Sense of Purpose

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” 
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“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.” 
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

 Frankl was a psychologist, and he founded a school of psychology called Logotherapy .Viktor Frankl was also a holocaust survivor, and this in so many ways informed his work. One might think that this was the most horrible experience of Viktor Frankl’s life, and in many ways that was true. Frankl was trained in psychology and neurology, and had achieved some renown when the Nazi’s sent him to Auschwitz in 1944. It was a most horrible and dehumanizing experience. 

Frankl survived the experience of a concentration camp because he realized that there was an important task he personally needed to complete: the completion of a manuscript he had been working on. That manuscript later became one of the most influential book of the post-war period: Man’s Search for Meaning, a book that explains the basis for his psychological theory, called Logotherapy, which holds that a fundamental basis for psychological and spiritual health is a sense of purpose.

Frankl noticed that there was a difference among those who survived and those who did not: a sense of purpose.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source:  “ Man’s Search for Meaning " by Viktor Frankl

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