Edith Eger is a hero of mine. She was born in 1927 and grew up in Nazi-occupied Europe. When she was sixteen, Edith and her family were sent to Auschwitz. She and her sister Magda survived, but their parents and nearly everyone she loved did not. When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated, she was discovered under a pile of dead bodies. Edith was severely malnourished, and had a broken back, pneumonia, and typhoid fever, among others. After the war, she moved to the US and earned a degree in psychology. She went on to earn a Ph.D. and became an influential psychologist.

She is the author of two books. First, The Choice: Embrace the Possible, a memoir in which she tells her experiences during the Holocaust and how she was able to overcome trauma and find meaning in her life. And second, The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life. I read Edith’s book The Choice when I was nineteen, and it had a profound impact on me. Edith Eger is an inspiration to me. She is someone I deeply admire and who I look up to every day to improve as a human being.

In this series of this blog posts, I share some of the most valuable lessons she taught me, and how they have helped me. I write about gratitude, the power of choice, and the difference between victimization and victimhood. There are several more lessons to come, and I will upload them as I write them.

This series of articles on my blog is also my attempt to show my admiration and appreciation for her.

You have a choice

Throughout my teens, I loved playing football, and I was in a club where I would train and compete every week. I have lots of beautiful memories of it, but competing was not easy. When the stakes were high, I would feel nervous and afraid to make mistakes. Pressure and expectations worsened things, and I couldn’t perform at my best or enjoy myself. I thought these situations meant something was wrong, and that the solution was to avoid them. But Edith’s story showed me the opposite.

Each moment in Auschwitz was hell on earth. It was also my best classroom. Subjected to loss, torture, starvation, and the constant threat of death, I discovered the tools for survival and freedom that I continue to use every day in my clinical psychology practice as well as in my own life.

I could focus on what I held in my mind. I could respond, not react. Auschwitz provided the opportunity to discover my inner strength and my power of choice. I learned to rely on parts of myself I would otherwise never have known were there.

Edith taught me that we always have a choice. She says, “It’s not what happens to us that matters most, it’s what we do with our experiences.” And that’s a choice. I believed that the pressure I felt while playing important matches was an obstacle, but I realized I could choose to see pressure as an opportunity, an indicator that I was doing something difficult and worth it. Instead of running away from it, I could embrace it.

This idea doesn’t only apply to sports but to life in general. If Edith saw a place like Auschwitz as an opportunity to discover her inner strength, maybe I could also choose to embrace any painful experience. This insight was empowering, but when I was under pressure or paralyzed by fear, the idea that we have a choice was not enough to change my behavior. Going to the places that scare you takes courage, and I lacked something. One of the main reasons why Edith believed she survived Auschwitz was hope, which she defines as “the awareness that suffering, however terrible, is temporary; and the curiosity to discover what happens next.”

Hope was all I needed. Now, I can choose to see obstacles as opportunities and consider any experience, painful or not, as my teacher. This will cause me to suffer, but meaning and purpose are within reach if I embrace whatever happens without fighting or resisting. That suffering is temporary, and more manageable because it has meaning. I can choose what I hold in my mind, I can choose to approach whatever happens with curiosity, and I can choose that my source of wisdom is the present moment.

The foundation of freedom is the power to choose. – Edith Eger