Victor Frankl: Worthwhile Goal

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For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. Matthew 16:25

This is the fourth in a series of posts in a book I am reading on my Philippines trip. It contains leadership insights from the most victorious team in sports history (winning percentage = 86% as of the writing of the book): The All Blacks, The New Zealand National Rugby Union Team.

“What a man [or woman] actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task…Being human always points and is directed to something or someone other than oneself… The more one forgets himself [or herself] — by giving himself [or herself] to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he [or she] is and the more he [or she] actualizes himself [or herself].”

Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning as quoted by James Kerr in Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About The Business of Life (London: Constable, 2013) 10-11.

Frankl concludes that our search for meaning as humans is only found in love and service to others. God designed us that way. He created us to give ourselves to others in service to Him. Greatness or actualization is found in that space and place.

Jenni and I have enjoyed a “tensionless state” this week. We have had a few days off in the tropical paradise of the Philippines. While rest and recreation are found in such places, meaning is not found here. It’s only found in struggling and striving toward a worthwhile goal.

What are you struggling and striving for?