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Part 2: Private Victory

Habit 1: Be proactive

Principles personal vision

Production/Production Capability Balance (P/PC)

Goose and the golden eggs, focus on both sides. For example, organization should focus on customers (P) as well as employees (PC).

Change comes from within, i.e. inside out. Effectively is P/PC balance, a natural law.

Pro-activeness & circle of influence

Pro-active people focus their energy on their circle of influence i.e. the things they can do something about. By working on ourselves instead of worrying about the conditions, we can bring a positive change and influence the conditions.

Types of problem

Direct Control: Work on private victory.

Indirect Control: Work on public victory.

No Control: Accept and move on.

All of the above lie in our circle of influence.

Have’s and Be’s

If I had ...Concern, I can be more patient...Influence.

Effectiveness

The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of effectiveness.

30-Day challenge

Work on your circle of influence, make small commitments and keep them. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not the problem. Don’t argue for other people’s weaknesses or your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it and learn from it immediately. Look at the weaknesses of people with compassion, not accusation. It’s not what they’re not doing or should be doing that’s the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation.

Knowing we are Response-able is fundamental to effectiveness and to every other habit of effectiveness we will discover. Proclivity means more than taking initiative; it means that we are responsible for our own lives. Our behaviour is a function of our decision not our conditions.

Self-Exercise Habit 1

For a full day, listen to your language and to the language of the people around you. How often do you use and hear reactive phrases such as If only, I can’t, or I have to.

Identify an experience you might encounter in the near future where, based on past experience, you would probably behave reactively. Review the situation in the context of your Circle of influence. How could you respond proactively? Take several moments and create the experience vividly in your mind, picturing yourself responding in a proactive manner. Remind yourself of the gap between stimulus and response. Make a commitment to yourself to exercise your freedom to choose.

Select a problem from your work or personal life that is frustrating to you. Determine whether it is a direct, indirect, or no control problem. Identify the first step you can take in your Circle of Influence to solve it and then take that step.

Try to 30-day test of proactivity. Be aware of the change in your Circe of Influence.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind

Principles of self-leadership

Find a place to do the following where you can be alone, uninterrupted and in peace. What would each of the following say about you if you imagined it was your funeral and they were to say something about your life? What kind of a husband, father, cousin, friend, and working associate you would like their words to reflect? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements?

Family, Friends, Colleagues, Community Service/Mosque.

The most fundamental application of Begin with the end in mind is to begin today with the image, picture or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference or the criterion by which everything else is examined. Each part of your life can be examined in the context of the whole, of what really matters most to you. By keeping that end clearly in mind, you can make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the criteria you have defined as supremely important, and that each day of your life contributes in a meaningful way to the vision you have of your life as a whole. If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience above, you will find your definition of success. It may be very different from the definition you thought you had in mind. Perhaps fame, achievement, money or some of the other things we strive for are not even part of the right wall.

Personal Mission Statement

Most effective way to begin with the end in mind is with a personal mission statement, philosophy or creed. It focuses on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.

With a mission statement, we can flow with changes. People can’t live with change if there’s not a changeless core inside them. They key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.

Everyone has a different centre where principles are based.

Identifying your centre

In order to write a personal mission statement, we must begin at the very centre of our Circle of Influence, that centre comprised of our most basic our paradigms, the lens through which we see the world. Whatever is at the centre of our life will be the source of security, guidance, wisdom and power.

Security: Represents your sense of worth, your identity, your emotional anchorage, your self-esteem, your basic personal strength or lack of it.

Guidance: Means your source of direction in life. Encompassed by your map, your internal frame of reference that interprets for you what is happening out there, are standards or principles or implicit criteria that govern moment-by-moment decision making and doing.

Wisdom: is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgement, discernment, and comprehension.

Power: is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices or decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.

Vision/Mission > Roles > Goals > Activities (2-3 every week)

There may be different centres.

Spouse

Family

Money

Possession

Work

Pleasure

Friend

Enemy

Religion

Self-Centered

Roles

Break up your mission statement role wise, for example husband, father, son, employee, Muslim, Citizen. Then write, goals and activities.

Self-Exercises habit 2

Take the time to record the impressions you had in the funeral visualization at the beginning of this chapter.

Take a few moments and write down your roles as you now see them. Are you satisfied with that mirror image of your life?

Set up time to completely separate yourself from daily activities and to begin work on your personal mission statement.

