5 Ways to Find Meaning and Joy in Your Career (feat. Dr. Viktor Frankl)
The unknown emptiness that hits you even after earning money and getting promoted. Or the wandering in endless, bleak suffering. The root…
The unknown emptiness that hits you even after earning money and getting promoted. Or the wandering in endless, bleak suffering. The root of depression and burnout in modern humanity is not a lack of ‘happiness’, but a lack of ‘meaning’. If you feel lost on how to live, if you want to step off the treadmill of chasing happiness, this piece will be your compass. It presents 3 concrete lenses to find the ‘absolute meaning’ hidden in your life.
📍 1. Action: Creative Contribution to the World
The first path of logotherapy (meaning therapy) advocated by Frankl is ‘action (creative value)’. Even during his imprisonment, he secretly treated the wounds of the sick and persuaded suicidal comrades, fulfilling his duty as a doctor.
Our daily lives are the same. A designer sketching a line more fiercely, the attitude of a clerk smiling at a customer once more. Regardless of the reward, when reaching outward to present a personal creation and take action, a human acquires profound meaning. Work is not merely a means to earn money; it’s a sacred act of extending oneself toward the world.
📍 2. Experience: The Capacity for Wonder and Love
The second path is ‘experience’. One morning, with his physical suffering at its peak, Frankl saw the burning red sunset of Bavaria through the camp’s barbed wire. In a moment he wanted to give up on everything, he gasped in front of that fatal beauty. And thinking of his absent wife’s face, he deeply experienced the emotion of pure love.
Like this, when we truthfully confront something, when we are moved by the wonder of nature, we fill our lives with meaning simply by encountering it. Aimless walks and deep eye contact with others are not a waste of time, but a gas station filling our existence.
📍 3. Perspective: The Sublime Attitude of Enduring Suffering
A situation where neither creation nor experience is possible might arrive. When the body is paralyzed, or when left utterly alone. Here, the third, most sublime value emerges: ‘Attitudinal value’ facing unavoidable suffering.
An upright back quietly accepting misfortune without despair. Merely silently enduring my tragedy silently can proclaim a powerful resonance and victory of humanity to others watching and to myself.
📍 4. Salvation: Not Happiness, but the Compass of ‘Meaning’
Modern people make happiness and pleasure their life’s goal. But Frankl firmly states, “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” Our depression is not because we have no money or lack pleasure. It’s due to an ‘existential vacuum’, having lost the fundamental meaning (will to meaning) to live for.
Step down from the treadmill chasing happiness. When you dedicate yourself to a meaning somewhere, happiness will gently land on your shoulder without you even knowing it.
📍 5. Transcendence: True Self is Found When the Self is Forgotten
The deepest meaning does not point towards myself. It occurs when I forget myself and reach out to others. The self-sacrifice of a parent caring for a child, the immersion of an entrepreneur burning themselves up for a cause they believe in. Thus, when the compass needle points to external values (work, love, calling) rather than oneself, a human is not trapped in ego and truly transcends.
What allowed Frankl to endure to the end in the Holocaust wasn’t merely saving his own life. It was the message he had to deliver to the world — that ‘calling’ kept him alive.
Epilogue: Asking from Your Wilderness.
Is the desperate situation you are facing an unavoidable wall?
If so, remember this question from Frankl.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Suffering cannot be avoided. Failures cannot be avoided.
But what meaning you excavate from that suffering is entirely in your hands.
Meaning transforms misfortune into stepping stones to your destination.
Micro-Mission “Turning the Compass”
Today, delete one plan you had made purely for ‘your benefit’ and ‘your comfort’.
Instead, take just 10 minutes to unreservedly commit a small creative action (a warm message checking in, helping a colleague, picking up trash on the street) that is entirely irrelevant to your own gain but helps someone else.
Observe the unfamiliar joy that approaches when you turn your compass needle outward today.
“Don’t aim at success. The more you target it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” — Viktor Frankl