Hi Felix,

You say you’ve “let go” but you continue to be under an enormous amount of stress. There’s an old Chinese proverb that says Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. I wonder if the tasks you are undertaking are too much for you, Felix, making your goals seem unreachable and causing you to lose a sense of future.

You may have heard of Viktor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist/psychiatrist who was a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps of WWII where several of his family members, including his pregnant wife, perished. Life in the concentration camps taught Viktor that our main motivation in life is not pleasure, power or wealth but rather meaning. He believed that we can discover this meaning in life by “the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering” and that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing…to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Felix, it’s easier to have a positive outlook during hard times when there’s hope that your situation will eventually improve, but you seem to have lost all hope. You don’t have a good attitude about your situation because you don’t see an end to it. Your goals seem unreachable and you’ve lost a sense of future.

Is it time to set different goals?

B