The Most Powerful Thing You Can Do While Suffering (And It’s Not What You Think)

Life Can Be Hard.

You get passed up for the promotion you wanted at work.

The investment you made—the one you were sure would work out—goes south.

The business deal you’ve been working on for months falls apart. Epicly.

Your kid doesn’t make the team.

Your dog gets sick.

On and on it goes.

Or worse, a family member falls ill.

Someone you love passes away. Gone without warning.

And it all tears at your heart. Rips at it. Crushes it. Fills you with sadness. Makes you suffer. And it begins to cloud your mind. Worse, it begins to cloud how you view others.

In many ways, the Buddhists were right—life is suffering. And even though it doesn’t feel like it at times, you’re not alone in that suffering. We all experience it.

But this blog isn’t about you. It’s not about feeling sorry for yourself.

It’s about something far more important.

This is about how you take suffering and engage with others.

Every year I read, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, understood suffering at a level few ever will. And yet, he taught that even in the worst conditions, man has one ultimate freedom—the ability to choose his response. He proved that suffering can either break you or shape you. And what you do with suffering, that choice?

It’s yours. It’s always yours.

We are failing each other when we accept people as they are. When we see only what is, we rob them of what could be. If you take a man as he is—if you speak to his weaknesses, cater to his limitations, and expect nothing more—you chain him to mediocrity. You make him smaller. But if you see him not for what he is, but for what he could become, you light a fire in him. You make him rise. You give him no choice but to step forward into the man he was meant to be.

Frankl somehow could do this in the midst of atrocities around him that would break 99% of humans. But somehow he did it.

And this concept of seeing someone as they should be and lifting it up to what could be, this is true for every person you meet. Your children. Your friends. Your colleagues. Your own reflection in the mirror.

Do not settle for what is. Speak to the highest version of them. Call it out. Challenge them. Demand their greatness. Because when you do, you don’t just change them—you change the world. The world is shaped by those who dare to believe in something more. Be one of them.

I lost a parent when I was young.

I didn’t get to say goodbye.

I didn’t see it coming.

And it tore my heart in two.

It shattered something inside me.

It hurt my soul to its core.

I could barely speak, let alone acknowledge it.

And worse, it clouded my view of the outside world and I closed off.

Pain does that. It blinds you. Warps everything. Makes you skeptical. Bitter. Focused ponly inward. Almost egotistical.

It convinces you you’re the only one suffering.

And if you let it, it makes you smaller.

I see that now. Back then, I didn’t. I let my pain shape how I saw others. And in doing so, I probably made my own life worse—without even realizing it.

At a minimum I definitely wasn’t trying to lift others up.

But here’s what I wish I had known:

Everyone suffers. Everyone carries something.

And if your own pain makes you blind to that, you miss the whole point of being alive.

You stop seeing people for who they could be. You stop believing in them. You stop lifting them higher.

That is a tragedy greater than suffering itself.

Because you are not just here to endure. You are here to elevate. To call out the greatness in others—even when you feel broken inside.

Especially when you feel broken inside.

Pain is not an excuse to withdraw. It’s a call to engage.

To see someone not for what they are today, but for where they could be.

So whatever you’re going through, don’t let it harden you. Don’t let it steal your ability to lift someone else higher.

See the best in them. Speak to their potential.

Treat them as they COULD be and watch them become what they SHOULD be.

And watch how, in doing so, you change the world around you and begin to heal yourself.

I’m telling you this works.

I’d like to challenge you. I’d like to challenge us.

No matter what kind of suffering you’re dealing with. No matter what bad stuff is going on in your life. No matter what pressures, pains, or fears you’re experiencing.

When you engage with loved ones and friends, see them and treat them as they should be.

Remind them what they’re capable of.

Remind them what they could be.

Help them become a better version of themselves by seeing the potential when they don’t.

These little things, are the big things in life. And they create ripples in the universe of higher and higher potential. Higher and higher success. And a better world.

Let's create this ripple.

Treat someone as they should be.

Video: Viktor Frankl On Treating People as They SHOULD Be

The best is ahead,

Victaurs