Imagine a pre-historic human that is taken away from her natural environment and then placed on a street corner in a busy city, where there are countless people rushing around, cars speeding by, horns honking, exhaust fumes choking the lungs, neon signs flashing, and so on. The human brain has changed very little over the past 10,000 years. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover I had not lived." ~ Henry David Thoreau See that the world is not coming to an end. Allow yourself to be distracted by humor. Try to search for facts and ignore opinions. Give your mind and your overall well-being a break and limit your exposure to news. The most provocative images and words will evoke anxiety, fear, anger, or lust. To provoke it's intended audience, it uses the most provocative images and words. To capture attention, it must provoke its intended audience. To sell advertising, it must capture attention. The more of this you consume, the worse off you'll be.Īlso, keep in mind that "the news" is not a reflection of reality it's an entity that lives by selling advertising. If you consume disturbing, stressful information, you'll be disturbed and stressed. Your mind can't help but becoming what it consumes. You've heard the saying, "You are what you eat." But what about information? You consume information every day. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." ~ Hans Margolius Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. What makes you think you're right now? This will end and it will likely end better and sooner than you think. Today, you can't imagine an end to what is happening now. Two months ago, you wouldn't have imagined what is happening now. This applies to the best and worst of outcomes. Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there. But you can stop yourself from making predictions about the patterns. If it can't find certainty, it looks for patterns and fills in the missing gaps with possibility. The human brain seeks knowledge and certainty. Those who predict, don't have knowledge." Lau Tzu "Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Frankl often refers to Friedrich Nietzsche's words: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How."Īpply these lessons today: What if the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest learning opportunity of your entire life? Did you get to spend more time with people you love during the stay-at-home order? Did you discover that the problems you once had were really not as terrible as you once imagined? How can you make meaning from your suffering now? Be Comfortable Not Knowing He saw three possible sources of meaning: 1) In work (doing something significant), 2) In love (caring for another person), and 3) In courage during difficult times. Speaking for himself, he envisioned a reunion with his wife and he saw himself using his notes to share with his psychotherapy patients (and eventually the millions that have read his book).įrankl believed that suffering, in and of itself, is meaningless we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. And tragically, he noticed that those who had lost all meaning, would be the next to die. What's the common thread he found among the survivors? They had a meaning to live for. While in the concentration camps, he made notes on how he and others lived through horrific conditions.
Psychotherapist and author of the epic book, Mans' Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl survived the holocaust. "In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice." ~ Viktor Frankl
So, in no particular order, here are timeless ways to reduce stress and to find peace, meaning, and purpose now (or at any time in your life): Attach Meaning to Suffering Reducing stress not only makes your life better, it can save your life, especially now that a strong immune response is incredibly important, to say the least.įor help in mastering the "90 percent," I'll enlist help from 2500 years of philosophy. Put another way, stress is among the top controllable health risks it attacks our immune system. But how does one actually practice it? And how can one practice it effectively during extreme times, such as the current COVID-19 outbreak and its ensuing chaos and stress? The "10 percent" we are experiencing now is extreme therefore, it's more important than ever to be mindful of the "90 percent." You've heard this before. Life is 10 percent of what happens to us and 90 percent of how we react. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." ~ Viktor Frankl In that space is our power to choose our response. "Between stimulus and response there is a space.
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