Start a collection of notes, quotes, and ideas you may want to use as resource material in writing your personal mission statement.

Identify a project you will be facing in the near future and apply the principles of mental creation. Write down the results you desire and what steps will lead to those results.

Share the principles of Habit 2 with your family or work group and suggest that together you begin the process of developing a family or group mission statement.

Habit 3: Put first things first

Principles of personal management.

Checklists, calendars, etc. is from previous generations of time management. The fourth generation focuses on difference between urgent and important tasks.

Important

Significant results

Urgent

Immediate attention

Quadrant I: Crises or problem. Must focus on quadrant II activities. Do weekly planning. Delegate urgent but unimportant tasks.

Types of delegation

Gofer: Go for this, do that i.e. micromanagement.

Stewardship: Results focused, instead of methods. Gives people choice of methods. Chance to be creative. Takes more time but much more effective.

Self-Exercises habit 3

Identify a quadrant II activity (Important but not urgent) you know has been neglected in your life—one that if done well, would have a significant impact in your life, either personally or professionally. Write it down and commit to implement it.

Draw a time management matrix and try to estimate what percentage of your time you spend in each quadrant. Then log your time for three days in 15-minute intervals. How accurate was your estimate? Are you satisfied with the way you spend your time? What do you need to change?

Make a list of responsibilities you could delegate and the people you could delegate to or train to be responsible in these areas. Determine what is needed to start the process of delegation or training.

Organize your next week. Start by writing down your roles and goals for the week, then transfer the goals to a specific action plan. At the end of the week, evaluate how well your plan translated your deep values and purposes into your daily life and the degree of integrity you were able to maintain to those values and purposes.

Commit yourself to start organizing on a weekly basis and set up a regular time to do it.

Either convert your current planning tool into a fourth generation tool or secure such a tool.

Go through A quadrant II day at the office".

Public Victories

Paradigms of interdependence

Emotional Bank Account

It is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship. It is the feeling of safeness you have with another human being.

6 major deposits

Understanding the individual

Attending to the little things

Keeping commitments

Clarifying expectations

Showing personal integrity

Apologizing sincerely when you make a mistake

Honesty & integrity

Honesty is telling the truth in other words conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming the reality to our words i.e. keeping commitments and fulfilling promises. One of the best ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build trust of those who are present. When you defend those who are absent you build trust of those present.

Integrity in an interdependent reality is simply this: you treat everyone by the same set of principles. Integrity also means avoiding any communication that is deceptive, full of guile or beneath the dignity of people. A lie is any communication with the intent to deceive.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

6 paradigms of human interaction

Win-Win

Win-Lose

Lose-Win

Lose-Lose

Win

Win-Win or No Deal

No deal basically means that if we can’t find a solution that would benefit us both, we agree to disagree agreeably. I wouldn’t want to get my way and have you feel bad about it.

Dimension of win-win

Character

Most know what a real win is for you

Integrity

Maturity

Maturity is the balance between Courage and Consideration

Abundance Mentality

The paradigm that there is plenty out there for everybody. People with scarcity mentality think there’s less out there. If someone else gets anything, it means less for them. They surround themselves with weaker people or yes men.

For win-win see biography of Anwar Sadat, or in search of identity or watch Les Miserables.

Relationship

The trust, the emotional bank account is the foundation of win-win. We’re no longer focusing on personalities or positions but on issues.

Agreements

You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward systems with these values and goals. The spirit of win-win cannot survive in an environment of competition and contests.

Processes

The essence of principled negotiation is to separate the person from the problem. To focus on interests and not on positions, to invent options for mutual gain and to insist on objective criteria.

Self-Exercises habit 4

Think about an upcoming interaction wherein you will be attempting to reach an agreement or negotiate a solution. Commit to maintain a balance between courage and consideration.

Make a list of obstacles that keep you from applying the win-win paradigm more frequently. Determine what could be done within your Circle of Influence to eliminate some of those obstacles.

Select a specific relationship where you would like to develop a Win-Win agreement. Try to put yourself in the other person’s place, and write down explicitly how you think that person sees the solution. Then list, from your own perspective, what results would constitute a win for you. Approach the other person and ask if he or she would be willing to communicate until you reach a point of agreement and mutually beneficial solution.

Identify three key relationships in your life. Give some indication of what you feel the balance is in each of the Emotional Bank Accounts. Write down some specific ways you could make deposits in each account.

