I didn’t see it at first. A small pin; on his left lapel; almost invisible on his dark blue suit.

“Bronze Star; Vietnam,” he said.

We were at a networking event of lawyers.

“That must have been terribly hard,” my wife Ann said empathetically.

“No… no it really wasn’t,” he said. “I realized very early on that I could be cold and miserable in a foxhole; or that I could be cold and happy. I decided to be happy. It’s a choice, you know.”

I do know…. At least that’s what I believe; it’s what I teach; it’s what I endeavor to practice.

But I’ve never had to do it in a foxhole.

We all have our stories; our tales of woe; the circumstances we suffer; the dramas we endure. I hear them from my clients. I’ve told more than my fair share to my own coaches. Of course, what we focus on expands. But, not only that, these stories dampen and imprison us. They keep us small. And they shroud us from the very happiness that is but a choice away.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist interned in the Nazi death camps; his entire family slaughtered, his life’s work destroyed. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl said that our greatest gift – the greatest gift of our humanity – is the power to choose how we will be, regardless of the circumstances.

The power, in every moment, to choose how we will be.

If in a foxhole, if in a death camp, then most certainly in our businesses and our lives.