Welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus.

Thank you for listening and letting me share this practice with you that has changed my life

and I believe continues to change people's lives throughout the world.

So today I want to talk about freedom.

And to do that, I want to introduce a quote.

Many of you will know this man and inspiration to many of us, Victor Frankel.

And in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, this is a book he wrote after surviving

the Holocaust and reflecting on what it was that enabled him to not just survive, but to thrive.

And I read this quote, and it occurred to me that it encapsulates something beautiful about what we're working with in a mindfulness practice and in a human life.

Frankl writes, when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

It's such a simple quote. I'll read it again. When we are no longer able to change a situation,

we are challenged to change ourselves.

So here is a man, here is a person writing from the extreme of the extremes.

When Victor Frankl talks about not being able to change a situation, he's talking about having witnessed some of the most atrocious acts ever committed by one human against another ever in the

history of human civilization.

It's a really poignant account in man's search of meaning how Victor Frankel talks about

this ultimate power to respond not to outward, which we don't often have ultimate control of,

and moving to a kind of inner freedom where we choose our response.

And this is what I want to talk about today, because if we pay close attention,

we will notice that our day is full of moments where we feel oppressed, where we don't feel free, where we feel extremely limited and burdened and oppressed in really significant ways.

And from a conventional standpoint, what we tend to do in those situations is get really moody

and get really mad at everything and everyone around us and we want things to change.

...