I could have easily chosen to believe that I was unlucky. I could have chosen to believe that I was no good because of the situations I got myself involved with (you have no idea). But, I chose not to believe that I was my circumstance. I chose not to believe that I was my past or that I was doomed to repeat it. I chose to believe that I was meant to live a big wonderful life. So it is. It’s not the events in our lives that shape us, rather our beliefs about what those events mean. Generalizations about what we have learned guide all of our actions. Most of us do not decide consciously what we are going to believe. Often, beliefs are based on misinter- pretations of past experiences. I have clients who believe they are damaged goods because they were molested or physically harmed. They live a life filled with arguing with the past and their perpetrator in their minds. They believe that if this event hadn’t hap- pened they would be happy and pure and innocent. I tell them that they already are pure and innocent and deserve to be happy despite what might have hap- pened to them. I tell them that they can decide not to believe in the shame of the event. They can believe that they are glorious, not because of what did or did- n’t happen to them, but because they are a human, alive on the planet. I tell them that nothing can “take What MoD Telieve Is Who MoD A1e ! 111