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Author: Viktor E. Frankl

• This confirms my childhood view of my father: a sense of justice is one of his main character traits. This sense of justice is rooted in his devout faith in God, otherwise it would be difficult to understand why he always says, "Everything is according to God's plan!"

• Since life is so short, what is its meaning? In the end, the answer I have come to after a lifetime of exploration is that death itself gives life meaning in a sense. Most importantly, the brevity of life does not erase its own meaning, because the past does not mean permanent disappearance, but is preserved - everything we do, learn, and feel is stored in the "past" before it fades away.

• Perhaps it can be called deep thinking, or to put it nicely, Socratic self-reflection. Anyway, when I was a child, every morning after breakfast in bed - or more precisely, after drinking coffee, I would spend a few minutes contemplating the meaning of life, especially the meaning of the day ahead, or more precisely, the meaning of the day for me.

• So, even if it's just a brief comment at a meeting, I will prepare my speech carefully and take notes; if it's a speech in front of thousands of people, I will prepare my speech and outline carefully, just like in a discussion with a dozen people.

• I try to finish everything as early as possible and never leave it until the last minute. This way, when I have a lot of things to handle, I don't have to worry about not being able to complete the tasks while working hard. And the third principle is: not only do things early, but also do the troublesome things first, in other words: get them done early.

• I always remember the good things about others and forget their faults.

• When you encounter any difficulties, kneel down (in your mind) and pray to God, and you will not encounter anything worse in the years to come.

• "Ignore everything and cheer for every damn thing." Yes, we need to see the positive side, at least those who want to live an artistic life need to.

• Humorous words not only make the atmosphere more relaxed during a speech, but also weaken the opponent's position in the subsequent free discussion, achieving the effect of a small force defeating a large force.

• If you want to talk about a person's character and qualities, you have to mention their hobbies.

• It can be said that almost all the important decisions in my life were made when I was climbing alone.

• If you delve deep enough into a hobby, you are no longer a half-knowledgeable outsider, but an expert in that field.

• As for amateur hobbies that are far from professional level, I also do them with great enthusiasm, without any shyness.

• Nothing is more disgusting to him than so-called mature rationality (here I mean the practice of blindly borrowing previous opinions without thinking).

• There is only one power, the power to save; there is only one honor, the honor of helping others.

• We should not actively ask what the meaning of life is, because we ourselves are the subject of answering this question, that is to say, we ourselves are the ones who have to answer the question posed by life, and we must take responsibility for our own existence. Only in this way can we answer this question about life.

• The ultimate meaning of life is beyond our understanding, and I call it "super-meaning" (Übersinn). We can only believe in it, and we must believe in it; in fact, each of us has been believing in it all the time, just without realizing it.

• Everything a person encounters has an ultimate meaning, which is the super-meaning, but we cannot understand and know this super-meaning, we can only believe in it.

• In 1929, I proposed the idea of distinguishing three different values, which are the three ways to give meaning to our lives from birth to the last moment of life, until the last breath is exhaled. Specifically, they are: our actions, the works we create, and our experiences, encounters, and love.

• I respect a person's decision to end their own life, but I also hope that people can respect my principle, which is to do my best to save and help others.

• Similarly, some people claim that they would rather go to a concentration camp than be a Nazi lackey. This statement is correct, but only those who have proven it through their actions have the right to say it, and those who have long ago fled abroad to live a comfortable life should not say it. After everything has settled, it is easy to criticize the actions of others.

• Perfection does not mean that nothing can be added, but that nothing can be taken away.

• The true masters I admire without exception are kind and generous, and although they have the power and qualifications to criticize me, they always overlook the shortcomings of my research and try to find something positive to affirm me.

• "Man's Search for Meaning"

• I say this to explain my view on money. I am not very interested in money itself. We need money, but the real meaning of having money is that we can do what we want without worrying about money.

• If we cannot obtain an absolute truth, then we must be satisfied with the mutual correction of various relative truths, and have the courage to face partiality. In the field of psychotherapy, we can and must move towards some kind of partiality in the intertwined and complex multiple melodies, and be aware of this partiality.

• Inspiring patients to discover the meaning of life is the core of meaning therapy.

• Frankl believes that the most important essence of human existence is "responsibility", so in meaning therapy, patients should take responsibility for their own judgments, and the doctor's values should not be imposed on the patients. The ways to discover meaning are: (1) creation, work; (2) recognition of value: through experiencing events and people, such as the nature of work or culture, love, etc., to discover the meaning of life; (3) suffering: when suffering is found to have meaning, it is no longer suffering, through understanding the meaning of life.

• "Paradoxical intention" therapy allows patients to deliberately engage in events that they fear, which is generally consistent with certain techniques in Morita therapy and the "paradoxical prescription" in systemic family therapy.

• The reason why people madly pursue the satisfaction of power, money, and sexual desires is because of emptiness and the frustration of the will to seek meaning. In order to avoid emptiness, people adopt various compensatory methods, such as the will to power and the will to pleasure. The sense of emptiness and urgency that is commonly felt by modern people is the therapeutic indication of meaning therapy. Therefore, meaning therapy has surpassed strict psychological therapy.

• The theoretical premise of paradoxical intention is: in many cases, the emergence of maladaptive behavior is due to people's excessive fear of certain frightening things. That is to say, because he is always worried about a situation that may make him anxious, he becomes extremely terrified, to the point where he is involuntarily led into this situation.

• If a person wants to use this method to cure stage fright, he can say to himself before the speech: "I will try my best to feel anxious, I will be anxious and uneasy on the stage, I want to escape, wrap myself up from head to toe. I want to tremble, shiver all over, I want to be ashamed, blushing and thick-necked, I want to stutter, and be incoherent." Through this paradoxical intention, a person will calm down. Ridicule fear and decide in a humorous way what you should say to yourself about fear, so that you can eliminate the negative effects that adversity may have on you and still be able to cope with it.

• Sometimes, we may be unable to succeed because we try too hard, and if we deal with problems more relaxedly and freely, success will be much easier. But this will help us shift our attention from the trivial matters that bother us to more meaningful values and more important things. Once we do this, we will find that it can solve problems, and we will no longer be troubled by anxiety.