9 Powerful Ways to Stay Resilient and Optimistic During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Viktor Frankl

Imagine finding yourself where your chances of survival are below 4%, and your risk of dying is above 96%. An Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and Holocaust survivor who developed the psychological approach known as Logotherapy, Viktor Emil Frankl, experienced this terrible and brutal reality when he was taken with his family by the Nazis to the deadly concentration camp near Prague. His father, mother, brother, and wife died in concentration camps. His entire family perished! The young doctor - prisoner 119104 - realized the significance of meaningfulness in life.

As a long-time prisoner, Frankl found himself stripped of his naked existence. How could he find life with meaning? How could he stay resilient and optimistic while experiencing hunger, bitter cold, and ruthless brutality?

With less than a 4% chance of surviving in Nazi camps, Frankl had four probabilities.

The first and most common one was to be taken into the gas chambers like many others to be killed with Zyklon B gas.

The second probability was to commit suicide. The third was to die from starvation or illness.

The last choice was to do whatever he could to stay alive. As a prisoner, he noticed that people who hoped to see their loved ones had projects they felt the need to complete, or had great inner faith tended to have better chances of surviving than those who had lost all hope. He also noticed that a future-oriented approach was crucial for their survival.

Did he see meaning in his life, even in desperate circumstances? Unquestionably, he did!

In those terrible, uncontrollable, and miserable circumstances, Frankl stated:

"They can take from us almost everything, our health, our property, our freedom, and even what is dearest to us - except for one thing: the freedom to decide how to react to our situation in life. We are the masters of our fate, he noted, not its victims." ― Viktor E. Frankl,?Man's Search for Meaning

What can we learn from Frankl's statement about our current coronavirus pandemic?

What can we learn from Frankl's statement about our current coronavirus pandemic? This might be the most challenging global health and economic crisis since World War II. This stressful and unpredictable pandemic has caused an astonishing number of deaths across nations. At this point, as I finalize this article, more than 3.2 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus, and the world has witnessed over 230,000 deaths.

But despite this grim pandemic, we can all notice that more people are recovering from this terrible disease; the fact is that more than one million people have overcome the coronavirus at this point! We must acknowledge that, as of today, more than 97% of all currently infected patients are in mild condition! Accordingly, we will understand essential human factors, such as our survival instinct.

We can all overcome this terrible crisis by sharing our global collaborative wisdom, willpower, knowledge, technology, resources, and the needed capabilities to defeat COVID-19, collectively. This ability to appreciate every moment despite difficulties, challenges, and unpredictable events is a significant human phenomenon that allows us to live our lives fully.

To put everything in perspective, I decided to share with you nine powerful lessons I acquired from Viktor Frankl and his philosophy of Logotherapy to help you keep stress out of your life and away from your career. Frankl's philosophy - Logotherapy - is compelling. Only someone who does not believe in a better future or in their skills and abilities to create a more desirable reality by acting upon it, for the sake of themselves and their loved ones and by changing their approach and attitude to that harsh reality basically can't survive.

Let's try to understand and internalize his advice in this difficult time.

1. Discover the Meaning of Life in All Circumstances

Occasionally, you are going through some difficulties in your life, but it's okay; we all do. However, it is essential which attitude you take towards the situation, and how you choose to react in unstable and unbalanced circumstances. Despite the unfortunate reality and the unclear future you may face, Frankl teaches and encourages you to have faith in your present day and future despite your seemingly unsolvable crisis.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” ― Viktor Frankl

2. Harness the Will to Find Meaning as Your Driving Force

Every moment in your life has a meaning and a purpose, and you must learn and obtain those lessons to elevate yourself to something more meaningful for your future. Frankl taught me that every difficulty, terrible circumstance, setback, and struggle that I experienced throughout my life allowed me to learn, grow, and achieve more inner strength and wisdom.

3. Embrace Your Freedom to Choose Your Attitude

Your freedom to change your attitude and your entitlement to choose your response to any situation can never be taken away. Your responsibility is to use it wisely.?

You have the ability and the power to change your perspective in desperate situations by controlling your self-talk, and to be more patient, to tolerate and control your emotions and responses.?

Even if you are faced with an unpleasant reality today, it is important always to remember that tomorrow will be a much better day.?

No matter how bad life may seem to you right now, there is always value to be taken from it, and there is still the possibility that the future will be much better than you ever imagined.?

4. Build Psychological Resilience for Optimal Well-being

Life is full of unpredictable events, and we cannot always prepare for things like the COVID-19 pandemic, illness, divorce, job loss, financial setbacks, abuse, war, or terror. During these times, it's important to rely on your psychological resilience, which allows you to cope mentally and emotionally with any crisis.