Deeply consider your own scripting. Is it win-lose? How does that scripting affect your interactions with other people? Can you identify the main source of that script? Determine whether or not those scripts serve well in your current reality.

Try to identify a model of win-win thinking who even in hard situations really seeks mutual benefit. Determine now to more closely watch and learn from this person’s example.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Principles of empathetic communication

Levels of listening

Ignoring, not listening at all

Pretending. Yeah. Oh. Right

Selective listening

Attentive listening (Focusing on words)

Empathetic listening

Empathetic Listening

Empathetic listening means listening with the intent to understand. You get into another person’s frame of reference. See the world as they do. Sympathy is a form of agreement, judgement. Empathy means not agreeing but fully understanding emotionally and intellectually.

Satisfied needs do not motivate. Only unsatisfied do.

Four stages of empathetic listening.

Mimicking

If a person is saying I’m sick. You repeat you’re sick.

Rephrase the content

If a kid says Boy, dad. I’ve had it. School is for birds.

You rephrase you don’t want to go to school anymore.

You reflect feeling

If a kids says Boy, dad. I’ve had it. School is for birds.

You’re feeling really frustrated.

You rephrase the content and reflect the feeling

You’re really frustrated about school.

When someone’s giving logical response you can also be logical. But the moment response becomes emotional; he needs to go back to empathetic listening.

Skills will not be effective unless they come from a sincere desire to understand.

Once you understand, now be understood.

Effective presentations

Ethos (Character), Pathos (Empathy, Relation), Logos (Logic)

Pathos: Describe their ideas to them better than they can so they know you understand.

Self-Exercises habit 5

Select a relationship in which you sense the emotional bank account is in the red. Try to understand and write down the situation from the other person’s point of view. In your next interaction, listen for understanding, comparing what you are hearing with what you wrote down. How valid were your assumptions? Did you really understand that individual’s perspective?

Share the concept of empathy with someone close to you. Tell him or her you want to work on really listening to others and ask for feedback in a week. How did you do? How did it make that person feel?

The next time you have an opportunity to watch people communicate, cover your ears for a few minutes and just watch. What emotions are being communicated that may not come across in words alone.

Next time you catch yourself inappropriately using one of the autobiographical responses, probing, evaluating, advising or interpreting – try to turn the situation into a deposit by acknowledgement and apology. (I’m sorry, I just realized I’m not really trying to understand. Could we start again?)

Base your next presentation on empathy. Describe the other point of view as well as or better than its proponents; then seek to have your point understood from their frame of reference.

Habit 6: Synergize

Principles of Creative Cooperation

It means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Uniformity is not unity. Unity or oneness is complementariness, not sameness. Lack of synergy. There’s always a third way. Think with your whole brain i.e. Logical (left brain) as well as Emotional (Right brain). When you understand the other person’s view, you both are on the same side. You really can make 1+1= 3, or 4 or 2000.

Self-Exercises habit 6

Think about a person who typically sees things differently than you do. Consider ways in which those differences might be used as stepping-stones to Third Alternative solutions. Perhaps you could seek out his or her views on a current project or problem, valuing the different views you are likely to hear.

Make a list of people who irritate you. Do they represent different views that could lead to synergy if you had greater intrinsic security and valued the differences?

Identify a situation in which you desire greater teamwork and synergy. What conditions would need to exist to support synergy? What can you do to create those conditions?

The next time you have a disagreement or confrontation with someone, attempt to understand the concerns underlying that person’s position. Address those concerns in a creative and mutually beneficial way.

Part Four -- Renewal

Habit 7: Sharpen the saw

Principles of balanced self-renewal

Habit 7 is personal PC. It’s preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have i.e. you. It’s renewing the four dimensions of your nature, physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional.

Physical Dimension

Caring effectively for your physical body. Eating the right kinds of foods, getting sufficient rest and relaxation, and exercising on a regular basis. Exercise is very important. A good exercise will build your body in three areas.

Endurance

Endurances comes from aerobic exercise, from cardiovascular efficiency, the ability of your heart to pump blood through your body. Heart being a muscle can be exercised indirectly through jogging, running, brisk walk, swimming etc.

You are considered minimally fit if you can increase your heart rate to at least 100 beats per minute and keep it at that level for 30 minutes. Ideally you should try to raise your heart rate to at least 605 of your max pulse rate, the top speed your heart can beat and still pump blood through your body. You maximum heart rate is generally accepted to be 200 minus your age. So if you’re 26 you should aim for an exercise heart rate of (220 – 26)x0.6 = 117. The training effect is generally considered to be between 72% and 87% of your personal maximum rate.

