“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”

Why it was said

Viktor Frankl writes this in the first part of Man's Search for Meaning, his account of the concentration camps, when describing how he tried to help fellow prisoners who had lost hope. The reversal became central to logotherapy, the approach he sets out in the second part of the book.

What it actually means

The usual question is "What do I get from life?", and when life gives very little, the answer is despair. Frankl turns the question around. Meaning is not something life owes you; it is something life asks of you, in the form of a task, a person who needs you, or a way of bearing what cannot be changed. The shift matters because it puts the answer back in your hands. You cannot control what life delivers, but you can always decide how to respond to what it asks. Frankl saw that prisoners who held on to such a demand, a manuscript to finish, someone waiting for them, tended to endure in ways that others could not.

How to use it

1. 1When you catch yourself asking "why is this happening to me?", rewrite it as "what is this situation asking of me?"
2. 2Name one person or one piece of work that needs you right now, and let that be the reason for today.
3. 3In a period you cannot change, choose one way of bearing it that you would be proud of later.