Dr.Edith Eger is the happiest she’s ever been in her 90s.
What’s the catalyst?
She gave up the need for other people’s approval.
“If you’re waiting for someone to make you happy, that’s not a good way to go because self-love is self-care,” she says. “It’s important to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say: I love me. Everything begins with you.”
“The only one you have for a lifetime is you.”
Dr.Eger is the embodiment of resilience in mind and spirit. In her bestseller, The Choice, she shares her extraordinary journey as a Holocaust survivor and the lessons it taught her to achieve freedom in our lives. We explored her most recent book, The Gift, where she explains various prisons of the mind — from victimhood to the need to be right — and reveals that the key to free ourselves is within.
“What you think you create,” she says. “Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to. Anything you pay attention to, you reinforce that very behavior that you want to extinguish.”
“You want to liberate yourself from the concentration camp of your own mind.”
How does your relationship with yourself contribute to your sense of well-being? What is one thought you might replace to cultivate greater self-compassion?
With gratitude,
Jenna