Ii- Flexibility

Flexibility comes through stretching. Most experts recommend warming up before and cooling down/stretching after aerobic exercise. Before it helps loosen and warm the muscles to prepare for more vigorous exercise. After it helps to dissipate Lactic acid so that you don’t feel sore and stiff.

Iii- Strength

Strength comes from muscle resistance exercises, like push-ups, sit-ups and weight lifting. Almost all benefit of such exercise comes at the end because strength is built when the muscle fibres rupture and the nerve fibres register pain. Then nature overcompensates within 48 hours, the fibre is made stronger.

Through regular exercise, which is very important, little by little, your resting pulse rate will go down as your heart and oxygen processing system becomes more efficient. You will gradually feel more energetic.

The spiritual Dimension

Renewing it provides leadership to your life. It could be through prayer, meditation, music, greater literature etc. Personal mission statement is so important. If we have a deep understanding of our centre and our purpose, we can review and recommit to it frequently.

The mental dimension

TV has a great influence and we must limit watching it.

Reading

The best way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis is to read good literature. Set a goal for reading one book every month, one week every 2 weeks and then every week.

Writing

Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experience, insights and learning promotes mental clarity, exactness and context. Writing good letters communicating on a deeper level of thoughts, ideas, feelings, rather than on the shallow level of events also affects our ability to think clearly, to reason accurately and to be understood effectively.

Organizing and planning

Organizing and planning represent other forms of mental renewal, beginning with the end in mind and visualizing, imagining the powder of your mind to see the end from the beginning.

The social/emotional dimension

If our personal security comes from sources within ourselves, then we have the strength to practice the habit of Public Victory. Intrinsic security comes from accurate paradigms and correct principles deep in our own mind. Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with the true principles and values and no other way.

There is security in knowing that you can deeply understand another human being. There is intrinsic security that comes from service, from helping other people in a meaningful way. One important source is your work, when you see yourself in a contributively creative mode really making a difference. Another source is anonymous service.

Scripting others

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.

Balance in renewal

In an organization the:

The physical dimension > Economic terms

The mental/psychological dimension> Recognition, Development and use of talent

The social/emotional dimension> Human relations, finding meaning through purpose or contribution and through organization integrity.

Organizations as well as individual effectiveness require development and renewal in all four dimensions in a wise and balanced way. This should be reflected in mission statement.

Synergy in renewal

The more proactive you are (Habit 1) the more effectively you can exercise personal leadership (Habit 2) and management (Habit 3) in your life. The more effectively you manage your life (Habit 3) the more Quadrant II renewing activities you can do (Habit 7). The more you first seek to understand (Habit 5) and the more effectively you can go for win-win solutions (Habit 4 & 6) synergetic. Renewal is the process of renewing all the habits.

As you become involved in continuing education, you increase your knowledge base and you increase your options. Your economic security does not lie in your job, it lies in your power to produce to think to learn to create to adapt. That is true financial independence.

The upward spiral

Conscience is the endowment that senses our congruence or disparity with correct principles and lifts us towards them when it’s in shape. Training of the conscience requires regular feasting of inspiring literature, thinking noble thoughts and living in harmony with its small voice. To keep progressing we must learn, commit, do. Learn, Commit, and do. And learn, commit, do again.

Self-Exercises habit 7

Make a list of activities that would help you keep in good physical shape, that would fit your life-style and that you could enjoy over time.

Select one of the activities and list it as a goal in your personal role area for the coming week. At the end of the week evaluate your performance. If you didn’t make your goal, was it because you subordinated it to a genuinely higher value? Or did you fail to act with integrity to your values.

Make a similar list of renewing activities in your spiritual and mental dimensions. In your social-emotional area, list relationships you would like to improve or specific circumstances in which public victory would bring greater effectiveness. Select one item in each area to list as a goal for the week. Implement and evaluate.

Commit to write down specific Sharpen the saw activities in all four dimensions every week, to do them, and to evaluate your performance and results.

Man’s Search for Meaning By Dr. Victor Frankl

Preface

DR. FRANKL, AUTHOR-PSYCHIATRIST, SOMETIMES asks his patients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and small, Why do you not commit suicide? From their answers he can often find the guide-line for his psychotherapy: in one life there is love for one's children to tie to; in another life, a talent to be used; in a third, perhaps only lingering memories worth preserving. To weave these slender threads of a broken life into a firm pattern of meaning and responsibility is the object and challenge of logotherapy.

