If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so. - Stephen Covey

It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don’t have the character to do it; they don’t own enough of themselves.

This power of choice means that we are not merely a product of our past or of our genes; we are not a product of how other people treat us. They unquestionably influence us, but they do not determine us. We are self-determining through our choices. If we have given away our present to the past, do we need to give away our future also?