Dr. Viktor Frankl: Three Main Directions for Meaning in Life

This is an except from Mind Macros 04.

“I. By doing something, by acting, by creating—by bringing a work into being.

"II. By experiencing something—nature, art—or loving people.

"III. Human beings are able to find meaning even where finding value in life is not possible for them in either the first or the second way—namely, precisely when they take a stance toward the unalterable, fated, inevitable, and unavoidable limitation of their possibilities: how they adapt to this limitation, react toward it, how they accept this fate. In the course of life, human beings must be prepared to change the direction of this fulfillment of meaning, often abruptly, according to the particular ‘challenges of the hour.’” — From Yes to Life by Viktor Frankl.

Dr. Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and the founder of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that explores meaning as the core motivational force in humans.

Frankl lost his parents, pregnant wife, brother, and life's work during his three years of imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps. These experiences influenced his work on meaning.

In light of Frankl’s story, the following quotation becomes more significant:

“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.”