What's the One Thing the Nazis Could Never Take from Viktor Frankl?

Viktor Frankl wrote this after surviving the Nazi concentration camps. He had watched everything taken from him: his freedom, his family, his work, his dignity. Everything except one thing: the freedom to choose how he would respond.

That's not inspiration-speak. That's the distilled wisdom of a man who learned it the hardest way possible. He wrote about it in detail within his book Man's Search for Meaning.

We spend a lot of our energy trying to change situations. And sometimes we can. But there are a lot of moments we can't control.

In those moments when we can't choose what's happening, we get to choose who we become. You get to choose who you become in response to what you cannot change.

In his book Frankl talks about our 'tragic triad' : pain, guilt, and death. The things we cannot escape. And his great insight was that these aren't the end of meaning. These are where meaning becomes possible. Because the only thing left to control is yourself. Your response. Your dignity. Your choice about what this means.

When you stop trying to change what cannot be changed, you have a chance to start changing yourself instead.