Man's Search for Meaning
Austrian neurologist Victor Frankl stresses that we are not at the mercy of our environment or events, because we dictate how we allow them to shape us. In Man's Search for Meaning (1946), he explains that humans have two psychological strengths that allow us to bear painful and possibly devastating situations and to move forward; these are the capacity for decision, and freedom of attitude. A colleague joined me for the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge this May. He worked for Deutsche Bank in 2001; he was on a business trip in São Paulo when the South Tower collapsed on top of the entire trading floor. I told him that I was not existent on 9/11. "So were some of my coworkers that day. And that is why I am grateful to be speaking with you here, now." Another executive, Mike Brady, shared in a remembrance session that he had sprinted from Merrill Lynch in financial district to midtown after the North Tower was struck. He had talked about his reconstruction efforts of the s...