Creativity Unleashed:Significant Work

One of my all-time favorite books is “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. He kept his body and hopes alive by thinking about seeing his wife again and by dreaming of lecturing after the war about the psychological lessons that could be learned from this experience. He writes about a number of these lessons in his book. “The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life,” he says at one point and goes on to tell us of three ways of finding meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person) and in courage during difficult times. Part of his point can be restated in this way: significant work can make our lives meaningful. And creative geniuses, above all else, are the people who find meaning in their lives by dedicating themselves to work that is significant to them.