I didn’t know the best selling book Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl was a an account of a survivor of a Nazi death camp. From the title, I gleamed it to be a philosophical read like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, only newer.

I had no idea.

I’m halfway through Man’s Search For Meaning while typing this, and it hits really hard.

Sure, reading how horrific humans treated other humans, and how ubiquitous death and disease became normalized is tough reading and makes you feel grateful for what we do have.

But, it’s more than that.

It’s the power of the human mind to choose.

Choose to look forward to something as simple as the future.

Frankl wrote that it was easy to tell when fellow prisoners were about to die because they gave up on having a future.

All hopes vanished.

There is one particular story Frankl tells about a prison mate who had a dream that the war would end on a specific date. When that date came close, and there was no end in sight, the man was so psychologically defeated, it lowered his immune system, he caught typhoid and died the day after his dreamed day of freedom.

Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist before and after surviving the Holocaust, later called his work based on his experience as a prisoner, Logotherapy. A school of psychotherapy that describes a search for life's meaning as the central human motivational force.

Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories.

Frankl wrote, “…it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.”

All this is to say, that when it comes to living your best life, and surviving the Holocaust is an extreme example, but also a damn good one to provide perspective, it’s all about your mindset.

You have the power to decide if what led to where you are now is going to lead to a victim mentality, or rather, an optimistic viewpoint with a better future. No matter your current status.

Finally, Frankl believed that life was a quest for meaning.

“The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.”

Frankl saw three types of meaning

We all have the freedom to choose how we respond to any situation.

My Mission: help one million people a day become the best version of themselves through living an Ascent Life.

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Time is all we have. It’s more important than money. Find the business or project that needs you most. Find purpose, and live your best life. With 30 years in a niche position of protecting the printing industry Tricia Judge expands on the concepts of finding purpose, helping others, and being remembered as someone who cared for others.

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