5 Life-Changing Lessons From Viktor Frankl On How To Live A Meaningful Life

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You’ve probably heard of psychotherapist Viktor Frankl’s extremely moving book,?Man’s Search For Meaning . In it, he chronicles his experience as a concentration camp prisoner and survivor.

But, if you’re like me, you never actually saw him speak. Therefore, what you may not know is that Frankl is extremely eloquent and his passion is infectious.

So I spent 20 hours watching all of his speeches and interviews on the Internet and curated the five most profound clips.

Here are the five lessons I learned at a deeper level:

1. More prosperity does not lead to more meaning
2. Beware of conventional goal setting
3. Create with the pure intention to help others
4. Embrace the dynamic tension of life rather than searching for peace
5. Do not 'hyper-reflect’ on your thoughts, sensations, or feelings

With that said, let’s jump into each clip…

1. More prosperity does not lead to more meaning

Even though this clip was filmed over 40 years ago in 1979, the topic of the meaning crisis is just as relevant for us as individuals and as a society—if not more so.

The interview is fascinating because it introduces a puzzle we increasingly have to reckon with…

The Meaning Paradox?

Why is it harder to find meaning in today’s affluent, comfortable society than it was in stressful, grueling concentration camps?

How is it possible that society's political and economic systems that are designed to satisfy every need end up missing the most important psychological one—meaning?

During the clip, Frankl expands on the crisis and then shares what he thinks the solutions are…

Frankl’s Antidote To Creating Meaning

He points to three solutions…

1. Develop ideals (ie - personal examples you aspire to)
2. Embrace challenges/tensions along the way
3. Pursue personal tasks (things you’re excited to be, do or have in the future).

In other places, Frankl gives more detail:

“The more you forget yourself in love or in work for the sake of a cause to serve or a person to love, is the very extent you will become happy.”

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”

Summary

Just as we have physical needs, we also have psychological needs. And just as the body needs food and water, our minds need meaning. Just as the body ultimately dies without water, if there is no meaning, people end their life quickly or give up and die slowly.

Frankl puts it more starkly…

“If there is no meaning available, then he takes his life.”

Personal Resonance

I grew up hearing about concentration camps throughout my childhood. My grandparents went into concentration camps when they were teenagers and had almost their entire family (parents, siblings, cousins) killed. So learning about concentration camps has a lot of meaning and significance for me.

2. Beware of conventional goal setting

This clip of psychotherapist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) beautifully captures one of his central ideas that's completely under-appreciated today.

I call it the Achiever’s Paradox.

It makes all of the sense in the world...

1. IF you want something
2. THEN you should make it a goal to achieve it
3. THEN you should make sure that each action you take aligns with that goal

In other words…

• If you want more money, turn it into a goal
• Same thing with prestige
• Same thing with happiness
• Same thing with sex
• Same thing with success

Paradoxically, this achievement approach can have the exact opposite effect.

Frankl illustrates this with the following quotes in the video clip…

“As long as you are aiming at happiness, you cannot obtain it. The more you make it a target, the more you miss the target.”

“Male patients who are striving to demonstrate their potency, they fall prey to impotence.”

“The more a female patient tries to show how much she's capable of experiencing a full female orgasm, the more she's doomed to frigidity.”

Frankl then points out how:

• IF you focus less on achievement for yourself
• AND you focus on a cause larger than yourself?
• THEN the more good things happen to you
• AND the more you help others

More specifically, he says…

"At that moment that you are no longer concerned with becoming a happy or a successful man or a woman, at that moment happiness installs itself by itself.”

An Oprah quote really resonates here :

“You get from the world what you give to the world.”

In the second part of the clip, Frankl provides an incredibly powerful example of the Achiever's Paradox that saved two people's lives.

He shares the story of two fellow comrades in the concentration camp with him who each were on the brink of suicide.

When they each independently came to him and said...

"See doctor, I have nothing to expect for my life anymore."

Frankl intuitively responded:

"Isn't it considerable that, instead, life expects something from you?"

