In my previous post, Caught Between Self-Sabotage and Learning, I explored why humans have the greatest capacity for both self-sabotage and unlimited learning. In this post, I attempt to transcend our paradoxical nature.

The Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl's essential teaching is:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.

In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response.

In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” (Stephen R. Covey in Pattakos & Dundon, 2017)

Viktor Frankl is saying that there is a small yet significant space in our minds—between stimulus and response. Let's take a moment to gaze into the depths of that space. What can we discover in the depths of our mind?

Every stimulus begins as an event: a sensation, an emotion, a tension, or an impulse. Every stimulus can become a memory. This level is not entirely under our control; it happens to us. The range of experiences we can have varies greatly, from sitting safely by the fireplace at home to wandering around homeless in a foreign culture while fleeing violence and dogma.

These stimuli include physiological reactions from our body, old traumas and emotions, evolutionary reflexes, affective resonances, and the direct experience of life moving through us. Therefore, the stimulus is not an enemy, but rather a rich signal of life. Our mental space begins precisely when we do not fully coincide with this impulse.

Frankl refers to the possibility of the observation process,........

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