist North Vietnam, your survival depends on your attitude to- wards your situation, your surroundings and yourself. And only through a conscious effort of accountability can you break out of the attitudinal disease called "prison thinking."