The meaning of life, according to Viktor Frankl

The assessment of oneself is the starting point in the search for meaning. Viktor Frankl

From the story of their experiences in a concentration camp, the DR. Viktor Frankl explains in his book "Man's Search for Meaning", The experience that led him to the discovery of logotherapy. Prisoner, for a long time, he felt in his own being what meant a naked existence.

How could he, who had lost everything, that he had seen destroyed everything that was worth it, that he suffered hung Live it?

The search for the meaning of life is the essence of existence. In the realization of this sense, man aspires to meet another human being in the form of a you and love him.

When the sense of existence is frustrated, the desire for power or pleasure occupies the most important place in the motivation of behavior, in this way the search for happiness becomes an end in itself and therefore in A frustration.

Content

• How can we transform our existence?
• What is the inner attitude?
  • Choose to have hope
  • Know your why
  • Learn to cry
  • Do not meet with being part of the flock
  • Live meaning
  • Fill your day with acts of goodness
  • Go beyond yourself
  • Feel the pain of others
  • We can change even when life is difficult

How can we transform our existence?

Happiness is obtained as a consequence of a reason and not by the search for herself. The door to happiness opens out, and who tries to knock it down is closed.

The optimismIt is a key piece of Frankl's conception; Life appears as an opportunity to answer, It is necessary to look for the best option to keep it and therefore maintain the promise to survive. In this sense, once for what, the accent passes to how.

Love is the highest goal to which the human being can aspire. This fundamental faith allows you to recover all the efforts, decisions or actions that someone has made in their life. The fundamental thing for Frankl is what man answers the questions that life gives him and not what man asks life. Happiness is the result of meaning.

In this commitment values ​​play a fundamental role, it is about the values ​​of attitude, creation and experience, privileged in the latter case the love experience. Values ​​make possible an inner journey from which, on the one hand, faith arises in the future, and on the other, the search for resources of love and meaning in one's personal life history.

The relationship between inner strength (values, faith, love, meaning) and future goal, It is the link that integrates the individual and allows him to recognize himself with a unique and unrepeatable being.

What is the inner attitude?

The inner attitude towards circumstances is the result of a personal choice. It is freedom for, the one that gives man the possibility of becoming an indeterminate being. Being beyond material or physical limitations is a human possibility where man knows the experience of heroism.

The inner attitude is also in deep communication with the spiritual unconscious. It is a manifestation of the presence of God in the life of man.

The nine most significant teachings:

Choose to have hope

We cannot always change the circumstances, but we can always choose our attitude in any situation that arises. When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves

Know your why

Ask yourself: What am I living for? Every day we should get up and ask ourselves why we get up and why we are here. "Who has a 'why' can tolerate almost any 'how'.

Learn to cry

Tears are not a show of weakness; emanate from a soul that is not afraid. "There is no need to be ashamed of tears, because tears witness that a man had the greatest courage, courage to suffer"-

Do not meet with being part of the flock

The world is upside down. Sometimes, doing what everyone does is crazy. "An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal".

Live meaning

We make sense of life answering the questions that life itself gives us. Life poses to each person a challenge and the person can only answer with his own life. What one expects from life does not matter; What matters is what life expects from one.

Fill your day with acts of goodness

Goodness has an objective, the hundreds of small acts of goodness that we have the opportunity to do every day are full of meaning.

Go beyond yourself

We find true meaning when we transcend our own limits and needs. The more a person forgets himself, when he gives himself to a cause or another person, the more human he is and the more he grows.

Feel the pain of others

Suffering is painful, however irrelevant that the problem seems to others. Have empathy with the pain of others, even if it is not a tragedy in the global perspective of life.

We can change even when life is difficult

We can create a significant life and full of meaning, love and purpose.

Origins, components and logotherapy techniques