Whenever you’re tired, exhausted, and ready to give up, just remember why you’re doing what you’re doing. Finding the “why” behind the “what” can motivate you to keep going, and empower you to press on.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl recounts his time as a Jew in the German concentration camps. It was there he came face-to-face with man’s instinctive hunger for meaning, and witnessed how a sense of meaning can sustain us even in the midst of horrific suffering. He readily quotes the Nietzschean maxim, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how,” having seen its truth in the bleakest of conditions.
We will never be in those same situations, but having something worth living for is still powerful. When you have a “why” for doing what you’re doing, that “why” infuses meaning into everything. And when you find meaning in your path and actions, it’s all the more likely you’ll stay the course, even in the most difficult of times.