I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and in America: "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.

Experiences in a concentration camp

This story will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?

Three phases of the inmate's mental reactions to camp life become apparent: the period following his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation. The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock.

The prisoner passed from the first to the second phase; the phase of relative apathy in which he achieved a kind of emotional death.

The truth - that love is the ultimate and the 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. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

It is well known that humour, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

In Auschwitz I had laid down a rule for myself which proved to be a good one and which most of my comrades later followed. I generally answered all kinds of questions truthfully. But I was silent about anything that was not expressly asked for. If I were asked my age, I gave it. If asked about my profession, I said doctor, but did not elaborate.

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.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future - was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year's, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience. It was simply that the majority of the prisoners had lived in the naive hope that they would be home again by Christmas. As the time drew near and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a dangerous influence on their powers of resistance and a great number of them died.

Any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche's words, He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,

Rilke spoke of getting through suffering as others would talk of getting through work. There was plenty of suffering for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum.

We now come to the third stage of a prisoner's mental reactions: the psychology of the prisoner after his liberation.

PART TWO - Logotherapy in a Nutshell

Logotherapy, in comparison with psychoanalysis, is a method less retrospective and less introspective. Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. In logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis.

Logos is a Greek word which denotes meaning. Logotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term striving for superiority, is focused.

Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a secondary rationalization of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

A public-opinion poll was conducted a few years ago in France. The results showed that 89 percent of the people polled admitted that man needs something for the sake of which to live.

A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

Any analysis, however, even when it refrains from including the noölogical dimension in its therapeutic process, tries to make the patient aware of what he actually longs for in the depth of his being.

(So pleasure & pain concept which Anthony ROBBINS used, was actually put forth by Sigmund Freud?)

To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfil were most apt to survive. The same conclusion has since been reached by other authors of books on concentration camps, and also by psychiatric investigations into Japanese, North Korean and North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps.

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.

We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, homeostasis, i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

Having shown the beneficial impact of meaning orientation, I turn to the detrimental influence of that feeling of which so many patients complain today, namely the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the existential vacuum.

Today man either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom.

The meaning of life

The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. Logotherapy sees in irresponsibleness the very essence of human existence.

Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own irresponsibleness; therefore, it must leave to him the option for what, to what, or to whom he understands himself to be responsible.

We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed (achievement); (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something - such as goodness, truth and beauty - by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness - by loving him.

No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

The third way of finding a meaning in life is by suffering. We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves.

Let me cite a clear-cut example: Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you? Oh, he said, for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered! Whereupon I replied, You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering - to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her. He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

The question was whether an ape which was being used to develop poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering. Unanimously, the group replied that of course it would not; with its limited intelligence, it could not enter into the world of man, i.e., the only world in which the meaning of its suffering would be understandable. Then I pushed forward with the following question: And what about man? Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

In addition to excessive intention as described above, excessive attention, or hyper-reflection, as it is called in logotherapy, may also be pathogenic (leading to sickness). Fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper intention makes impossible what one wishes. In German.

Solution? Paradoxical Intention. Let me recall a case. A young physician consulted me because of his fear of perspiring. Whenever he expected an outbreak of perspiration, this anticipatory anxiety was enough to precipitate excessive sweating. In order to cut this circle formation I advised the patient, in the event that sweating should recur, to resolve deliberately to show people how much he could sweat. A week later he returned to report that whenever he met anyone who triggered his anticipatory anxiety, he said to himself, I only sweated out a quart before, but now I'm going to pour at least ten quarts! The result was that, after suffering from his phobia for four years, he was able, after a single session, to free himself permanently of it within one week.

The Individual and His Religion: The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure.

The following patient was a bookkeeper who had been treated by many doctors and in several clinics without any therapeutic success. When he was admitted to my hospital department, he was in extreme despair, confessing that he was close to suicide. For some years, he had suffered from a writer's cramp which had recently become so severe that he was in danger of losing his job. Therefore, only immediate short-term therapy could alleviate the situation. In starting treatment, Dr. Eva Kozdera recommended to the patient that he do just the opposite of what he usually had done; namely, instead of trying to write as neatly and legibly as possible, to write with the worst possible scrawl. He was advised to say to himself, Now I will show people what a good scribbler I am! And at the moment in which he deliberately tried to scribble, he was unable to do so. I tried to scrawl but simply could not do it, he said the next day. Within forty-eight hours the patient was in this way freed from his writer's cramp, and remained free for the observation period after he had been treated. He is a happy man again and fully able to work.

