Prisoners Of Our Thoughts

1. Exercise the freedom to choose your attitude-in all situations, no matter how desperate they may appear or actually be, you always have the ultimate freedom to choose your attitude
2. Realize your will to meaning-commit authentically to meaningful values and goals that only you can actualize and fulfill.
3. Detect the meaning of life's moments-only you can answer for your own life by detecting the meaning at any given moment and assuming responsibility for weaving your unique tapestry of existence.
4. Don't work against yourself-avoid becoming so obsessed with or fixated on an intent or outcome that you actually work against the desired result.
5. Look at yourself from a distance-only human beings possess the capacity to look at themselves out of some perspective or distance, including the uniquely human trait known as your "sense of humor."
6. Shift your focus of attention-deflect your attention from the problem situation to something else and build your coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and change.
7. Extend beyond yourself-manifest the human spirit at work by relating and being directed to something more than yourself.

"All human beings, Frankl would say, ultimately have both the freedom and responsibility to position themselves along two key dimensions of life," writes Pattakos. These two key dimensions are success-failure and despair-meaning. Where are you right now in this continuum? Are you where you want to be?
"There is something in us that can rise above and beyond everything we think possible. Our instinct for meaning, at work and in our daily life, is ours right now, at this very moment. As long as we are not a prisoner of our thoughts," concludes Pattakos.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather recognize that it is he who is being asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and only he can answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Viktor Frankl