Meaning = Suffering + Justification, Letting Go, and Creating What We Want to See

We'll start this episode wrapping up the cognitive neuroscience approach to understanding feelings from the last one. This will help us understand that we often see in others what we expect to. Looking for the good in others helps us find good, whereas focusing on bad will leave us seeing and experiencing bad from them. Then, we'll discover that suffering actually helps to create meaning, proposed by Viktor Frankl in "Man's Search for Meaning." By creating goals that form justifications for things that appear as suffering, those things no longer appear negative (such as doing housework).  Moreso, they leave us feeling "sculpted," for the most enjoyable things in life are always hard. Finally, we'll learn that we can't always control what we feel, but can control how we want to respond to it. We are often more anxious about the thought of feeling something than the feeling itself. This is because we feel like we always have to be in control. The truth is that it's okay to feel lonely and sad. By acknowledging feelings and seeing them for what they are - temporary normal occurrences - we can be closer to ourselves and our partners. And learn to let go, too.

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