Feeling Persecuted? Two people and four questions for choosing differently

Do you feel unappreciated? Did you get passed over for a position or opportunity you deserved? Maybe you’ve been punished for doing the right thing or, even worse, for reasons you don’t understand at all. I know of two people who faced greater challenges and chose differently.

These two people didn’t just get punished, demoted or fired. They were imprisoned. One for life for doing right. The other sentenced to death for no good reason.*

Nelson Mandela watched the injustice inflicted by the apartheid system of South Africa and set about changing the system. For his stance he was sentenced to life at the Robben Island prison with hard labor. For doing the right thing he faced a life of breaking rocks in the limestone quarry and confinement in a small cell. Most people in his situation define their context as prison and themselves as prisoner. Mandela made a different choice. In his 18 years on “The Island” he mentored many other young activists and political prisoners. He was so effective at this that Robben Island earned the nickname of “Mandela University and he earned the nickname of “Professor.”

We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

Nelson Mandela

Victor Fankl, a noted neurologist and psychiatrist of his time, was sent to the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Millions died in these camps. Many victims of the gas chambers or firing squad. Many others defined themselves as victims and simply gave up. Frankl made a different choice. He choose to view his confinement as a research opportunity with himself and the other prisoners as the subject matter. His observations of who survived the experience became the book Man’s Search for Meaning and formed the foundation for a whole new school of psychology – Logotherapy.  Instead of victim, Frankl defined himself as researcher and challenged himself to find meaning in his suffering and in the suffering of others.

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

Viktor E. Frankl

The stories of these two people remind me that I have a choice. I can let my context define me or I can define myself in that context.

4 Questions to help you make a different choice:

·       Can I gain new competencies or skills in my current situation?

·       What opportunities does my current situation create that didn’t exist before?

·       How might I make my thoughts and actions become an inspiration to others?

·       What might be the best possible outcomes of this situation and what can I do to make these things happen?

*Victor Frankl not only survived long enough to be liberated by the allies, go on to write Man’s Search for Meaning and found the Logotherapy School of Psychology, he also lived until 1997.

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