How we view adversity, stress, failure, accidents, illness, bad experiences, and other problems strongly affects how we live and thrive, and this is one of the most important reasons that having a resilient mindset is so important.

The key to your well-being is endlessly developing and maintaining your psychological resilience and strengthening your ability to recover, bounce back, and cope with the difficulties and stresses of your life.?

By doing so you will be able to emerge from any crisis stronger than ever before, having learned something from experience.?

5. Unlock Unlimited Potential to Bounce Back from Setbacks

Your freedom to believe in your abilities to overcome stresses, challenges, pain, illness, and random events is magical and essential to your growth and well-being.?

You can be far from home, from your family and friends, you may be unemployed, struggling financially, or unhappy with your marriage or relationship.?

Whatever complicated and unpleasant situation you are facing at this moment it is up to you to manage it properly, by striving to change the condition or by changing your attitude towards the issues you are facing.

When you are taking care of yourself and managing to be self-motivated and inspired then it's easier to deal effectively and adequately with your everyday life issues.

6. Rely on Your Belief System for Survival

Throughout life, many of you have experienced sudden challenges where you could rely on your inner strength, willpower, adaptability, and flexibility to overcome unpredictable and often unpleasant events. The good news is that often our survival instinct kicked in, allowing us to bounce back and become even stronger and wiser. This has enabled us to maintain a positive attitude toward the situation and move forward.

7. Tap into Endless Capabilities Even During a Crisis

When you have a bright idea of what you are trying to accomplish, and you manage to build a vision and maintain a zoom focus on your future, looking beyond a present crisis, difficulties, or other challenges then eventually, you will be able to live a very fulfilling life.?

You can thrive, prosper, and enjoy life by using your unique talent in a meaningful, and exceptional manner.?

8. Take Control of Your Life with Empowering Decisions

Taking command of your personal and professional life is your free choice. It is in your hands to set rules and boundaries that you don't want to cross. You are the one to decide what is essential and what is less important for your personal and professional life.?

Often, tough decisions will occur. Decisions that have a special meaning for you. Even though they may seem awkward and nonconforming, you may choose to act upon them anyway. After some time, you may wonder if you have done the right thing.?

Hence, it is helpful to accept them from an optimistic and futuristic perspective. It is beneficial to be in complete harmony with yourself at that time when you made the decision and especially now, at this moment, when you once again analyze that choice you made.

9. Overcome Emptiness, Meaninglessness, and Boredom

Frankl noted that when people see their lives as fruitless, vague, and pointless, they face a twentieth-century phenomenon in which many people feel that life is meaningless.?

This feeling of inner emptiness that we repeatedly experience, while putting our work, our career, current project, next promotion, or next client on top of our most valuable and meaningful people, without even realizing the cracks which we are creating, Frankl calls "existential vacuum."?

If meaning is what you desire, he noted, then meaninglessness is a hole, a gap, in your lives. Therefore, based on Frankl, whenever you have this type of vacuum, you must fill it by doing something meaningful for yourself and others.

I’ve discovered that Logotherapy holds the wisdom, not only to save our lives but to bring meaning, joy, and purpose into them.?This philosophy taught me about the sense of love and what it means to be loved.?

It taught me about the purpose of my work, the importance of my values, the essence of building a beautiful family, the need to learn and develop spiritually, and the ways to succeed in the world without losing myself physically and mentally.?

Let's adopt Viktor Frankl's positive, future-oriented, and meaningful approach to shifting our focus to the solutions and inspiring stories of survival and recovery from this unfortunate disease. Our united and cohesive approach holds the power to confront the COVID-19 pandemic; it's only a matter of time and a collective global effort.

I genuinely believe that if we follow Viktor Frankl's survival guidance on an individual and a community level by adopting his positive, future-oriented, and meaningful approach, we will be able successfully, to cope with our current crisis and overcome all the future crises?

We must work together, with an ego-free and purposeful mindset, sharing our collective knowledge, tools, technologies, and goodwill to defeat any disease or any other barrier that prevents us from living a harmonious, prosperous, and meaningful life.

“It is not freedom from conditions, but it is the freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.” ― Viktor E. Frankl,?Man's Search for Meaning

Let's Stay Resilient and Optimistic by adopting a positive and future-oriented approach!

Thanks for reading!

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Hello, I'm Rafael, known to my teams as Raf.

I am dedicated to creating harmony and fostering meaningful workplace environments. With a deep appreciation for people, teamwork, and impactful results—paired with a love for high-quality coffee—I strive to empower companies to transform their workplace culture.

My mission is to cultivate a positive, collaborative, resilient, and healthy atmosphere that infuses meaning and purpose into the professional world.

Let's work together to create a more meaningful, purposeful, and enjoyable workplace. Join me on this journey!

Purpose, Trust & Coffee

Raf