The incredible story of Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who during WW II was deported to several camps in Czechoslovakia and Poland. His wife and children died, as did many of his fellow camp inmates. The circumstances were so discouraging that even many of the strongest people lost the will to keep fighting back.

Yet Viktor Frankl survived the horrors, and those conditions seemed unable to keep him in their grip. By carefully observing the behaviour of his fellow inmates, he discovered a powerful weapon that would help him for the rest of his life, even in the most difficult of circumstances. He shared his insights with his comrades, who in turn drew strength and courage from them.

The very last human freedom

Frankl arrived at the insight that - even in the most difficult circumstances - there is one freedom that nobody can take from you, namely: the choice under all circumstances to define your own attitude and to choose your own path. On this basis he decided that no one would ever hurt him again. However much suffering he may have been subject to, he decided for himself whether it would affect him or not. Between the stimuli from outside and his reaction he found his greatest strength: the freedom to choose.   

Stimulus and response

In the best-selling management book of all time, ´The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People´, Stephen Covey uses the story of Viktor Frankl to expound upon his views of proactivity. Covey says that the freedom to choose arises as soon as you are conscious of stimulus and response. Stimulus is the incentive that you receive, for example today´s corona crisis. The response is how you react to this situation. The space between the two is your freedom to choose, and the place where you take responsibility for your own life.

Reactive behaviour and proactive behaviour

Reactive people allow themselves to be completely influenced by what’s going on around them. They let themselves be carried along, and they place the responsibility for what happens to them outside of themselves. They don´t understand that they possess the freedom to choose. Their response is entirely determined by the stimulus.

By contrast, proactive people make use of their freedom to choose and decide for themselves how they will respond to certain situations. They are aware that they often cannot change a great deal about the situation itself - but they know that they can determine their own behaviour. They remain in control and assume responsibility for their actions.

Training proactive behaviour

Identify for yourself a situation in which you often display reactive behaviour. Make 3 columns on a sheet of paper. At the head of the first column put "stimulus" and in it describe the situation. Call the third column "response" and in it describe your normal reaction. The second column stands for freedom to choose. In this middle column, try to formulate as many alternative responses as possible, ones that are different from what you´d normally do. After that, you can decide for yourself what you do with it. Good luck!