After some escapades tonight and finding myself overwhelmed by social fears and anxiety, I found myself looking into how to overcome fear. It led me to a Seinfeld episode in which George comes to the conclusion that his life sucks because of his choices and he decides to start doing the opposite. Apparently in the episode, his life gets a lot better.
Turns out, this seems to relate to a form of therapy called paradoxical-intention. It's pretty interesting, actually.
Long story short: the founder of this therapy is Viktor Frankl, one of the people we studied in my CPAC class. Fascinating man: survived the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and became a pioneer of one of the major schools of thought about psychology. He wrote a book called
Man's Search for Meaning.I want to listen to this book, but here is a quote from it that is enriching to me like spiritual food:
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible." - Frankl
Dang. :P
