Quotes About Empowerment

Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen. We can choose our response, Frankl was saying, even under the specter of death.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Often, though, people carry around the belief that the majority of their problems are circumstantial or situational—which is to say, external. And if the problems are caused by everyone and everything else, by stuff out there, why should they bother to change themselves? Even if they decide to do things differently, won't the rest of the world still be the same?

We grow in connection with others. Everyone needs to hear that other person's voice saying, I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another.

He wrote, "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.

We can't convince people not to be self-destructive, because for now, the self-destruction serves them. What we can do is try to help them understand themselves better and show them how to ask themselves the right questions until something happens—either internally or externally—that leads them to do their own persuading.

Everyone needs to hear that other person's voice saying, I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another. In therapy we say, Let's edit your story.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.

And so it begins, at last. Charlotte doesn't leave this time. Instead, she stays in therapy until she learns to drive her own car, navigating her way through the world more safely, looking both ways, making many wrong turns but finding her way back, always, to where she truly wants to go.

Sometimes we imprison ourselves with a narrative of self-punishment. If

One of the most important steps in therapy is helping people take responsibility for their current predicaments,

One of the most important steps in therapy is helping other people take responsibility for their current predicaments, because once they realize that they can (and must) construct their own lives, they're free to generate change.

In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

once they realize that they can (and must) construct their own lives, they're free to generate change.

I particularly liked this quote from Frankl's book: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life. But

At some point, being a fulfilled adult means taking responsibility for the course of your own life and accepting the fact that now you're in charge of your choices.

leaving the world a better place than she found it.

I particularly liked this line from Frankl's book: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Rather than steering people straight to the heart of the problem, we nudge them to arrive there on their own, because the most powerful truths—the ones people take the most seriously—are those they come to, little by little, on their own.

stimulus and response in order to choose his freedom.

If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're okay with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're okay with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're OK with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.