My favourite book of last year (possibly of the whole decade) is Charlie Mackesy‘s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. It is a beautifully simple yet profound book. Leafing through it yesterday, I was struck by this saying :
"One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things"– Charlie Mackesy
Thinking about Charlie’s statement ‘One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things’, I remembered Jack Canfield‘s success formula:
Event + Response = Outcome
Canfield’s formula says that the way we respond to an event determines its outcome. In that case, if I want a different outcome and I can’t change the event, I need to change my response.
"The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
Viktor E Frankl
When I first read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, I was deeply moved by the inner heroism of this extraordinary man, who transformed the horrific suffering he experienced in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II into a profound sense of hope for millions of people. I have returned to this book many times to infuse myself with Frankl’s confidence that each of us has the ability, at any moment, to access our limitless potential and create meaning in our daily lives.
Key to Frankl’s thought was his therapeutic system called Logotherapy, which “seeks to make us aware of our freedom of response to all aspects of our destiny.” Rather than accepting the prevailing reductionist and nihilist views of his day—that life had no meaning—he urged people to “say yes to life in spite of everything.”
Seven Core Principles
In the ambitious book Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl’s Principles at Work (Berrett-Koehler, 2004), author Alex Pattakos, a long-time student of Frankl’s, shows how we can exercise this freedom in the workplace. Using seven core principles he extracted from Logotherapy, Pattakos illustrates how we can respond creatively and valuably at will to the challenges in our organizations. The seven principles are:
1-We are free to choose our attitude toward everything that happens to us.
2-We can realize our will to meaning by making a conscious commitment to significant values and goals.
3-We can find meaning in all of life’s moments.
4-We can learn to see how we work against ourselves.
5-We can look at ourselves from a distance and gain insight and perspective as well as laugh at ourselves.
6-We can shift our focus of attention when coping with difficult situations.
7-We can reach out beyond ourselves and make a difference in the world.
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness."
Viktor E Frankl
He explains, “The space between what happens to us and our response, our freedom to choose that response and the impact it can have upon our lives, beautifully illustrate that we can become a product of our decisions, not our conditions.” In other words, we have the power to shape our circumstances rather than be dictated by them.
Mr. Frankl further explains, with probably the most beautiful of his writings:
“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. 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 the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
There are deep meanings in these words, but for the current context of this post - it means if you put too much energy into that one target, one thing - it will take away your freedom to respond to its success or failure. Since you have pre-decided, what will make you unhappy and happy.
“Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.” - Viktor E Frankl
I think we lose this freedom when we "pursue", rather we should "ensue". As when we "pursue", put more and more energy into it, by making it our ultimate dream, the "choice" disappears.
An easier way to understand this, how Stephen Covey puts it: Take an action based on your value system, rather than its outcome. If the focus is outcome, then "freedom to choose our attitude towards a positive or negative result" is no longer there.
Likewise, by drawing on what Frankl calls “the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,” we can create deep meaning, experience great fulfillment, and become catalysts for profound change at work, in our families, and in communities. The beauty is that we possess this capability already; we just have to learn how to use it.
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To explore more, contact me, let’s talk.
Joe Turan
- Life Coach
- Tantra & Kuscheltherapeut
00436643884305
www.joeturan.com
Source :
-Michelle Rogers (turning over pebbles)
-KALI SAPOSNICK (thesystemsthinker)
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