Episode 32: Viktor Frankl rule

Welcome to wisdom from the aerial view, the podcast for those who wish to learn how to crush their anxiety and find meaning and purpose in their lives. Good morning, good afternoon. Dr. Klein, Mark, how are you today?

I'm good, how are you Enid?

I'm good, I know you've got a little bit of a cough, so if you start to cough in the middle, we all understand, we all go through it. I wanted to do something different today. You and I have been having these conversations for quite some time now. And often you mention a guy by the name of Victor Frankl. And he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. And he wrote it in 1945. Since then, they've had different editions of it and coming out in different forwards, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, you know, I'm going to reread it. I read it a long, long time ago. And why does Mark keep bringing it up? And so I read it and I read the 2006 edition and the foreword was written by a rabbi, Rabbi Kushner, Rabbi Harold Kushner, who was the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. And he wrote the foreword and he wrote this, counseling situations. Forces beyond your control can take everything away you possess, except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. And then I thought, aha, that's why Mark always conjures up this book. because that's exactly what you've been saying. So let's talk a little bit about that today, Mark, and about the book. All right? Yeah.

Okay, sure. Yeah, the Viktor Frankl rule, which we've condensed that whole book down into the Viktor Frankl rule. So I think I have told you that if I was going to teach a young person one thing, only one thing, that's what I would teach him. You're in complete control of how you feel. I think the actual quote, if I might, is he said the following, that everything can be taken from a man, but one thing.

We have.

Mm-hmm.

All right.

the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way. So we live in a society and we've talked about this, we talked about sticks and stones, we've talked about people feeling victimized by words and so on. And every time I've heard that and we've talked about this ad nauseum, I realize... Don't people realize that they have been granted an unbelievable gift, unbelievable superpower, right? That they have control of how they feel. And we've talked about this. In fact, just yesterday, I was talking with a friend who has some things going on and, you know, I had put him into a kind of a, not quite a funk, but not as super happy as he has always been. And he's heard me talk about this many times. We spent a lot of time yesterday talking about it. And one of the examples I use is somebody else we've talked about, which is Benjamin Hall, the Fox News correspondent who was severely injured in missile attacks in Ukraine. And his cameraman and his associate were both killed. He survived, but lost, I think, I may have this wrong, but something like both lower extremities, I think a hand, an eye. And when you talk, when you listen to this man, you would think he would A, be super depressed, B, have, look at that moment as the worst moment in his life, because most of us would certainly look at it that way. And he doesn't look at that at all. In fact, he doesn't quite say this, I don't think, but he does allude to the fact that it was a really good thing that he got blown up by a missile. Why? Because it has changed the way he looks at life. And he realized the Viktor Frankl rule, you have complete control of how you feel about everything. And we talk a lot about purpose in this podcast and your purpose has everything to do with the way you look at the world.

and nothing to do with the events that actually happen in your life, the things that happen to you. And you've made fun of me because before I go into surgery, I've often laughed, right? And you think I'm a nut job. But well, you might be right. And you probably have you probably get my wife to agree with you and maybe some of my children. But but it's a way better way to be because you then you appreciate every moment for what it is. Just another event in your life. You the the one of the corollaries that comes from

Mm-hmm. Yes, I do.

the Viktor Frankl rule that you're in complete control of how you feel is the metaphor of what our life is, the book, right? That every page in our story is equivalent, that for that reason, and then when our lives are over and somebody reads the book of our life, no one page jumps out as the special page. All pages contribute equally to the story that is or was our life. And when you realize that and you couple that with the Victor Franklin rule, you realize, well, I should embrace every moment. Every page of my life is equal. Every moment is equal. They're all part of the story. So they all are equal. And I don't have to feel terrible during the events or experiences that... appear to be less than pleasant. I get to choose how I want to feel about those. And again, nobody has to take my word for it. A guy like Benjamin Hall, if you don't know who he is, Google him, go to YouTube, listen to him. He's got, I think, two books out now describing his experiences. And you'll be amazed. This guy's smiling all the time. He's so upbeat. And yet he's gone through this horrendous event that almost everybody else would say would be the worst day of their lives. So the Viktor Franka rule is a tool that, excuse me, one of the tools that allows you to move through your life. in a much less stressful and anxious way. We start this podcast, you start this podcast every week. This is the podcast if you want to learn how to crush your stress and have meaning and purpose in your life. Well, you and I didn't invent this. This is the way the world is. This is the gift that we've been given with our life and people like Viktor Frankl and Benjamin Hall provide us with the tools we need to be successful in dealing with the events of our life.

