Man's Search for Meaning: Finding Your Why

Some books entertain us. A few change how we see everything. For me, one of those books is Man's Search for Meaning. It was written by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist from Vienna. In 1942, Frankl and his family were sent to Nazi concentration camps. He survived almost three years of hunger, cold and cruelty. His parents, his brother and his wife did not. Yet even there, Frankl noticed something remarkable. The prisoners who held on longest weren't always the strongest. They were often the ones who still had a reason to live. Someone waiting for them, perhaps, or work they hadn't finished. Frankl kept himself going by picturing his wife's face, and by imagining himself, one day, teaching others what he had learned. His most famous idea is this. Everything can be taken from us except one thing: the freedom to choose our attitude, in any situation. He liked to quote Nietzsche: if we have a 'why' to live for, we can bear almost any 'how'. After the war, Frankl wrote the book in just nine days! It has since sold more than ten million copies. And he went on to live a long, full life, until the age of ninety-two. So, when life feels heavy, try asking a different question. Not, 'Why is this happening to me?' but, 'What is life asking of me right now?' Your 'why' might be small. But it matters more than you think.