Viktor Frankl's Despair Equation Is A Lesson On Two Levels

Aug 15, 2023

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In this clip, Viktor Frankl shares something profound that has stuck with me...

As long as an individual cannot find meaning in the suffering, he or she will certainly be prone to despair and, under certain conditions, to suicide.

But, at the moment they can see a meaning in their suffering, they can mold it into an achievement.

Thus, the same exact challenge can lead one person to suicide and the other to growth.

This quote is a reminder of the immense freedom we all have moment-to-moment to construct the meaning of our reality. This may be one of the greatest freedoms granted to humanity and the one least exercised.

Questions I’m Pondering From The Clip

How can I automatically generate multiple profound meanings for each
moment as I experience it?
What would the practice look like?
What are the contours of moments in my life that lack the most meaning? And contain the most meaning? What are the key patterns?

Full Interview

Frankl not only provides us a lesson on how to live a more meaningful life, he also provides us with a meta-lesson on how to communicate our ideas more effectively…

How To Create Your Own Equation As A Thought Leader Like Frankl

Overview

One of the core things that thought leaders do is help people achieve or avoid outcomes in their their life.

They do this by helping them get or avoid those outcomes in a better way:

Highest likelihood of success
In the most enjoyable and/or meaningful way
In the fastest way
In the least costly way
In the biggest way

Equations are the recipe for those better outcomes.

In the clip above, Frankl introduces his equation:

Despair = Suffering - Meaning

Benefits

Thinking in equations can help you on two levels as a thought leader:

It can provide you with a memorable and namable idea that you create a book around and become known for
It can help you structure your thinking

Case Study

In the Procrastination Equation, researcher Piers Steel (great name by the way) reveals an equation for boosting your motivation:

What’s great about this equation is that it provides a structured way to think about procrastination. More specifically, it…

Introduces the levers we can pull that impact procrastination
Tells us whether to pull those levers up or down

For example, if we want to decrease motivation, we should INCREASE the gap between our action and the reward we get from it. If we want to increase motivation, we should INCREASE the perceived/actual value of what we’re doing.

I used the power of equations in my article, The 100-Hour Rule: Forgotten Study Shows How You Can Become World-Class In 100 Hours, where I introduced the equation to building world-class micro-skills…

World-Class Micro-Skill = 
Deliberate Practice * Skill Selection * 100 Hours

7 Quick Steps To Turn Your Idea Into An Equation (for paid subscribers)

Below are the six steps you can follow to create your own equation (which we also share in our year-long flagship thought leader program)…

Blockbuster Blueprint