Man's Search for Meaning

Key takeaways

• Everything can be taken from you except your choice of attitude
• People who have a reason to live can endure almost any hardship
• Meaning comes from work, love and the stance you take toward suffering
• Happiness cannot be chased directly; it follows from living for something
• Imagine you are living for the second time and correct today's mistakes

Inside this bit

1. Meaning survives the camps

   Viktor Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist who spent 3 years in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and lost his wife, parents and brother. This book is his account of those years and the psychology he built from them.

2. The last human freedom

   Frankl describes how the camps stripped away everything: name, possessions, family, dignity, even the certainty of the next meal. Yet one thing remained.

3. A why to live for

   Frankl noticed that prisoners who lost hope often died quickly, sometimes within days, while those with a purpose held on through the same conditions. He tells of one man who dreamed the war would end on a certain date, and when that date passed with no liberation, he fell ill and died.

4. Three roads to meaning

   So where does meaning actually come from? Frankl names three sources.

5. Stop chasing happiness directly

   Frankl argues that happiness cannot be pursued head on. The more you aim at it, the more it slips away, because you are focused on your own state rather than on anything worth doing.

6. Put it to work

   This week, write down one thing that is asking something of you right now: a person who needs you, a piece of work only you can do, or a situation you cannot change but can face with dignity. When something frustrating happens, pause and name the response you are choosing before you react.