La Hero on a Mission The Path to a Meaningful Life

Not content with his own negative attitude, the author developed a more positive way of going through life. Mr. Miller’s own turning point comes after reading work of the Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived captivity in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Analog to telling a story, Mr. Miller explains his role model of four personifications we all play - for shorter or longer time - in our life: the victim, the villain, the hero and the guide. Only the hero and the guide have a positive impact in our life, the victim and the villain are their negative counterparts. The hero chooses his life to have meaning. He takes his fate in his own hands, makes sovereign decisions according to plans he foresees for the future. He will not always be successful, but in the end he will succeed. The victim on the other hand, with a belief of being doomed, lets fate decide what his life will look like. Like in a story the hero gets our sympathy, depending on the story being well or badly told. The book is about how to write a good life story, a life story whose hero we can sympathize with and therefore we will put effort in to succeed. First of all the reader is provoked to put a eulogy about one’s own life on paper. Based on this outlook at one’s own life comes a ten year, a five year and a one year ‘Vision’, a kind of To-do-Lists for the coming years. As with all these life manuals goes, only by doing and holding through a positive result might be acquired. There is no guarantee. What makes this book interesting is the coherency and the consistency of its underlying theory. To me it is worth the try and the effort.