All right, that's right.

I'm gonna ask you a question, having just reread the book again. When you started on your journey toward the aerial view, toward looking at things that way, did Victor Frankl play a huge role in that? I mean, there are so many corollaries between what he's saying in this book and for those people who don't know who he was and you should, and I would recommend this book to just about anybody. This is a man who was in a concentration camp and saw the worst the worst of worst of humanity and yet walked away from it saying, it's not gonna define me, it's not gonna be who I am, I can control what I, et cetera, et So when you found your way to the aerial view, was it because of Viktor Frankl? How did it happen? Was it happenstance? Did you read it first and tell me?

No, he was a big part of it because there are a few things, if I had to say, how did I build a foundation of that perspective that I call the aerial view? It's not new. Just every listener should know I did not invent this. This has been talked about for eons by different people, but we tend to forget it or not appreciate it. So, and maybe I'm presenting it with a different name and a different title, but it's not a new idea under the sun. There are no new ideas under the sun as it turns out. So one of them was Viktor Frankl. Wow, we have the power to control how we feel. We're not victims ever. We get to decide. He was in a concentration camp, right? And like you said, so the worst of the worst. was a psychiatrist before he was a prisoner of war, before he was in the Nazi concentration camp. He was already a psychiatrist. He had that training, that perspective into human behavior that... Enid (08:44.5) Yeah.

certainly gave him a leg up, but that wasn't enough. was his watching what was going on and his appreciation that we do actually have this superpower to decide how we feel. That allowed him to get through his experience and then move forward and create a division of psychiatry, psychology called logotherapy, based on what he had learned. you know, Dury's experience in arriving at what we call the Viktor Frankl rule. The other thing was, you asked me how I got to the aerial view. That was a big part. Another part really was Albert Einstein. So I think I've told you from when I was young, I always had this sense that there was something strange about time and that it was a thing. just existed. I don't know where this came from. I was 10 years old when I think I first had this idea. And then, of course, many years later, I read about relativity and I was stunned by the fact that that's actually how the world works. So when you put together, so for me, putting together the science, primarily some facts from relativity, special relativity, and some of the weirdness of quantum physics. These all point to the fact that our world is not what we think. Once you appreciate that the world is not what you think, then you ever say, okay, well then what is our world? And then you start putting the pieces together of what our world is, how reality is created, what choices mean. And the Viktor Frankl rule, Holy Mack rule, right? Holy Mack rule, get, wow, right? You don't have to feel terrible. In fact, I was talking to my friend yesterday and I said to him something we've talked about before, which is don't put a label on something. So.

Yeah. Yeah.

The other day, I was doing some work at my desk. I have two desks in my office, one in front of the other. My chair slides between the two of them. One of them has my desktop computer, and the other is like a desk that looks like an 18th century big wooden desk with some drawers in it. I don't know why I do.

Why would you have two desks?

Okay, just just checking up on you here

But I actually use them both and it's very functional. It's like right now I'm sitting at my more standard desk with my bookcase behind me, which you can see, but people can't see. At any rate, so these desks are fairly close together, probably about four feet apart. And I'm in this office all day long working. I had just worked out, so was in my workout gear, shorts and a t-shirt. I got up to get something. So I wheeled back in my chair, turned around, stood up and smashed at full speed into the edge of my other desk, right into my thigh. I mean, it was a blow. And it hurt a lot. And of course, what's the first thing I did? I did. After I realized how much this hurt, I immediately laughed. Why did I laugh? Because...

Hmm.

Don't tell me you laughed. You laughed.

Because when you become the disinterested observer, when you're observing your own life, right, it's like watching a comedy in some things that we do. You some things are very serious, some things are tragic, but some things are funny, right? So if you were watching a skit on TV, like on Saturday Night Live and something, and some very serious guy doing work gets up and smashes it through his desk, everybody would laugh. Okay, well, when you become the disinterested observer, and you're in the aerial view, you're allowed to laugh at stupid things like that. Yes, it hurt me, but just watching it, it was kind of funny. It was so stupid. You had to laugh how stupid it was, right? I'm in this room every day. I get out of this chair, how many times a day? And I smash it. I walk straight on into the edge of my desk. I have a big bruise. Nothing terrible is gonna happen. It's gonna hurt for a few days, but it was funny. And... I looked at it immediately as, oh, this is what happened on page 375 of my book, right? The genius gets up from his chair and walks into his desk. You see my point. So when you view your life that way, and this is a variation of the Viktor Frankl rule, you have complete control of how you feel. I don't have to get mad. I didn't have to start yelling at myself for being such a moron, which I was at the moment. You know, I didn't have to lament the fact that, God, I'm going to limp for three days. It was just... I did something dumb. It was kind of funny. I'm going to live through it. It is going to be uncomfortable for three or four days. It's just another event in my life. The key is to embrace every moment. It is so hard to do. It is so difficult to do because we all go through things that are unpleasant, painful, sad, disappointing, right? But we have a choice. What Victor Frankl saying is you have a choice at that point. How do you want to react to it? You can cry.

