WWII POW & Choice: Lesson Learned
May 31, 2016How did you reflect on memorial day?
Thanks to the brave men and women who have served and continue to serve our country, we are granted freedom. Unfortunately, far too many of us never fully appreciate and leverage our single greatest freedom: choice.
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor says, “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.”
Now imagine it is World War II and you survived a horrific plane crash, followed by a seven-week journey across the Pacific in a raft only to face near starvation and unspeakable torture in Japanese POW camps. This is the true story of Louis “Louie” Zamperini. His tale is one of those that would be dismissed as fiction if it was not known to be true.
When all of his extrinsic freedoms were taken away he relied on his greatest intrinsic one, choice of mindset. Rather than choose victimhood, and of all circumstances this would seem acceptable, he focused on a future of possibilities. His positive mindset not only saved his own life but that of countless other POW’s.
You might recognize this story. Angelina Jolie did a movie on his remarkable survival called, “Unbroken.”
As you enjoy the start of your summer, remember our armed servicemen/women, and your freedom of choice in mindset. It is the most powerful of all our freedoms.
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