Victor Frankl was a young psychiatrist when he was scooped up by the Nazis and placed into a concentration camp. He watched his friends and family systematically being killed over several years.
Throughout his time in the camps, he was exposed to a wide range of adversity. He realized that from his first hand experience, he ultimately had control over how he reacted to his environment.
Only he would decide how he would view his life, even though he was imprisoned. Although his Nazi captors could bestow inhumane conditions, they couldn’t control how he reacted to it..
From his experiences he wrote the book, Man’s Search For Meaning, one of “the ten most influential books in the United States.” At the time of his death in 1997, the book had sold over 10 million copies and had been translated into 24 languages.
He channeled his adversity into an awareness of the power that one ultimately has over their environment.