How to Live a Meaningful Life

A deep dive into Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

If you experience apathy or boredom, you’re not alone.

It’s something Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, wrote about extensively. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, offers a path away from apathy and towards a meaningful life.

He argued that fulfillment comes not from pursuing happiness, but from finding purpose, even in life’s most difficult moments. Frankl believed that “this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.”

To Frankl, life is always asking something of us, and our task is to answer through our actions and attitude. He said, “Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

Existential Vacuum

Frankl coined the term “existential vacuum” to describe the restlessness and apathy that many modern people experience. As he said, “The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.” Life is meant to be engaged in, but existential vacuum leads us to drift through life.

He says modern people face a huge challenge: “No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).”

We have no roadmap other than the one most people were given: get good grades, go to college, get a good job.

Frankl found that 60% of the American students he worked with showed a degree of existential vacuum. It makes me wonder what a stat like that would be now.

So, what do we do?

Finding Meaning

Frankl believed that every single person can experience meaning, but they must choose to seek it out.

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.

You do not simply exist, but every moment it is your responsibility to determine what your existence will be.

Frankl developed a 3-part system for how one can create meaning in one’s own life, which he called logotherapy.

According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

This is how I view these points:

1. Work on a project or goal that you’re excited about

2. Spend time with people and in places that amaze you

3. Have a growth outlook on the challenges you face

This, however, will not be easy. In fact, Frankl believed that pursuing meaning will create tension and friction in your life, but he says that is part of the point.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. 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.

To live life fully, there will be tension. The key is to find a goal worthy of your time and energy. Life is not meant to be easy, but meaningful.

Look Outward

Frankl believed it was important to look outward in your quest for meaning. Life is not about you, it’s about others and doing what good you can.

Here is what Frankl said about that:

Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself-be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

The more you strive to make yourself succeed for your selfish reasons, the more it will evade you. You must seek meaning and goodness for its own sake. Focus on that, and happiness will be yours as a byproduct.

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 side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product 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.

No matter what situation we find ourselves in, there is something we can do about it. This week, try doing one of these things:

• Pick a project to work on

• Go somewhere that amazes you

• Journal about how you’re growing in your current situation

-Mark

P.S. Did you enjoy this deep dive into a specific book? Like this post or leave a comment to let me know. Happy to do more of these.