Amazingly, both individuals flipped 180 degrees as they realized that life, in fact, did expect something of them.

One comrade had a daughter waiting for him.

The other had an unfinished work to complete.

Frankl summarizes his finding by saying…

“Those inmates or prisoners were most likely to survive the camp period were:

1. Oriented toward a future
2. Orientated for becoming free again in the future
3. Oriented to a meaning that they had to fulfill the future, a task that they had to complete in the future, and/or to be reunited with their beloved people in the future, again (most important)."

Maybe JFK was on to something deeper psychologically when he famously said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

We humans are not innately selfish or lazy. Even under the most difficult conditions, we are wired to think beyond ourself. Even on the brink of impossible odds, we are wired to still push.

Video Source

https://bit.ly/3Y07mGh

3. Create with the pure intention to help others

You probably know Viktor Frankl as the psychotherapist who lived through concentration camps and wrote?Man’s Search For Meaning .

What you probably don't know is that he originally published the book anonymously.

Not only that, the book became more popular than all of his other books combined.

Describing his pure intention as he was writing the book, he states...

"This one book, that had become such a success, was written with the 100% conviction that it never could build up any reputation for me as an author, because I had decided to publish this book anonymously. So I knew while I was writing it, up to the last word, it will NOT do anything for myself.

I did it while contemplating that if someone lies in a sanatorium in a bed knowing that he's going to die within a short period. And then in such a desperate situation, he takes up that book of an unknown author, and then he might think...

'If this guy over there in Auschwitz did not lose the conviction that up to the last breath, under any conditions, even the worst ones, the most miserable ones, life retains a meaning up to its last moment, up to our last breath. And this man, this unknown man, this anonymous has shown this, and there must be something to it. And I wonder if I also could change my attitude towards something that per se in itself is unchangeable.'"

So what do we take of this personal story?

Was Frankl's selflessness a cause of the book's success or just a coincidence with it?

For Frankl, the answer is clear...

Frankl’s #1 Takeaway

Frankl says...

"Precisely, this was the reason, by just doing a thing for the cause's sake or for other's sake, but not for your own sake. And then success comes by itself. Comes automatically. And this is a real success."

To explain how, he gives the eye as a metaphor:

"The capacity of the eye, in order to perceive visually the surrounding world, most ironically depends on its incapacity to perceive anything of itself.

When does my eye perceive anything of myself?

If I am afflicted by a cataract, I might see some clouds. If I'm afflicted by glaucoma, I might see rainbow halos around the light. Then my eye perceives the heightened tension in a certain part of the eye bulb.

But the normal eye, The normally functioning eye doesn't perceive anything, notice anything of itself. And to the extent that it does or it would do, it is impaired in its function."

Bottom Line

So often when we directly pursue a goal (money, fame, prestige, happiness, self-actualization), we paradoxically push it away.

But, when we sincerely and full-heartedly throw ourselves into our craft with the intention to create the most good and faith that things will work out, we end up becoming more happy, rich, and famous as a byproduct.

I call this the Achiever's Paradox.

In his other work, Frankl more deeply explains how striving backfires.

Video Source

INTERVIEWER: Dr. Pat Stark, Dean, School of Nursing

HOST: University of Texas at Houston

LINK:?bit.ly/3Do78zk

4. Embrace the dynamic tension of life rather than searching for peace

In this 1963 interview clip, Viktor Frankl shares this controversial idea:

---> Most psychotherapy is a "psychological tranquilizer." <---

In other words, in his opinion, most therapy makes a fundamental mistake.

It tries, as its main goal, to relieve anguish by guiding people toward a "tensionless inner equilibrium."

Frankl makes the case that the opposite should be done.

Rather than avoiding tension, we should embrace it.

Rather than enduring meaningLESSness, we should search for meaningFULLness.

Frankl says:

"Man must be prepared to endure the tension between the meaning (which is in wait for him) and the being (the actual state of affairs). This gap between what he is and what he should become. This gap must be endured."

