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Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond
Finally, Frankl’s most enduring insight, one that I have called on often in my own life and in countless counseling situations: Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
The man, whose self-esteem had always depended on the respect of others, is emotionally destroyed.
have known people who rose to the challenge of enduring the most terrible afflictions and situations as long as they believed there was a point to their suffering.
having a Why to live for enabled them to bear the How.
“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. 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
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What a man thinks so is what he deserves
FIJS03
On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return.
Man is capable of doing anything when faced with choices.
FIJS
