Bestselling American author Stephen Covey writes about Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning in You’ve GOT to Read This Book!, a compilation by Gay Hendricks and Jack Canfield:

I read Man’s Search for Meaning first, around 1962. The biggest understanding that I gained from Frankl was that you have the power to choose your response to any given set of circumstances. Frankl did this in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he was subjected to inhuman treatment on all levels: physical, mental, and emotional. At one point, the Nazis burned his manuscript-his life’s work. Instead of becoming despondent, he changed his initial reaction from “Why me?” and “Why is this happening?” to “What is life asking of me?” The answer, in the case of his manuscript, was, “Rewrite it; make it better.” With this shift in thinking he could always find meaning in life, regardless of what was happening on the outside.