Relating this idea to his experience in four concentration camps, he says that the basic question was not whether or not he would survive, which is what one might think the dilemma would be as an outside observer. Rather, Frankl says that the basic question was whether or not there was a higher meaning in all of the pains that these innocent people had to undergo.

Expanding on this idea in?Man's Search For Meaning , Frankl says:

"There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

Personal Takeaway

Frankl's sharing of his experience from the concentration camp hit me deeply today. I listened to the clip seven times, because I had to hear it over and over in order to put words to the feeling.

Here is my current interpretation of his wisdom:

What made the concentration camps so difficult wasn't just the physical challenges to the body. It was also the psychological challenges that robbed life of its meaning. And without this meaning, people stopped doing what was necessary in order to survive physically.

In her book,?Shattered Assumptions , psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman makes the case that the root cause of trauma isn't necessarily just the events themselves. Rather, it's people's shattered assumptions of how reality works and inability to recreate meaning afterwards.

She makes the case that we implicitly carry around the following assumptions that give life meaning:

1. The world is generally a safe place where more good happens than bad
2. Most people have good intentions and can be trusted
3. Good things happen to good people who do good things

In life's most difficult situations, these assumptions are shattered, which then can make life feel meaningless, which then erodes our life.

I now view the ability to find sources of meaning in every moment (especially the most difficult ones that shatter our basic assumptions) as a fundamental skill that's critical to master for mental health and resilience.

Video Source

https://bit.ly/3DsnruV

5. Do not 'hyper-reflect’ on your thoughts, sensations, or feelings

This 1985 Viktor Frankl clip surprised me more than any of his other videos.

It shares an idea of his that I've never heard, and it challenges something I've held sacred.

Let me give you some context...

Frankl’s Challenges Introspection

Since I was young, I have treasured the power of introspection—looking inward at my thoughts, feelings and sensations. As such, I've spent a huge amount of my life reflecting on myself.

And, I'm not alone:

• Much of meditation is based on noticing our body's sensations
• Socrates said, “know thyself,” because he believed it led to wisdom
• Psychotherapy is often based on verbalizing our introspections

Frankl challenges the power of looking inward, and believes that we overvalue it.

More specifically, he challenges many types of psychotherapy:

"[Many patients] are sometimes the victims of other types of psychotherapy who compel a patient ever more, and for five and more years, each week, several times throughout 50 minutes, to observe and watch themselves. And due to such a maximum of introspection and retrospection, digging out things from the earliest childhood, they sometimes may become, their neurosis sometimes may well become reinforced, to say the least."

More so, Frankl also challenges the idea that we can find the meaning of life on a meditation mat:

“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

Ultimately, Frankl believes too much introspection (what he calls hyper-reflection) leads to many modern neuroses such as:

• Impotence
• Performance anxiety
• Social anxiety
• Anticipatory anxiety

Frankl’s Solution To Hyper-Reflection

Frankl's solution is what he calls dereflection:

"But this dereflection business can be carried out only to the extent that the attention of an individual is shifted from something negative, from his pathology to something positive, to something that is in wait for him, in store for him, a task to complete or a meaning to fulfill."

Summary

Our attention is the leading edge of our life. Where our attention goes, our life flows.

Frankl argues that we should put our attention much more in 3 places...

• OUTWARD RATHER THAN INWARD?(Toward our love for and impact on others rather than just ourself)
• ACTIONS RATHER THAN OBSERVATIONS
• FUTURE RATHER THAN THE PRESENT?(Toward a meaning we will fulfill)

Personal Takeaway

I'm still chewing on Frankl's words.

Clearly, he doesn't mean that we should stop all introspection. So, I'm very curious where he would draw the line between health and unhealthy reflection.

I recently bought another book of his, and I look forward to diving deeper.

Video Source

INTERVIEWER: Dr. Pat Stark, Dean, School of Nursing

HOST: University of Texas at Houston

LINK: https://bit.ly/3DwHcS1

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