In short 🔍
One of the best books based on author’s first hand experience with extreme hardships of life, on the verge of an imminent death in the Nazi concentration camps. His factual accounts of how those with purpose, meaning and hope survived vs. how those who give it up, perished. He went on to become a world renowned psychologist who pioneered logotherapy.
Takeaways 🧠
- A purpose/hope is man’s inner strength that can raise him above any of his outward fate. Despite all odds, we are never left with ‘Nothing’ if we retain our freedom to choose, how we will respond. We cannot choose our circumstances but we can ALWAYS choose our attitude & response to them.
- There is no general answer to what is meaning of life. It has to be created on daily basis in our given circumstances and then acted upon in the direction of achieving our hopes.
- Human suffering is inevitable & omnipresent but it ceases to be suffering the moment it finds a meaning.
- Life is not just thoughts & meditation. It is ultimately about taking responsibility to find right answers to problems and fulfil our duty by taking consistent action, however small.
- We do not need tensionless state, but rather the striving & struggling for a worthwhile goal.
Actionable Advice 🎯
- Happiness, Peace, Success are abstract concepts, which only elude us if chased. Rather we should look for a goal/purpose/meaning in what we do & everything else automatically follows.
- Practice gratitude for whatever you have had despite everything that seems to be going wrong. Cultivate the habit of finding purpose, meaning even in suffering.
Quotes 🏷️
- He who has a ‘Why’ to live for can almost bear ‘How’
- Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.
- Everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude.
- Dostoevsky said, There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
- Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is yet to come & yet it is over.
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