In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl recounts his experience in Nazi concentration camps and explores his theory of logotherapy—the notion that the primary goal in life is seeking meaning (see here for more background).
Here are 12 lessons you can learn from him and here’s my podcast episode expanding on these lessons.
12 Lessons
To become great you have to become worthy of your suffering. “Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.”
You can either be a victim or a victor of your circumstances. “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.”
Seek discomfort because comfort destroys the soul. “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”
Embrace suffering because life is suffering. “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete
Know your why. “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.”
The search for meaning is what drives each and every one of us. “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “Secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.”
Live now as if you have already died. “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.”
Cultivate a powerful and strong inner life. “As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence, he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances.”
Find and embrace love, it’s the most powerful force in the universe. “Listen, Otto, if I don't get back home to my wife and if you should see her again, then tell her that I talked of her daily, hourly. You remember. Secondly, I have loved her more than anyone. Thirdly, the short time I have been married to her outweighs everything even all we have gone through”
The despair you feel is not a mental disease but a lack of meaning. “A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.”
Learn to suffer with virtue instead of complaining. “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.”
There are two kinds of people in the world a) decent and b) indecent. “From all that we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the “Race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society.”
For a full breakdown, listen to the episode I made about Viktor Frankl on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Google Podcast.