And one of the things you've taught us, we've talked about is that there are no wrong choices, right?

Let's put, it's not that there are no, yes, in a sense, there's no way to know what the right choice is. That's the point. Things may turn out, things may turn out not to work out so well from a choice, but you have no idea. There is no way to know. And there was, we just went through this and we're still in the middle of this unbelievable tragedy in Texas. I mean, if this isn't breaking your heart, I don't know what is. Children swept away in the water. mean, it's just hundreds of people.

Right, therefore there's... Right, right, right, right.

you know, many dead, missing who probably are not going to end up being alive. It's an unbelievable tragedy, right? But the world is a very interesting thing. So here's a story which I heard. I'm pretty sure it's true. You know, you hear things on the news you don't always know, but I'm going to go with this being true because it would be true.

Yes.

A 10 year old girl was about to go off planning to go off to summer camp this summer. sometime right before the end of the summer, she was she injured her knee and ended up tearing a meniscus in her knee and required surgery, which meant she's going to be out of commission, she can't go to the camp. And she was very sad and disappointed. And you can imagine everybody in the family was disappointed. So if you were to label that experience, that event, you would say bad event. know, young child injured, surgery, summer is ruined. Well, the camp this girl was going to go to was Camp Mystic. And she didn't go to Camp Mystic and she could have been the one swept away. Right. So. Now we look back at that event and we say, wow, that injury was probably a godsend. It might have saved her life. So that's how events work. That's why you shouldn't label events because you don't know the long-term outcome. We've talked about this. Every choice, every decision creates a cascade of events, the ultimate outcome of which is impossible to know. In fact, it's impossible to know not because we just don't have all the information. It's just the way the world works. It's the way a quantum world works. You cannot predict the outcome with certainty. You don't know. So when you make a choice or you see an event occur, to label it is... Incorrect because you don't know what the long-term outcome of that choice would be you may not know for a generation It takes time for the world to unfold and the other side of that is when you label it as bad You're going to feel sad depressed unhappy disappointed some negative feeling what Victor Frankl is selling telling us what the Victor Frankl rule says is no No, don't do that

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't put a label on it as bad. Never label it as bad, because you get to choose how you want to feel, right? You don't have to get upset about it. You don't have to get disappointed about it. You don't have to pitch a fit about it. You don't have to go into a rage about it. You don't have to go into a depression about it. He's telling you, guess what? You have been endowed by our creator with this unbelievable power to decide for yourself how you want to feel. Don't put labels on things as good or bad. A, you don't know what the outcome is going to be, just like the story about this girl who had surgery and didn't do her camp mystic. Initially, looks terrible. terrible, then it looks like a godsend. That's the way the world works. And number two is don't put a label on it because when you put a negative label on it, it's going to put you in a negative mood. And Viktor Frankl is trying to tell us, he's whacking us over the head saying, no, no, no, you're in control. I was in a concentration camp, he tells us, and I got through it just fine. Maybe not just fine, but I got through it. But I got through it, right? And I had a full life after that.

Not just fine. Yeah.

But you know, let's, and I'm curious, in the book, and he talks a lot about, obviously, about suffering. I wanna talk a little bit suffering. He says, there are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work, but to enjoy one's life. But what never can be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, Life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering. Why do I bring that up? Because actually in light of what happened in Texas, I kept thinking about the unimaginable suffering that they are going through in Texas. And I think interestingly enough that we as a nation are suffering right along with them. So let's talk for a few minutes about suffering.

Unimaginable.

It's unavoidable. How do we deal with suffering? He saw? Man's inhumanity to man and he dealt he coped. How do we deal with the suffering?

Well, there's a lot of ways you can deal with suffering. Everybody is going to go through some, some worse than others. All of our lives are not equivalent. Some people skate through with minimal suffering. Other people have suffering from the day they're born. Right. So it's not, quote, fair. It doesn't the world for whatever reason doesn't work that way. What Victor Franken is telling us is that it doesn't really matter. Right.