Another case. It was the most severe case of stuttering he had come across in his many years of practice. Never in his life, as far as the stutterer could remember, had he been free from his speech trouble, even for a moment, except once. This happened when he was twelve years old and had hooked a ride on a streetcar. When caught by the conductor, he thought that the only way to escape would be to elicit his sympathy, and so he tried to demonstrate that he was just a poor stuttering boy. At that moment, when he tried to stutter, he was unable to do it. Without meaning to, he had practiced paradoxical intention, though not for therapeutic purposes.

Paradoxical intention can also be applied in cases of sleep disturbance. The fear of sleeplessness12 results in a hyper-intention to fall asleep, which, in turn, incapacitates the patient to do so. To overcome this particular fear, I usually advise the patient not to try to sleep but rather to try to do just the opposite, that is, to stay awake as long as possible. In other words, the hyper intention to fall asleep, arising from the anticipatory anxiety of not being able to do so, must be replaced by the paradoxical intention not to fall asleep, which soon will be followed by sleep.

Results of very short term therapy may last a life time, contrary to Freud’s philosophy.

The Case for a Tragic Optimism*

It means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the tragic triad, as it is called in logotherapy, a triad which consists of those aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death. This chapter, in fact, raises the question, how is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that? Is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.

Optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all odds, against all hope.

But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation. This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon - laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh.

People have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning. I had diagnosed in cases of young patients suffering from what I called unemployment neurosis. And I could show that this neurosis really originated in a twofold erroneous identification: being jobless was equated with being useless, and being useless was equated with having a meaningless life. Consequently, whenever I succeeded in persuading the patients to volunteer in youth organizations, adult education, public libraries and the like - in other words, as soon as they could fill their abundant free time with some sort of unpaid but meaningful activity - their depression disappeared although their economic situation had not changed and their hunger was the same. The truth is that man does not live by welfare alone.

Whenever I am confronted with someone who is prone to suicide. I explain to such a person that patients have repeatedly told me how happy they were that the suicide attempt had not been successful; weeks, months, years later, they told me, it turned out that there was a solution to their problem, an answer to their question, a meaning to their life. Even if things only take such a good turn in one of a thousand cases, my explanation continues, who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place, you have to live to see the day on which it may happen, so you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.

Regarding the second facet of the mass neurotic syndrome - aggression - let me cite an experiment once conducted by Carolyn Wood Sherif. She had succeeded in artificially building up mutual aggressions between groups of boy scouts, and observed that the aggressions only subsided when the youngsters dedicated themselves to a collective purpose - that is, the joint task of dragging out of the mud a carriage in which food had to be brought to their camp. Immediately, they were not only challenged but also united by a meaning they had to fulfil.

As for the third issue, addiction, I am reminded of the findings presented by Annemarie von Forstmeyer who noted that, as evidenced by tests and statistics, 90 percent of the alcoholics she studied had suffered from an abysmal feeling of meaninglessness. Of the drug addicts studied by Stanley Krippner, 100 percent believed that things seemed meaningless.

How does a human being go about finding meaning? As Charlotte Bühler has stated: All we can do is study the lives of people who seem to have found their answers to the questions of what ultimately human life is about as against those who have not.

As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love.

Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

In addition to such practical experience, empirical evidence is also available which supports the possibility that one may find meaning in suffering. Researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine have been impressed by the number of prisoners of war of the Vietnam war who explicitly claimed that although their captivity was extraordinarily stressful - filled with torture, disease, malnutrition, and solitary confinement - they nevertheless ... benefited from the captivity experience, seeing it as a growth experience.

I view my life as being abundant with meaning and purpose. The attitude that I adopted on that fateful day has become my personal credo for life: I broke my neck, it didn't break me. I am currently enrolled in my first psychology course in college. I believe that my handicap will only enhance my ability to help others. I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible. - "Jerry Long

Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to the discovery of meaning? In no way. I only insist that meaning is available in spite of - nay, even through – suffering. If, on the other hand, one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude.

You may be prone to blame me for invoking examples that are the exceptions to the rule. Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza.

