5 Lessons from "Man's Search For Meaning" To Improve Your Daily Life

Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning" can teach us the importance of finding a meaning to our lives whether it's through work, caring for others, or having dignity through our suffering.

“Whoever was still alive had reason for hope. Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune, position in society—all these were things that could be achieved again or restored. After all, we still had our bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future.”

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, Page 82

Introduction

For thousands of years people have wondered whether or not there is a meaning to life; if we have an ultimate purpose to our existence; whether that meaning comes from a deity in the sky, or if life is inherently meaningless as proposed by certain philosophers and believed by many across the world today.

Is life meaningless and are we simply to survive and spread our genes and that’s all there is to life?

A Centers for Disease Control research study from 2010 stated that while most people are satisfied with their life, satisfaction decreases with decreasing household income, decreasing education levels, and being part of an “other” race. This statistic shows that achievement—including educational achievement—and our careers are closely tied with having meaning in our lives.

An Atlantic article from 2013, citing the same research study, states that “4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose”. Why do so many Americans feel lost, at drift, or that they live meaningless lives? In the society we live in today, people choose to hide when they suffer a set back due to not wanting to be seen as a loser by friends, family or greater society. The Internet promotes the perfect aesthetic of a life as a mom, the 24/7 Hustle Culture, or life as busy professional as the ideal. Promotion of these ideas has caused many of us to feel like if we don’t have everything all together—meaning that if we don’t have a professional career being paid 6 figures per year—that we don’t matter and that our lives are meaningless.

Of course having a career can provide a sense of meaning and purpose, the time in my life that I most felt meaningful was working as a mining engineer and surveyor for a gold mine in Arizona, but that’s not the only reason we are alive. It’s important to be self sufficient, and work provides a sense of fulfillment, but sometimes we face setbacks that can make that difficult or impossible. Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning teaches us that our sense of meaning comes from other sources including taking care of a friend and having dignity while facing the most challenging times of our lives.

Summary of Man’s Search for Meaning

Man’s Search For Meaning by psychotherapist Viktor Frankl is a deeply personal Memoir and Philosophical book split into two parts. The first half of the book, written by Frankl in only 9 days, details his personal experience of surviving the Holocaust in a Concentration Camp in World War II as an ordinary inmate until his release by Allied Forces.

The first part of the book, in which Frankl describes his own experience in the concentration camp demonstrates an extreme example when one group gains total control of another group and the potential corruption and destruction arising from this imbalance.

Frankl’s first-hand experiences are told in both first person personal stories and in a third-person, objective and scientific prose and language. The majority of the first half details the hardships of life in a Concentration Camp. Frankl describes how every moment in the concentration camp is dedicated to survival due to the lack of adequate food–a small piece of bread and 1 pint of watery soup each day, the amount of hard work in extreme cold, and the physical brutality of the camp’s Guards and “Capos”.

Each day for the inmates is a struggle for food, clothing or even a scrap of thread. Inmates are forced to work in snow with shoes with no shoelaces and swollen ankles exposed to the snow. Frankl describes the emotional trauma involved when breaking a shoelace made of wire and the effect of this environment on the psychology of each prisoner.

Throughout his experience, Frankl describes thinking of his Wife and Parents with whom he had no contact during his internment. To survive these harsh and demoralizing conditions, Frankl mentally rehearses his writings which were taken from him during his arrival at the camp. All personal belongings were taken from inmates as well as their clothing and heads shaved at the initial contact at the camp. In order to withstand the brutal life of the camp, Frankl visualizes his wife and imagines giving lectures regarding his psychological techniques in front of large audiences, where he learned the importance of finding meaning in survival of the daily struggles he faced.

The end of Frankl’s experience in the Concentration Camp occurs when he is released after Allied Front Lines crossed the concentration camp. After Liberation, Frankl discusses how he and other inmates had to re-learn how to live again, and some of the dangers of being freed from such a difficult mental and emotional situation. The second half of the book is dedicated to a Psychotherapeutic technique created by Frankl titled “Logotherapy” in which Frankl suggests that therapists connect their patients with Meaning in their lives as to heal many psychological afflictions.

For many of us, the experience of a prisoner or holocaust survivor is so far removed from our real lives, what can we learn from this book?

5 Lessons from Man’s Search For Meaning

1. Man’s Will To Meaning

Frankl describes the typical prisoner’s experience in three stages. First there is shock and a disbelief in the reality of the situation, which Frankl calls a “Delusion of Reprieve”, that the prisoner believes at the very last moment they will be saved from the concentration camp. This first stage is followed by an apathy during the “Provisional Existence of Unknown Length” of suffering in the Camp. Finally is the liberation from this provisional existence where the prisoner has to relearn to be human and includes the potential pitfalls of bitterness and disillusionment.

 “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.” Page 73.

During a setback, where we lose something that we consider important to us, we may be lost and feel that life is meaningless. Or someone may feel that they don’t have anything to live and feels that life is meaningless. Why should they try or strive towards a goal? They don’t know what they want to do as a career or they have no success finding a career for whatever reason.

