The Choice  
Dr Edith Eva Eger  

Summary

Beautiful memoir written by a famous psychologist who lived during the Holocaust

Notes

Just as we act as our own prison, we can also be our own liberators

When we force our truths and stories into hiding, secrets can become their own trauma, their own prison

Freedom lies in learning to embrace what happened. Freedom means we master the courage to dismantle the prison brick by brick

Suffering is universal but victimhood is optional

There is no hierarchy of suffering. There’s nothing that makes one’s pain better or worse than another

We cannot choose to have a life free of hurt. But we can choose to be free, to escape the past, no matter what befalls us and embrace the possible

All your ecstasy in life will come from the inside

We have a choice; to pay attention to what we’ve lost to to pay attention to what we have

No one can take away fro you what you’ve put in your own mind

Survival is a matter of interdependence. It’s not possible alone.

To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself and trust that you are enough

Running doesn’t heal pain - it makes it worse

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing - those one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way

If you’re going to live, you have to stand up for something

Perfectionism is the belief that something is broken - you

To be free is to live in the present. The only place where we can exercise our freedom of choice is the present

Only I can do what I can do the way I can do it

You can live to avenge the past or you can live to enrich the present

The real feeling disguised by the mask of anger is usually fear

We all bear suffering. We can’t erase the pain. But we are free to accept who we are and what has been done to use and move on

This is the work of healing. You deny what hurts, what you fear. You avoid it at all costs. Then you find a way to welcome and embrace what you’re most afraid of. Then you let go.

To save yourself, you’re going to have to give up the imagine of who you were supposed to be

To heal we embrace the dark. We walk through the shadow of the valley on our way to light

Our painful experiences aren’t a liability, they’re a gift

Doing what is right is rarely the same as doing what is safe

To run away from our past or to fight against our present pain is to imprison ourselves. Freedom is accepting what is and forgiving ourselves, in opening our hearts to discover the miracles that exist now

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