Ideas on Mental Health & Meaning
Preventing Burnout & Compassion Fatigue in Times of Stress
It is difficult, sometimes if may feel nearly impossible, to maintain our own health and wellness when trying to take care of others - whether that means taking care of an ailing family member, or an organization or corporation. Kyla Cofer, talks about how to prevent...
Discovering vs. Making Meaning
The great thing about working with Rabbi B. is that we don't really have a plan - we start with a topic and see where it goes, and we end up covering a lot on the topics of mental health, meaning, logotherapy, and a whole bunch of, hopefully, helpful information. In...
Resiliency at Work – from a Military Perspective
Resiliency continues to be an important topic in our world today. The better we are at it, the more we train ourselves to be resilient in good time, the better we will "bounce back" from difficult times. Matthew Lostaglia ("like 'lasagna', you don't say the G") has a...
Hiking the Mountain – to Preach, Teach, Coach, & Serve
"Preach, Teach, Coach, & Serve" - these are the words Jay Thompson has lived by for the past decade. He lives these principles through his work with HikeTheMountain.org; helping businesses and organizations craft their culture with intentionality and purpose. In...
The Meaning of Labor Day (and podcast 2 for 1!)
Although the "true" end of summer is not for a few more weeks, Labor Day in the US typically marks the transition from Summer to Fall, and for many of us life changes as kids go back to school or college. Labor Day can also be a time to slow down and think about the...
The Future of the Frankl Archives w/ Alex Vesely
We are so close to a feature length film on the life of Dr. Viktor Frankl! For this episode, we went deep into the archives to pull up one of my previous discuss with Alex Vesely - Dr. Frankl's grandson. What a great chat - hopefully we get to talk again sometime...
Desperation, Redemption, & Recovery
We seem to be facing an ever increasing substance use and abuse problem. But recovery is possible. In this episode, we go back to a discussion with a former client from my days in adolescent substance abuse treatment. We continue our discussion on substance abuse,...
Anxiety, Trauma, & EMDR – Return of the Podcast
That's right, The Meaning Project Podcast is BACK!!! It seems like we have been an experiencing increasing rates of anxiety and trauma, post-COVID. A recent statistic I read suggests "90% of people will face some kind of trauma in their life." In this episode of the...
Difficult Decisions in Affluent Times
We live in an age of affluence in many respects. The mass media bombard us with stimuli and we have to protect ourselves against them by filtering them, as it were. We are offered a lot of possibilities and have to make our choice among them. In short, we have to make...
Disappearing Values
Again, Frankl said this in The Will to Meaning in 1969 - over 50 years ago!! Today we live in an age of crumbling and vanishing traditions. Thus, instead of new values being created by finding unique meanings, the reverse happens. Universal values are on the wane....
Avoiding Tension
Another one of my favorites, and one I talk about often, from The Will to Meaning: "Tension is not something to avoid unconditionally, and peace of mind, or peace of soul, is not anything to avow unconditionally. A sound amount of tension, such as that tension which...
On the Future of Psychiatry & Pharmacotherapy
In the 1969 book The Will to Meaning, Dr. Frankl discusses his views on using medication to treat "endogenous", or physically manifested, depression, suggesting that in some situations, medication or even ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, might be warranted. What holds...