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazi

Becoming a member of the club

Today’s most valuable currency is social capital, defined as the information, expertise, trust and total value that exist in the relationships you have and social networks to which you belong.

Success in life = The people you meet + what you create together

We are the people we interact with. Our paychecks, our moods, the health of our hearts, and the size of our bellies – all of those things are determined by whom we choose to interact with and how. Generosity, Authenticity, and a belief that greatness is anyone’s to seize, regardless of economic background, ethnicity, or gender, so long as they provide ever-increasing value to others – are thankfully here to stay.

Poverty, I realized, wasn’t only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people who could help you make more of yourself. You can’t get there alone. When you help others, they often help you. Reciprocity is the gussied-up word people use later in life to describe this ageless principle. I just knew the word as care. Success in any field, but especially in business, is about working with people not against them. Ask accomplished CEOs or entrepreneurs or professionals how they achieved their success, and I guarantee you’ll hear very little business jargon. What you will mostly hear about are the people who helped pave their way, if they are being honest and are not too caught up in their own success.

Flat out, people do business with people they know and like. Careers – in every imaginable field – work the same way. I learned that real networking was about finding ways to make other people more successful. It was about working hard to give more than you get.

Today I have more than 10,000 people in my phone’s contacts who will answer when I call. They are there to offer expertise, jobs, help, encouragement, support and yes, even care and love. They successful people I know are, as a group, not especially talented, educated, or charming. But they all have a circle of trustworthy, talented, and inspirational people whom they can call upon.

Don’t keep score

They key to success in one word is: generosity.

You’ve got to be more than willing to accept generosity. Often, you’ve got to go out and ask for it. Until you become as willing to ask for help as you are to give it, however, you are only working half the equation. That’s what I mean by connecting. It’s a constant process of giving and receiving – of asking for and offering help. By putting people in contact with one another, by giving your time and expertise and sharing them freely, the pie gets bigger for everyone.

We have a tendency to romanticize independence and see autonomy as a virtue. In my experience, such a view is a career killer. Autonomy is a life vest made out of sand. Independent people who do not have the skills to think and act interdependently may still be good individual producers, but they won’t be seen as good leaders or team players. Their career will begin to stutter and stall before too long.

Hey, Ray. Who do you know in the entertainment world that I can talk to for some advice about breaking into the industry? You know any people who’d be open for a short lunch?

If I’m going to take the time to meet with somebody, I’m going to try to make that person successful. But David kept score. He saw every social encounter in terms of diminishing returns. My point is such: Relationships are solidified by trust. Institutions are built on it. You gain trust by asking not what people can do for you, to paraphrase an earlier Kennedy, but what you can do for others. In other words, the currency for real networking is not greed but generosity.

Some lessons about creating lasting relationships:

Experience will not save you in hard times, not will hard work or talent. If you need a job, money, advice, help, hope or a means to make a sale, there’s only one surefire, fail-safe place to find it – within your extended circle of friends and associates. There’s no need to ponder whether it’s their lunch or yours, there’s no point in keeping track of favors done and owed. Who cares? It is better to give before you receive. And never keep score. If you interactions are ruled by generosity, your rewards will follow suit. Remember it’s easier to get ahead in the world when those below you are happy to help you get ahead, rather than hoping for your downfall. Contribute: it’s like Miracle-Grow for networks. Give you time, money and expertise to your growing community of friends.

What’s your mission?

Every successful person I’ve met shared, in varying degrees, a zeal for goal setting. Successful athletes, CEOs, charismatic leaders, rainmaking salespeople, and accomplished managers all know what they want in life, and they go after it.

Step one find your passion

A goal is a dream with a deadline. Campbell believed that deep within each person, there’s an intuitive knowledge of what she or he wants most in life. We only have to look for it.

Look Inside

The important thing when conducting an internal review is to do without the constraints, without the doubts, fears and expectations of what you should be doing. You have to be able to set aside the obstacles of time, money and obligation. When I’m in the right frame of mind, I start to create a list of dreams and goals. Some are preposterous; others are overly pragmatic. I don’t attempt to censor or edit the nature of the list – I put anything and everything down. Next to that first list, I write down in a second column all the things that bring me joy and pleasure: the achievements, people, and things that move me. The clues can be found in the hobbies you pursue and the magazines, movies, and books you enjoy. Which activities excite you the most, where you don’t even notice the hours that pass?

When I’m done, I start to connect these two lists, looking for intersections, that sense of direction or purpose. It’s a simple exercise, but the results can be profound.

