Viktor Frankl

I recently finished reading Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning. Though I had read and listened to Frankl’s messages in the past, his work had a greater impact on me at this stage in life. I had even quoted Frankl is my book on leadership back in 2011.

“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 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.”

I am not a therapist, but a coach. Yet I find in guiding people to greater meaning, understanding, direction, resolution, forgiveness, and even reconciliation of issues and relationships, Frankl’s treatise has great meaning. We are all human, so we share the load of insecurity, frustration, impatience, and even deep emotional inadequacies, all of which make us human. But these traits also get in our way.

Frankl’s treatise on man’s search for meaning is a classic. His experience in Nazi Concentration Camps showed him what humankind is capable of, but his capacity to see the virtue of human choice in the midst of unconscionable suffering was what kept him alive. The ability to stay positive under such circumstances and to consciously try to grow one’s soul was equally powerful.

Take the time to read or even re-read Frankl’s book. It can change you from the inside out and make you a better person.

Here are a few Business & Life Tips to think about….

Business Tips:

• If you coach or mentor someone, you’ll help them learn and grow. The surprise is that you’ll likely learn and grow even more.
• Compromise isn’t a cop-out. It’s an intelligent way to reconcile differences. You can have team unity without having uniformity.
• It’s one of the great ironies: we work hard and sacrifice to achieve success, but realize at some point that even this is not enough.

Life Tips:

• Forgiveness and forgetting are not the same thing. Learn to forgive, but don’t forget. People need to win back your trust.
• Age is often a matter of how you think. Many of the great feats of humankind have come from people in the last third of life.
• Your belief system dictates how you react to people and circumstances. Stop to think about how this impacts others.

Tags: Advice, Business Tips, Capable, Character, Classic, Coach, Dedicate, Dedication, Determination, Developing Leaders, Direction, Dreams, Drive, Emotion, Energy, Ethics, Family, Forgive, Friends, Frustration, Guide, Happy Happiness, Human, Humankind, Impact, Impatience, Insecurity, Integrity, Issues, Knowledge, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Excellence, Leadership Problems, Leadership Skills, Learning, life, Life Tips, Listen, Meaning, Motivation, People, People Leader, People Leaders, Personal, Personal Development, Read, Reality, Reconciliation, Relationship, Resolution, Responsibility, Search, Stage, Success, Surrender, Target, The Mind of a Leader, Trait, Understand, Values, Vision, Wisdom