People kept telling me to read this one book. It took me 32 years. Reading it changed everything.
I had just gotten out of a sales planning meeting for my 9-5 job and I wanted to pull my hair and scream. Actually...I
I called out sick for the rest of the day. I felt stuck. I felt trapped. In my job I didn't feel like my opinion mattered. And I wasn't inspired. I didn't know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be but it wasn't what I was doing.
"I need something that shifts my headspace," I thought. Whenever I'm feeling stuck, I now know that the knowledge to help me is out there, I just don't know what it is yet. So I usually have to do a little seeking.
"Hmm, what do I need the most?" I wanted my life to feel meaningful.
I downloaded an audiobook on Audible that had been recommended to me a million times by everyone: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
I drove up to Balcones Canyonlands Natural Wildlife Preserve, a nice remote wooded hilly trail perched high with a view of Lake Travis, to go for a long slow trail run. I put Viktor Frankl on my earphones and just started running.
I ran for an hour or so, the drive there and back was a couple of hours and when I got home I didn't stop listening to the audiobook until it was finished. It's a 5 hour audiobook. I couldn't put it down.
The book starts with Frankl's description of his time imprisoned in Nazi prison camps for Jews. Wikipedia tells me, "He survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim." The horrors he describes! He is honest about how brutal it was. He was one of the few lucky ones who made it out alive.
Amid the despair and horror, he describes the mindset required to live each day. He details how some people could do it: some people could find the inner mental strength to find a reason to live and a reason to still see goodness.
Frankl argues that if one can find meaning in life even in the most hoffific place, a Nazi prison camp, then we all must try.
Top quotes from Man's Search for Meaning:
- “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
- "Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
- “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
- “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
- “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.”
- “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 personal 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. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
- “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
What happened next:
I quit my job.
Well, first I cried on the phone with a lot of people like my mom and
I moved back to California and started studying for the GRE to get into grad school (that story here). I took a statistics course I needed. I got a way better part-time consulting job that was challenging and fun and on a team of people who respected each other.
Why did this book change everything?
I'm not 100% sure but here are some of my ideas:
- I put my own suffering in perspective. I'm allowed to suffer and my pain experience is real. But seeing what Viktor Frankl could overcome, and because he describes the prison camp experience so vividly, it really helped me assess my suffering for what it was: very low. And doable.
- He argues that we are in charge of our mind, our attitude. This was empowering!
- It added to my realization that our relationships with people are what's important--what truly
give us meaning. Making shifts little by little in accordance with this realization--more and better connections with others--since then has helped me feel much happier.
My advice for when you feel stuck:
Seek out new ideas, people, experiences that will shift your perspective. The information is out there beyond your block and it will change the way you see and experience the world. You don't know what you don't know so don't expect to solve your challenge with the same thinking that created this challenge.
For a new way of thinking you need to upload new ideas into your brain.
Try:
- Reading a book or 10. Seriously, if you read 10 books on one topic, the way you see the world will get a big upgrade.
- Watching a TED talk by someone you wouldn't normally pick
- Going to an event you wouldn't normally go to and talking to people you don't normally talk to
- Going to a workshop meant to help you get unstuck. There are a ton of great coaches out there helping people do this work. Try one with holotropic breathing.
- Taking a psychadelic substance such as ayahuasca, mushrooms, or LSD in a safe setting with people you trust. Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. Please consult your doctor before taking any drugs or supplements to make sure you're healthy enough. If you're worried you're not, don't do it.
Recommended reading:
