Three ways to find meaning in life according to a Holocaust survivor
Some of my friends are going through painful transitions.
Events such as the death of a spouse, job loss, breakup, or children leaving home leave us with an awful void.
We start to question everything. We feel we have no purpose. We’re not sure how to spend our time. Days just pass and we cannot get out of our own way. We cannot motivate to try something new. Nothing excites us.
How do we find meaning or purpose?
Austrian psychiatrist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl wrote the following in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:
"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways:
1. by creating a work or doing a deed;
2. by experiencing something or encountering someone; and
3. by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" and that "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."