Letting Meaning Lead: Turning Steps Into Light
Created at: September 7, 2025
When meaning leads, even the smallest step becomes a march toward light. — Viktor Frankl
From Compass to Momentum
Frankl’s line suggests that meaning functions first as a compass and then as propulsion. When purpose clarifies direction, even a hesitant action becomes more than motion; it becomes momentum. The smallest step no longer feels trivial because it aligns with a story larger than the self. In that alignment, effort converts into significance, and significance converts into energy.
Frankl’s Camp-Tested Insight
This conviction was forged under extreme darkness. In Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), Viktor Frankl recounts how prisoners who could locate a why—love for a spouse, a manuscript to finish, faith in a future task—could endure the how of the camps. Echoing Nietzsche, he observed that a durable purpose reorganizes suffering into sacrifice. Thus, the metaphor of marching toward light is not naive optimism but a disciplined stance: meaning does not erase pain; it orients it.
Why Small Steps Matter
Once meaning leads, scale becomes secondary. Behavioral science shows that tiny, consistent actions can unlock disproportionate gains. Amabile and Kramer’s The Progress Principle (2011) found that perceiving even modest progress releases motivation and creativity. Similarly, BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits (2019) demonstrates how micro-steps, anchored to purpose, generate reliable change. Therefore, a single phone call, a paragraph written, or a short walk is not merely activity; it is evidence that the narrative is advancing.
Choosing Meaning Over Pleasure or Power
Frankl contrasted the will to meaning with the will to pleasure or power. Short-term comfort or control often evaporates when conditions worsen, but meaning compounds under strain. This aligns with Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), which ties well-being to autonomy, competence, and relatedness—qualities deepened by purpose. In other words, when meaning leads, satisfaction becomes a byproduct, not the goal, and resilience ceases to be accidental.
Resilience as a Coherent Story
Meaning also weaves adversity into a coherent narrative. Antonovsky’s sense of coherence (1987) links health to experiences that feel comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful. Likewise, Tedeschi and Calhoun’s work on posttraumatic growth (1996) shows that people can reorganize shattered assumptions into a renewed purpose, not by denying pain but by situating it. Consequently, each small step serves as punctuation—a comma that keeps the sentence of one’s life moving forward.
The Light We March Toward Together
Moreover, meaning often expands in community. Haslam et al.’s The New Psychology of Health (2018) demonstrates that shared social identities give people purpose and stamina. Consider volunteers who tidy a neglected park: the effort is modest, yet coordinated intention alters a neighborhood’s horizon. In this way, light becomes less a distant beacon and more a collective glow, brightened by many coordinated steps.
Practices That Let Meaning Lead
Practically, purpose can be operationalized. Try a quick values inventory, then tie one daily action to a top value. Engage in job crafting (Wrzesniewski et al., 2001) by reframing tasks around service or mastery. Use story-editing (Wilson, 2011) to rename setbacks as training. Keep a brief progress log to leverage the progress principle, and schedule one weekly act of contribution. With such scaffolding, tiny movements stop feeling trivial and start reading as chapters in a luminous story.