How can you live the life you want to live? Frankl’s answer:
Live as if this is your second chance and you’ve already made your mistakes the first time.
His reasoning goes like this: The essence of your existence is to live a responsible life. Responsibility is always “to” something, a response to a question.
But who is asking the questions? Are we asking life to do what it’s supposed to do for us, from an attitude of entitlement? Is it not rather that life asking us the questions? Life is saying to us: “You’ve been given this life. Now what are you going to do with it?”
Frankl suggests that we imagine we’re asking this question far into the future. How will I look back on my life? Did I do something responsible with it or did I squander it? Was I responsible to my life?
I think of this when I see someone who is depressed, or when I myself am down in the dumps. What you make of your life is your life! This is it. If you spend your whole life being depressed, that will be the sum total of your life. You’re not going to get another one. Is this what you want?
The goal of this line of questioning is not to bully yourself out of depression but to take a stand toward what’s happening and not be passive about it. A colleague related how his client was able to acknowledge his depression, and say to himself “Okay, this is part of my life. This is something I have to accept as a fact of life and battle with.” And paradoxically, that acknowledgment already made him feel better.
(based on “The Essence of Existence” from “Logotherapy in a Nutshell” at the end of Man’s Search for Meaning)