Channeling Viktor Frankl
Story time, kids. Before stoicism made it to Silicon Valley tech bros and mindfulness became a part of modern psychology, Viktor Frankl learned this while suffering in the concentration camps:
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
It’s hard to imagine how this insight surfaced amidst the horrors of Auschwitz. He was longing for freedom, tortured from not knowing the fate of his wife (she died).
Being a doctor, he had some creature comforts for helping to treat inmates sick with typhus. But that also meant staring death in the face a whole lot more.
I’ve tried to imagine that level of suffering and was completely incapable of it (my idea of suffering is being nagged by your mom or doing night feeds).
But the incredible strength and resilience of survivors like Frankl has given us mere mortals some valuable wisdom to draw upon and a poignant example of the capacity of the human spirit to endure unimaginable suffering.
His ability to find meaning in suffering didn’t just help him survive, it offers us a blueprint for handling our own challenges, big or small
You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Marcus Aurelius
Frankl’s insight mirrors the core idea of stoic philosophy: we can’t control the events around us, but we can control how we respond to them.
Mindfulness aligns with this principle too. It's a practice of cultivating awareness, which helps us identify that space between an external stimulus and our response to it.
Identifying that space gives us a window to choose a response, instead of defaulting to an emotional reaction. That response could be a positive reframing of a situation, a deliberate shift in mindset, or a choice to remain non-judgemental.
Doing this successfully and consistently yields good habits, self control, better decision making, deeper relationships, and more. It’s also really hard.
But being on a path and failing repeatedly along the way is better than drifting aimlessly and not realising that you need to be on a path. A ship might not know exactly where it’s going, but if it sails in one direction, it’ll reach land eventually.
If you guys were to take away only 3 things from all this:
- Practice taking that space and being deliberate in your response.
- Read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl at some point in your early adult life.
- Learn about the Holocaust, what happened in the concentration camps, and the incredible stories of survival and resilience that came out of it.
Frankl reminds us that in the face of unimaginable suffering, we have the power to choose our response. His resolve, belief, and will to live got him through 4 concentration camps. So the next time you guys refuse to go to bed at 11pm after using the living room as an obstacle course all night, I will try to channel Viktor Frankl.