PNTV: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (#7)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv episode number eight. Today we're going to do a great book, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. As always, we'll use this book plus my notes, Philosopher's Notes on the book where I pull out a few of my favorite big ideas in a six page PDF. And I'm really excited about this book. It's a classic, as you may know, of self development and the psychology movement. It could be described as one of the early old school positive psychology books. And Viktor Frankl's story is extraordinary. He survived the concentration camps of the Second World War and he went into those concentration camps as a psychotherapist and he came out transformed with what he called logotherapy, his philosophy that he describes in this great book. There's a couple of primary tenets to this philosophy that I love, that I want to share and we'll go into detail on today. Number one is the idea that anything can happen to us, anything can be taken from us, but one remaining thing, that is our freedom to choose how we respond to a situation. And again, this is from a guy who survived the horrors of the Holocaust. So we'll talk about that, we'll hear it in his own words. And then also this idea that we are born with a mission to fulfill, that we have a destiny, we have a purpose, and that it's not about figuring out how we can have the most chillaxed lifestyle, but figuring out how we can give ourselves most fully to the world. Those two big ideas are really what I love most about this book that we're going to talk about today. So first the idea of your attitude. Viktor Frankl says this. He says 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, that's huge. And in the note I quote, I don't know, like six, seven, eight different people. I go from Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Jesus, Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Martin Luther King Jr. Dan Millman, Carlos Castaneda, Norman Vincent Peale, all these great teachers who say basically the same thing. In fact, this is principle number one in my evolving philosophy. I'll put a link to that below this video. But the idea that we need to control the contents of our consciousness, we need to choose a positive response to any given situation. We need to choose optimism. And it's hugely powerful Buddhists talk about this in the context of emptiness. They like to say that everything is empty, everything is neutral. We often like to think that something is good or bad, but it's not. It's how we perceive something that gives it its meaning. So we want to realize that no one can ever force us to think a certain way. No one can ever take away that freedom to choose how we respond to a situation. That's what Victor Frankl is saying here that we want to pay attention to. So Stephen Covey talks about this as well in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habit number one is the idea of being proactive. You can be reactive and have something happen. Stimulus, response. You know you're caught in traffic, therefore you're grumpy. Stimulus, response. Or we can be proactive, right? Something happens, we choose our response. We're responsible, we're response able. Able to respond. Traffic happens and we turn on the philosopher's notes. MP3s right? And we have a great commute to work or whatever it is. We use it as an opportunity to breathe or to be thankful that we're even in a car. We always have the opportunity to choose our response. Huge idea in this book and in the idea of logotherapy that again we talk about again and again and again. We're going to keep on coming back to it again and again and again and again. The next big idea I want to talk about is the idea that your potential is waiting. And I'm going to share another thought, another direct quote from Viktor Frankl. He says what man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. That is awesome. So we talked about this in the note on Happier, in the episode on Happier, which I think was number six by Talbin Shahar. This idea that we want to hold the tension. We talk about this in a lot of notes. We want to hold the tension between our ideal life and our ideal who we are to show up in this world in our current reality. And there's what's called dynamic tension between this current reality and that ideal right now. A lot of times we make the mistake of wanting to get rid of this tension because we've been stressed out by it in the past. We want a tensionless state. That's what Viktor Frankl is talking about here. We just want to be in the now. We want to Love what is. Well, that's great and that's important, but it's only part of the story. We want to love what is. We want to be in the power of now, and we want to hold the tension of that energy that's pushing us to become even more, to give ourselves even more fully to the world. That's the dynamic tension we want to learn, to really play with. And we're going to talk about that a lot in these episodes. But really big idea, holding the tension. It's not about having a tensionless state. It's about having a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by us and then practicing all these ideals we know to be true, to move toward that ideal with grace and joy and love and appreciation. We have some other big ideas in the note we're not going to get to right now, but I want to talk about One of my favorite passages in any book I've ever read is from the introduction to this book, man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl says something that I just love. He says that success must ensue from our commitment to something bigger than ourselves. And I actually love this quote so much. And I remember when I first met John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, several years ago, we were talking about his business, Whole Foods, and my business at the time, ZODs, and the ideals that he used to build Whole Foods and he still uses to build Whole Foods. And we were talking about Viktor Frankl. And it just so happened that I had this quote written in my journal. I have a journal with me all the time, and I often write my favorite quotes in the first page of this journal. And I had written this quote. So it was one of those goosebump moments where I opened it up and I read it and I want to read it to you right now. Viktor Frankl, he says again and again. I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America, don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended consequence, unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success. You have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of Your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run. In the long run, I say success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it. It's amazing. So this idea that success cannot be pursued. It must ensue from our commitment to something bigger than ourselves. We talk about this again and again and again. We're not going to go into details on that right now, but I will suggest, what is it that you're committed to? Think about that. What's the thing you're committed to more than anything? We can go after success and we'll get a certain amount of success. We won't have the true deep sense of joy and fulfillment and a deep connection to our highest source unless we're committed to something bigger than ourselves and our own little success. And the irony is, in my own experience, as we commit to this thing that's bigger than us, giving our gifts to the world and greatest service to the world, success chases us. We can talk about this, and we will talk about this a lot more. For now, we've got to go. He also says, everyone has a mission. What's yours? We talk about this in the note. I have some questions to help us get there. And then the final big idea here, one more. He says that anyone who has a strong enough why, when you have a strong enough, why, you can endure anyhow? Beautiful thought on that. And he also says, what is to give light must endure the burning. Isn't that beautiful? What is to give light must endure the burning. So if we want to give our light to the world, our highest selves, we've got to realize that we're going to burn a bit in that process. As we actualize, as we become all that we're capable of becoming, there's going to be that tension, there's going to be that burning. We want to embrace that and realize that what is to give light must endure the burning. That is a very quick look at one of my favorite books. Hope you enjoyed it and look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day.

See ya.

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