All

your situation is not deterministic. That's really important. if you're born in a situation that's difficult or you live in a situation that's difficult, it doesn't mean you can't have a fulfilling, meaningful life at all. You get to control how you feel. That's number one. Let me read you something from his book, if I might.

Right.

Please do. Okay.

He's talking about exactly what you're talking about, suffering and tragedy. He says, optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential, which at its best always allows for one, turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment. Two, deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better. And three, deriving from life's transitoriness and incentive to take responsible action. So what's he saying? Number one, turning suffering to human achievement. He's saying, okay, you don't have to be the victim. You can turn it around, take your suffering and make something of it, make something positive of it. You know, we talk a lot about the evolution from selfish to selfless, from inward to outward focus. That's what he's telling you, right? How do you turn suffering into achievement? The best way to do it is to go help somebody else make a positive difference in this world. That's number one. And Benjamin Hall would tell you the exact same thing. He will tell you the exact same thing. These are truths. The next thing, deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better. So. You know, if you feel guilty because you survived the concentration camp and everybody else didn't, right, or somebody who's in a terrific, you know, the guy who was in the plane crash in India, he's the only guy that walked away, everybody else. People have a lot of guilt about things when they're the ones that walk away. Soldiers in battle, they're only one who comes out of a firefight. You know, again, people in concentration camps, people have guilt. And what he's saying to you is that's not determinative either. Same thing, turn it around. You get to choose how you feel. You get to choose what you want to make for your life. You're never a victim. That's the message, right? We live in a victim society. And you know I have railed about this for eons. Why do I rail about it? Because I'm insensitive? No, I'm like, you know, may I cry at television commercials? No, because I realize you're making people powerless when they are actually super powerful.

The Viktor Frankl rule, you're never a victim unless you let yourself be a victim. Don't give that power away. When you let somebody else make you feel terrible, that's a big mistake. You wouldn't give them the key to your house. You wouldn't give them the password to your checking account. Why in the world are you going to let them determine how you feel? No, that's yours and yours alone. That's your power. That is what Viktor Frankl is telling you. You get to determine that. And the last thing you talked about, derive it from life's transitoriness and incentive to take responsible action. We know life is finite. It doesn't go on forever for anybody. That's the message we've been talking about for months here now, is that we're here for a reason, right? Take that sense of impermanence, that we're only here for a short time, and do something with it. Do something super positive with it. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's in the service of others and to benefit the world in which you live. As long as you're doing that, that's successful, meaningful life. That's what's going to put joy in your life. And another thing we talk about is what's that last moment on earth? Let's say you're not demented. Let's say you have your faculties right up until the hour before you pass away. I've seen lots of people like this. I think if I recall, your mother was, I don't remember, your mother, had she lost her ability to reason before she passed away? I don't remember in it.

No, no, no, no, not my mother, no. Yeah.

She didn't, right? Right, she didn't. So right up until the end, right? OK. What's that last thought people are going to have at the end? It might be I'm going to miss somebody or whatever. But probably at some point the thought is, what did I do with the life I had? What did I make of it? Right? At the end, if you can say, if people can say about you, you know, she was a really good person. She cared about other people. She always gave her the best. She was a person of integrity. And that's what people, by the way, are going to say about you, Enid, for sure. Then, wow, wow.

my only my relatives are going to say that yeah now that would be nice.

No, but wow, right? That's what people are going to say because that's what you have at the end. And what Victor Franklin is trying to tell us throughout his book and his other writings is that you have complete control over how you feel. Now do something with that. Make something of your life. Be positive. Don't be negative. Don't be a victim. turn your life into a meeting, bring meaning into your life in your own way. One thing that we see, he and I see a little differently, and my inclination is to assume he's right and I'm wrong, because he's a really smart guy, is that he implies that each of us has our own purpose. I agree in the sense that we each have our own course. But the only thing I would say is we have a universal purpose, which is to make that evolution from selfish to selfless, and with that we're focused to make the world a better place. I'm pretty sure he would agree with that. I think what he's talking about is the mechanism by which you do that. That's an individual thing. It's an individual thing. But the bottom line is the same, right? Don't waste it. Don't squander it. Don't ever be a victim. You have complete control of how you feel. I mean, if you want to live a life with less angst, less stress and more meaning, just follow the Victor Franco rule.

