Continuing from my last post from Dr Viktor Frankl's book on 'Man's search for meaning', these are some key points:
1. A person finds meaning by striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
2. To overcome 'existential frustration', Dr Frankl calls attention to the gap between what one is and what one should become. Man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life.
3. He sees freedom and responsibility as two sides of the same coin.
4. To achieve personal meaning, one must transcend subjective pleasures by doing something that points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself, by giving himself to a cause to serve, or another person to love.
5. Dr Frankl himself chose to focus on his parents by staying in Vienna when he could have had safe passage to America.
6. Even when confronted by loss and sadness, Dr Frankl's optimism, his constant affirmation of and exuberance about life, led him to insist that hope and positive energy can turn challenges into triumphs.
7. Frankl emphasized on the importance of nourishing one's inner freedom, embracing the value of beauty in nature, art, poetry, and literature, and feeling love for family and friends. But other personal choices, activities, relationships, hobbies, and even simple pleasures can give meaning to life.
8. Why do some people find themselves feeling so empty? Frankl's wisdom here is worth emphasizing-- it is a question of the attitude one takes towards one's life's challenges and opportunities, both large and small.
A positive attitude enables a person to endure suffering and disappointment as well as enhance enjoyment and satisfaction.
A negative attitude intensifies pain and deepens disappointments; it undermines and diminishes pleasure, happiness, and satisfaction; it may even lead to depression or physical illness.
9. Subsequent research in psychoneuroimmunology has supported the ways in which positive emotions, expectations, and attitudes enhance our immune system. This research also reinforces Frankl's belief that one's approach to everything from life-threatening challenges to every day situations helps to shape the meaning of our lives.
10. The choices humans make should be active rather than passive. In making personal choices we affirm our autonomy. Frankl writes-- man is ultimately self determining. What he becomes-- within the limits of endowment and environment,-- he has made out of himself.
11. Persons facing difficult situations/choices may not fully appreciate how much their own attitude interferes with the decision they need to make or the action they need to take. Frankl offers readers who are searching for answers to life's dilemmas a critical mandate-- he does not tell people what to do, but why they must do it.
12. Frankl stimulated many therapists to look beyond patient's past or present problems to help them choose productive futures by making personal choices and taking responsibility for them. He argued that therapists should focus on the specific needs of individual patients, rather than extrapolate from abstract theories.
13. Despite a demanding schedule, Frankl also found time to take flying lessons and pursue his life long passion for mountain climbing. He joked that in contrast to Freud's and Adler's "depth psychology", which emphasizes delving into an individual's past and his or her unconscious instincts and desires, he practised "height psychology", which focuses on a person's future and his or her conscious decisions and actions.
His approach to psychotherapy stressed the importance of helping people to reach new heights of personal meaning through self-transcendence-- the application of positive effort, technique, acceptance of limitations, and wise decisions.
14. His goal was to provoke people into realizing that they could and should exercise their capacity for choice to achieve their goals. Writing about tragic optimism, he cautioned us that "the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best."
15. In conclusion, the meaning of our life is to help others to find the meaning of theirs.
1. A person finds meaning by striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
2. To overcome 'existential frustration', Dr Frankl calls attention to the gap between what one is and what one should become. Man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life.
3. He sees freedom and responsibility as two sides of the same coin.
4. To achieve personal meaning, one must transcend subjective pleasures by doing something that points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself, by giving himself to a cause to serve, or another person to love.
5. Dr Frankl himself chose to focus on his parents by staying in Vienna when he could have had safe passage to America.
6. Even when confronted by loss and sadness, Dr Frankl's optimism, his constant affirmation of and exuberance about life, led him to insist that hope and positive energy can turn challenges into triumphs.
7. Frankl emphasized on the importance of nourishing one's inner freedom, embracing the value of beauty in nature, art, poetry, and literature, and feeling love for family and friends. But other personal choices, activities, relationships, hobbies, and even simple pleasures can give meaning to life.
8. Why do some people find themselves feeling so empty? Frankl's wisdom here is worth emphasizing-- it is a question of the attitude one takes towards one's life's challenges and opportunities, both large and small.
A positive attitude enables a person to endure suffering and disappointment as well as enhance enjoyment and satisfaction.
A negative attitude intensifies pain and deepens disappointments; it undermines and diminishes pleasure, happiness, and satisfaction; it may even lead to depression or physical illness.
9. Subsequent research in psychoneuroimmunology has supported the ways in which positive emotions, expectations, and attitudes enhance our immune system. This research also reinforces Frankl's belief that one's approach to everything from life-threatening challenges to every day situations helps to shape the meaning of our lives.
10. The choices humans make should be active rather than passive. In making personal choices we affirm our autonomy. Frankl writes-- man is ultimately self determining. What he becomes-- within the limits of endowment and environment,-- he has made out of himself.
11. Persons facing difficult situations/choices may not fully appreciate how much their own attitude interferes with the decision they need to make or the action they need to take. Frankl offers readers who are searching for answers to life's dilemmas a critical mandate-- he does not tell people what to do, but why they must do it.
12. Frankl stimulated many therapists to look beyond patient's past or present problems to help them choose productive futures by making personal choices and taking responsibility for them. He argued that therapists should focus on the specific needs of individual patients, rather than extrapolate from abstract theories.
13. Despite a demanding schedule, Frankl also found time to take flying lessons and pursue his life long passion for mountain climbing. He joked that in contrast to Freud's and Adler's "depth psychology", which emphasizes delving into an individual's past and his or her unconscious instincts and desires, he practised "height psychology", which focuses on a person's future and his or her conscious decisions and actions.
His approach to psychotherapy stressed the importance of helping people to reach new heights of personal meaning through self-transcendence-- the application of positive effort, technique, acceptance of limitations, and wise decisions.
14. His goal was to provoke people into realizing that they could and should exercise their capacity for choice to achieve their goals. Writing about tragic optimism, he cautioned us that "the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best."
15. In conclusion, the meaning of our life is to help others to find the meaning of theirs.
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