Embracing Change with a Protagonist Mindset

In his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, Austrian psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl describes life in the concentration camp where starvation, chronic lack of sleep, physical torture and psychological harassment were a way of existence. On arrival, prisoners were stripped from all possessions and literally left naked. They lost all possible material links with their former lives. Conditions were such that they brought out a human being’s most primitive instincts, making prisoners focus almost exclusively on survival.

One may think that in the face of these exceptionally difficult circumstances, where apathy was the dominant feeling, an individual would feel completely and unavoidably restricted by his surroundings. Frankl, however, openly challenges this idea, offering a life-lesson.

“The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed”. (…) they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Frankl refers pointedly to what ‘having the right attitude’ meant.

“Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. (…) What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked (…) and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Man’s Search for Meaningis one of the most original tributes to life. It demonstrates that even under the most adverse circumstances there is still hope if you have a protagonist attitude. In face of suffering, oftentimes we give up, feel lost and question the purpose of life. The book, a must-read for anybody interested in leadership development, shows that it is upon us to step up to these circumstances and assign our own sense of meaning and purpose to our life.