I continue to tell to whoever will listen, about the great tool that is YouTube for motivating yourself. What people paid hundreds of dollars for a few decades ago or had to seek out through books and videos, are available for free at a moment’s notice through YouTube. Motivational speeches and testimonies that will inspire you even in your darkest moments to keep pushing forward are as accesible as they have ever been before.

Trying to be a pupil of my own advice, when I was confronted with some small challenges the other day, I decided to feed my mind some positive motivation by listening to a Tony Robbins talk (among thousands he has done) where he talked about his own hardships and the exercises he would do to bring his mind state from a negative downtrodden one, to a positive uplifting one. He relied on these exercises during two very trying times in his life: when he was young and his parents had divorced and he was living on his own with no money in his early 20’s and when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in his early 30’s.

At these times in his life, he would listen to audio tapes from inspirational speakers and read biographies of people who endured incredible hardship in their lives and came out on the other side of it stronger, determined and more focused. He rattled off a few books and tapes that helped inspire him including one by Viktor Frankl called Man’s Search for Meaning. What caught my attention in his description of the book was that it was a motivational autobiography written by a psychiatrist who survived the Auschwtiz concentration camp. I decided to investigate the life of Viktor and what he endured, since I also often read about trying times in history to give myself perspective and help me to realize that my predicaments are small and almost insignificant compared to what many people in the world have, and continue to, endure.

The Story of Viktor Frankl

Viktor was born in Vienna Austria in 1905 and from an early age took an interest in psychiatry.

He studied the practice in school and even before he had to endure real hardship, he took an interest in turning people’s thought process around. When he was a medical resident in Vienna, he headed the so called “suicide pavilion” of a local hospital where 3000 women were at risk of suicide.

Once the Nazis annexed Austria, he was no longer allowed to treat non Jews and ended up working at the Rothschild hospital in Vienna and took considerable personal risk of falsifying reports to save Jews some the euthanasia program of the Nazis.

Time in the Concentration Camp and the Evolution of his Ideas

In 1942 Frankl, his wife Tilly, his parents Elsa and Gabriel and siblings Walter and Stella were transported to a ghetto in Czechoslovakia. His father died there of either starvation or pneumonia. After 2 years there, they were all transported to the Auschwitz camp.

At Auschwitz, his mother and brother were murdered. His then pregnant wife was eventually sent to Bergen-Belsen where she died not long before the camp was liberated.

When Auschwitz was liberated, only Frankl and his sister Stella were left.

Frankl has been conceiving his ideas about finding meaning in life and the psychology of those who commit suicide before he ended up in Auschwitz and his experience at the camp only sharpened his conviction on finding meaning in your life even in the most difficult circumstances.

Once he returned to Vienna after the liberation, he threw himself into his work and a year later published a book whose German translation is called Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. The English version shortened the title to Man’s Search for Meaning.

Source: Amazon

The book dealt with the day to day experience of a concentration camp inmate from the point of view of a psychiatrist and went on to become a best seller of its time, selling tens of millions of copies. In fact, post war, until his death in 1997, Frankl wrote 39 books. Talk about a guy who was motivated and put his money where his mouth was.

Frankl’s Philosophy

If you want to get an idea of Frankl’s philosophy without reading his book you can listen to this interview with him here.

At the heart of his philosophy about meaning is the freedom to choose. We cannot help what happens to us, and in a sense we are not totally free because we are subject to the constraints of time and our bodies (you don’t have freedom from sickness, old age etc) however, we do have the freedom to choose. We have the freedom to choose to search for happiness and meaning in our life despite our circumstances.

Meaning, according to Frankl, can be found in the most mundane things, it’s the will to complete something that can keep you going. The dedication to a cause and to leaving your mark, no matter how small can push people who are suicidal to forget their predicament and through the act of focusing on a task, lose their sense of hopelessness.

Hopelessness according to Frankl, comes from a lack of direction and a lack of meaning in one’s life. However when someone has a task in front of them, even if it is seemingly small, it gives them a sense of some purpose to complete something, especially if it is something meaningful to them.

Frankl gives numerous examples in his interview, of paraplegics who find incredible happiness and contentment in their lives, to people who are almost vegetables, who take time to pray and hope for those who are feeling down on their luck.

He mentioned that those that saw a life for themselves after the concentration camp, were the ones that were more likely to survive because they had found their reason to push on. They had found their hope that told them that there was a chance that things could change for them.

Frankl mentions that the odds of surviving Auschwitz when he came were 29 to 1. However, as long there was no certainty that he would die, he had hope and he had a chance.

How Does This Apply to Today?

To adapt this to today and to the sense of unfulfillment that many people have in their lives, one of the keys to achieving happiness is through taking action.

I believe many people’s minds are holding them back from achieving their own contentment and happiness by way of fear. Fear of what others will think, fear of failure and fear that they may not be able to handle the success if they are successful. This fear prevents you from taking actions that give you greater meaning in your life and can give you that small sense of purpose that contributes towards your general contentment.

I like the analogy that I heard Gary Vee use a while ago: “I’m on offense, you guys are in your head on defense worrying what the world may do to you. But that’s defense, you need to be on offense.”

If you want to write a book, you are not going to just sit down and write it without having written before. If you want to make a movie or music you have to try via video editing software or music software. Yes the first few iterations may be bad, but those are learning experiences and stepping stones towards greater output.

When I started back writing this blog 5 months ago, my goal was to try to write posts of about 1500 words without trying to necessarily achieve that every time to keep the pressure off of myself. At first this was very difficult, I would think long and hard about topics, I would reject many ideas to potentially write about and present, and many times it would take me a few days to put out posts because of all the planning, editing and thinking that went into the post.

With my mind starting to switch from defense to offense though, I am noticing things are changing. A 1500 word post can pretty much flow off of the page within an hour and I can spend another hour or two editing, placing links in or putting up cool pictures. In that sense the practice of writing every week has improved my skills to the point where I am able to focus on other bells and whistles which will make my page and my pages more enjoyable for all the readers.

Conclusion

Of the paraplegics, Frankl often said that they have legitimacy, meaning these people have a legitimate issue that severely hampers their life and yet many of them choose to be happy. Many even try to care for others in need as they want their happiness and contentment to spread to others.

Frankl survived incredible hardship and made it through odds stacked against him. In the process he lost his parents, wife and brother. Frankl went on though to find his purpose, find his meaning, find his task and went on to lead what I would consider a full and content life. If someone can defy those circumstances and hardship, then my problems are minutely insignificant to what he had to face. Find your meaning, find your task and start doing. The more you think about chasing happiness and only one or two more things will get it, you will always be chasing. You can find your joy now, embrace it.

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