Following this train of thought, only people who are fully employed professionals such as Doctors, Lawyers and Engineers, who have never experienced any type of loss, heart break or set back are the only people whose lives have meaning. According to this train of thought, stay-at-home-mothers or -dads, people with mental or physical disabilities, or people who do not work have meaningless lives.

The central idea behind Man’s Search for Meaning is the therapeutic technique called Logotherapy, which states that man’s most important goal is to find a purpose to his life or “a will to meaning”.

“Why is it important for a person to find a will to meaning in his life?”

It is important for each person to find a will to meaning in his life because people require a goal to move towards and a vision of the future that will allow them “The Courage To Suffer” during challenging times without giving up.

“A man who could not see the end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life.” Page 70

Having a goal in life that we work towards, making small amounts of progress each day is how we make our lives meaningful. If we are limited by some external force, we can still help others and find meaning in our suffering.

2. Three Ways to Have Meaning In Life

Frankl believes that the three ways people can have meaning in their life is by accomplishing meaningful tasks—such as working, loving for or caring for another person, or third by suffering through a situation which can not be changed–for example life in the Nazi Concentration Camps. Frankl believes that having meaning in suffering shows that life is inherently meaningful and that life is not simply living to survive and reproduce.

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an eradicable part of life, even as fate and death.” Page 67.

Frankl’s words and experiences help me to feel that my own struggles and challenges in life have a meaning, and that my life has meaning.

When I worked as a mining engineer, the profession that I went to school for many years and invested many thousands of dollars into learning, I woke up each day with passion, vigor, and purpose in working as part of a team to complete a large scale project with equipment that reminded me of mechanical dinosaurs roaming the earth. My life had meaning and purpose, until I didn’t have that job anymore and my life seemed entirely drained of meaning and purpose. So I started this Substack, I began reading more deeply, and as part of my journey I came across this book.

In many ways, it’s those of us who face a setback, or a loss of some type in which we lose the meaning and purpose of our lives and we must look to books, poetry, and art to dig deeper into life and regain a sense of meaning. I now volunteer at a Wildlife Rescue, I care for those around me in my life, and I find meaning in the suffering that’s part of my life. The suffering I have faced and the difficult experiences I’ve endured have led to a more meaningful life.

3. The Importance of Goals

“As we said before, any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners.” Page 76.

By discovering our own “will to meaning”, what gives our life meaning whether it’s our family, our career, or overcoming our own challenges, we now have a deep inner reserve of energy to keep moving forward and progressing towards our goals.

I think that younger people can have a pressure that comes from having all the options in the world available, and a sense that if we’re not maximizing every second of our life and maximizing every opportunity, that we’re “wasting” our time and our life isn’t meaningful like people with five million followers. I would suggest to someone in this situation to simply pick a goal and work towards it.

4. “The line between good and evil runs…right through every man’s heart” Solzhenitsyn

“It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or prisoner tells us almost nothing…From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man.” Page 86

One of the most unexpected portions of the book was after Frankl’s liberation from the Camp, and he does not whole handedly condemn the guards and paint the prisoners as entirely innocent. Frankl brings up certain guards who treated him more kindly than other guards, and brought up the fact that many of the harshest prisoners became “Capos”—essentially mini enforcers for the guards who were willing to punish other prisoners often more harshly than many of the guards did.

This specific section gave me a pause and reflection, and led to the internal decision within myself that no matter what the situation to be in “the race of the decent man”.

5. The Power and Brutality of Language

The experiences of Frankl are incredibly brutal and dehumanizing. The language of the guards, and many times Frankl’s own language mirrors this brutality and power.

“A few minutes previously the same guard who struck me had told us deprecatingly that we “pigs” lacked the spirit of comradeship.” Page 25.

Frankl’s own language when describing his experience is scientific and detached, such as when he described the lack of food leading to his own body consuming his muscles for sustenance, he describes himself as “the organism”. Frankl also uses language when he imagines his wife and converses with her, which gives him the strength to carry on. We must always understand the power of language in our lives.

Conclusion

The suffering of Frankl as a concentration camp inmate is so far removed from us today that, unless we are going through a challenging “provisional existence” of our own, his concerns of meaning seem almost detached and inconsequential for our lives. Until we feel the loss of a meaningful part of our lives, whether that’s job loss, heart break, or the loss of a loved one, it’s challenging for us to understand what Frankl went through.

Whether you are a Fortune 500 CEO or a Janitor, you will face suffering in this world. Suffering is a part of life as much as life itself. We must understand our own will to meaning, what’s important to us, and have the “courage to suffer” to hold onto a vision of what’s meaningful to each of us for the times that the difficulties and challenges arrive on our doorstep.

It’s important to know that there is a purpose and a meaning to our lives at all times and to think about a future time when everything that you’ve gone through will be an asset.

Questions For Further Discussion

• What ways have you found to make your life meaningful?

• Have you ever faced your own “Provisional Existence”?

• What do you think Viktor Frankl meant by “Delusion of Reprieve”?

• How has having a purpose in your life helped you to overcome adversity and suffering?

• What have the most challenging times in your life taught you?