A Sense of Meaning at Work
When we are having difficulties in our own lives and watch the news to see other people’s difficulties unfold, a frequent reaction is to seek an underlying meaning that will make our difficulties easier to bear.
After seeing that his fellow inmates in concentration camps were more likely to survive the terrible circumstances if they retained a sense of purpose, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote extensively about this process.
Extracting meaning from suffering might be useful in many ways. Cancer patients, for example, have better psychological adjustment if they find meaning in their medical experiences. People who make sense of their loss and even find benefits in it experience less distress after the death of a family member.
It can also apply in the business world. How many of us have struggled to build a successful business, failed multiple times but kept going? I’m not saying for a second that this example is in any way close to Victor Frankl’s, however, there is often a feeling of purpose or meaning that comes with succeeding in spite of the odds. And, as we’ve seen, this can be incredibly therapeutic and helpful in overcoming challenges & setbacks as well as building resilience.