Yes, I think that's right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Number one, and number two, remember the life is transient and think about what you want to, that last thought you have in your head at the end. And number three, that we are here for a purpose, to make this evolution, to become more outward folks and take care of other people. If you have that, then there's no reason to have angst. And especially in light of the metaphor of the book, that every page in your book, represents every moment is a different page in your book and every page is equal. There's no one moment of your life that's more important than the others. They are all 100 % equal, otherwise you wouldn't get from point A to point B. They're all really critical. So embrace them all. When you stand up and smack into your desk, it's okay to laugh, right?

I bet you Victor Frankl didn't do a lot of laughing in the camps. You know, you always tell stories. I just want to tell one quick one, because you talked about my mother and we talked about time and we talked about last moments. It was in the year 2002. I was flying down to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with my mother and got a call that she was very, very ill. And I went down and my prayer on the plane was that I wanted her, I wanted to see her before the end. But they said you wouldn't, that she was not going to make it, but come, come. I flew down and I got there. And my mother was actually purple because the first stages of death were. And I walked into her hospital room and she was very much alive, but very much not alive. And she looked at me, opened her eyes, smiled and said, thank you. And died in my arms. She waited for me.

my goodness.

She waited for me. Kind of interesting about time and all of that and meaning, but there was a great meaning in that moment, I hope for her and I know for me. So while those are choices we make, my choice was to get on that plane at that very moment. It was the right choice, whether it was wrong or right, but important, you know.

No, don't, no, don't what I'm saying to you about choices. I don't want people to get confused is that different choices work out different ways, but there's no way to know, right? Make, make a choice and, and just let it go because you have no idea what the outcome is going to be. You know, I find, I find this conversation to me. We've had it many times. I think about this, as you know, day in and day out, but I'll tell you one short, I don't know if I mentioned this to you before, but,

No, no, no, I get it. get it. Yeah. Sure. That's right. Yeah. And stick. Yeah, right. Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

one of my grandsons who's very smart and very sweet. He's got a giant heart. But sometimes he's at that age where sometimes he's his own worst enemy and he gets stubborn and he gets locked into a point of view and he can't get out of it. And you once asked me what I teach my grandchildren. And just recently I taught him the Victor Frank-a-Rule and I called it the Victor Frank-a-Rule. I said, I'm gonna teach you something that's called the Viktor Frank rule. He doesn't have to know who Viktor Frank led and tell me he was in a concentration camp. You know, he's not even quite eight years old. I wasn't gonna put that on it. But I just told him, this is a really cool rule because it's super powerful. It's gonna make your life fantastic.

Right, right, right.

because most people don't know they have the superpower, but I'm going to tell you about it. And now you're going to know that you have the superpower and it's going to make your life fantastic. And I told them that Victor Frankl, you have complete control of how you feel. You don't have to be sad. You don't have to be mad. If your brother does something you don't like, you don't have to pitch a fit, right? Something happens. It doesn't work out your way. You don't have to get upset. You get to decide how you want to feel. There's no, that's just the way it is. How cool is that? Right? So you teach a seven year old that. And it's not the last time he's going to hear it from me, I can assure you. But what do you do for your grandchildren or your kids or your people you're close to? You can buy them presents, you can take them out for dinner. These are all fun things. not opposed to any of them. But if you can give a kid a tool like that and make it stick over time, that's better than all his college tuition. That's going to turn.

Yeah.

That's going to make for a wonderful life. And of course, that's what I want for him. I love the pieces. He's adorable. So this Victor Frankl rule is no is no small thing, right?

Yeah.

And a lot less expensive too. Yeah, no, I agree. Totally. And that's why I wanted to spend a whole episode on this. It's important. I think it's worth listening to. We are running out of time and I want to end it. I usually end it with you. I usually end it with something from your book, but I have to end it with something from Victor Frankl's book. And he says, a human being is not one thing among others. Things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes within the limits of endowment and environment, he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, In this living laboratory and on the testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself. Which one is actualized depends on decisions, but not on conditions. Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz. However, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Israel on his lips. Final words, doc?

Not after that. No, he's you what? You can't say it better than that. That's right.

Well, we wish you all peace, wish you all harmony, we wish you all... We all know that we have meaning in our lives just to find them, to figure out how we get there. Just... Yeah. Markekleinmd (30:41.1) Just, last thing I would say is go practice the Victor Frankl rule as often as you can. You'll find your life is much more joyful and meaningful.

No question. Thank you, doctor. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you all.

Thank you, Enid. Another great episode together. Love you. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Bye-bye.

Love you too. Peace.