It could be a strong desire to return to a beloved person, complete a creative or intellectual project, or simply the strong wish to help others. Their personal meanings took many different forms. In the autobiographical section of his deeply moving book, Frankl relates that those who managed to stay in touch with what made their lives meaningful in the Nazi extermination camps were more likely to survive. We must find meaning even in our suffering, he writes, for otherwise we are lost. It was written by the Austrian psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and founder of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, who lived from 1905 to 1997.įrankl argues that our primary task in life is to furnish it with meaning, whatever form this may take. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor FranklĪt the top of my list (and many others of its kind) is Man’s Search for Meaning: The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust (Frankl, 1946, 2004).
Altruism: The Science and Psychology of Kindness – Matthieu Ricardġ. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment – Eckhart Tolle Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life – Edith Hall The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living – Dalai Lama and Howard C. These creative, science-based exercises will help you learn more about your values, motivations, and goals and will give you the tools to inspire a sense of meaning in the lives of your clients, students, or employees. I hope you will find it enlightening.īefore you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Meaning and Valued Living Exercises for free. The list below includes thinkers from both sides of the argument.
Other common suggestions include self-realization, relationships, pleasure, service, and creativity. The most cited contenders are happiness and love. But they tend to disagree on what that meaning might be. Others maintain that there is an absolute meaning to our existence. The meaning of life, they argue, is a subjective affair. Some believe that life has no intrinsic meaning and that we must construct our meanings ourselves. Many thinkers, past and present, have grappled with it (Baggini, 2005 & Eagleton, 2007.)īroadly speaking, the theorists of meaning fall into two camps. There is no more important topic than the meaning of our lives. What aims should we pursue to live a fulfilling life?
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