Look outside

Next, ask the people who know you best what they think your greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Ask them what they admire about you and what areas you may need help in. The transformation of a dream into reality requires hard work and discipline.

Step Two: Putting goals to paper

The simplest version of the plan is separated into three distinct parts: the first part is devoted to the development of the goals that will help you fulfill your mission. The second part is devoted to connecting those goals to the people, places, and things that will help you get the job done. And the third part helps you determine the best way to reach out to the people who will help you to accomplish your goals. This means choosing a medium to connect, but, more important, it means finding a way to lead with generosity.

In the first section, I list what I’d like to accomplish three years from today. I then work backward in both one-year and three-month increments to develop mid-and-short term goals that will help me reach my mission. Under each time frame, I create an A goal and a B goal that will meaningfully contribute to where I want to be three years from now.

Step Three: Create a Personal Board of advisors

Build it before you need it

George, for example, is a smart guy in his twenties who was introduced to me through a mutual friend. George worked in public relations in New York and aspired to start his own PR business. He asked me to lunch one day looking for advice and encouragement.

Ten minutes after we sat down, I knew he was on the wrong track. Have you started to reach out to potential clients? I asked. No, he told me, I’m taking it step by step. My plan is to work my way up in my current company to a point where I can afford to leave. Then I’ll incorporate, get an office, and start searching for my first customers. I don’t want to start meeting with potential clients until I can present myself as a credible PR person with my own firm. You’ve got it totally backward I told him. You’re setting yourself up for failure. My advice was to start finding future clients today. Had he thought about what kind of industry he wanted to specialize in? Had he thought about where the top people in that industry hang out? Once he could answer those questions, the next step was to go hang with this new circle of people.

The most important thing is to get to know these people as friends, not potential customers, I said. Though you’re right about one thing: NO matter how friendly you are, if the people you approach are any good at what they do, they won’t hire you right off the bat to do their PR. Which is why you should offer your services for free – at least at first. For instance, maybe you can volunteer your time to a nonprofit organization they’re involved in, or aid in publicizing a school fund-raiser their kids are involved in. But won’t my employer be angry at my expending so much energy on other things, George asked. Doing good work for your employer comes first, I told him. Finding time to manage your outside work is your responsibility. Concentrate on an industry that your present employer doesn’t service. Remember, if you haven’t done the necessary legwork on the day you decide to open your own business, you’ll be back at your old job in no time flat. "So I should work for these people for free?"

Absolutely, I said. "Today you are unproved, and breaking in is tough. Eventually, you’ll have a growing circle of people who have seen your work and who believe in you. Those are the kinds of connections you’re looking to create if you’re going to start a business, or if you’re looking to change jobs or careers.

At some point, while you’re still working for your current employer, start looking to turn one of your contacts into a real, paying client. Once you’ve got an established client that will provide references and create some word-of-mouth, you’re halfway home. Then, and only then, is it time to go back to your company and ask to go half time, or better yet, turn them into your second big client. If you quit at that point, you’ve hedged your bets. You have a group of people who will help transition you into a new career.

Too often, we get caught up efficiently doing ineffective things, focusing solely on the work that will get us through the day. The idea isn’t to find oneself another environment tomorrow – be it a new job or a new economy – but to be constantly creating the environment and community you want for yourself, no matter what may occur.

Right now, there are countless ways you can begin to create the kind of community that can help further your career. You can 1) Create a company-approved project that will force you to learn new skills and introduce you to new people within your company; new skills and introduce you to new people within your company; 2) take on leadership positions in the hobbies and outside organizations that interest you 3) join your local alumni club and spend time with people who are doing the jobs you’d like to be doing 4) enroll in a class at a community college on a subject that relates to either the job you’re doing now or a job you see yourself doing in the future.

Have you investigated the friends and contacts of your parents? How about your siblings? Your friends from college and grad school? What about your church, bowling league or gym? How about your doctor or lawyer or Realtor or broker?

Focus on your immediate network: friends of friends, old acquaintances from school and family. I suspect you’ve never asked your cousins, brothers, or brothers-in-law if they know anyone whom they could introduce you to help fulfill your goals. Everyone from your family to your mailman is a portal to an entirely new set of folks. So don’t wait until you’re out of a job, or on your own, to begin reaching out to others. You’ve got to create a community of colleagues and friends before you need it. Others around you are far more likely to