Challenged to change

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a1216.

#Control #Perspective #Quotes #ViktorFrankl

Reflection: Day 18

NOTICE THE SPACE — “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.” ~ Viktor Frankl

Reflection is about self-focus. Each day you’re practicing holding up a mirror. Specifically, you’re observing your thoughts, in response to a prompt.

ɕ

Arrived in the middle? Visit the first post, Where to begin?
(The entire series is available to download as a PDF ebook.)

#PracticingReflection #ViktorFrankl

Responsibleness

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a420.

#Quotes #ViktorFrankl

To choose one’s attitude

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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.

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a36.

#Books #Quotes #ViktorFrankl

Between stimulus and response

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.

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a306.

#Discipline #Quotes #ViktorFrankl

The meaning of life

We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a447.

#Quotes #ViktorFrankl

He who is asked

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by being responsible.

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a426.

#Quotes #ViktorFrankl

The meaning at a given moment

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. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?”

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a423.

#Quotes #ViktorFrankl

Instead of possibilities, I have realities

What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? “No, thank you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done, and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a429.

#Quotes #ViktorFrankl

A human being is a finite thing

To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions. … I also bear witness to the unexpected extant to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.

~ Viktor Frankl

slip:4a413.

#Quotes #ViktorFrankl