Have you been wronged?

Have you been wronged? Has something that

happened to you kept you from doing what you

want to do, or living the life you want?

If so, I’m truly sorry to hear that. I wish the

world was the sort of place where things like

that didn’t happen.

The good news is, you have the power to turn

this situation around. Whatever happened, no

matter how bad it was, it doesn’t have to

define your life. It could be your whole story,

or it could be just an experience from the past

that you’ve overcome, one of many things that

have made you stronger. Only you can choose,

and you do have a choice. You can keep

holding onto it, or you can let it go. It is

standing between you and happiness.

Even if something unspeakably horrible has

happened to you, you can still rise above it.

Rape victims, children sold into slavery, people

who have been blinded or crippled, even

Holocaust survivors have managed to

overcome the atrocities committed on them

and go on to live positive lives.

Consider this quote from Man’s Search for

Meaning, a book by Viktor Frankl about how he

and others survived the Holocaust and rose

above their time in the concentration camps:

_We who lived in concentration camps

can remember the men who walked

through the huts comforting others,

giving away their last piece of bread.

They may have been few in number, but

they offer sufficient proof that everything

can be taken from a man but one thingthe last of the human freedoms—to

choose one’s attitude in any given set of

circumstances, to choose one’s own

way._

In life’s worst circumstances, these people

didn’t let anyone make them victims. You don’t

have to either. Starting now, choose to define

yourself in a new way, not by what other

people do to you or have done in the past, but

by what you do. Exercise your freedom to

choose your own way.