Parables are stories that illustrate a moral or lesson. From the Greek parabolē, meaning “comparison, illustration, analogy,” parable was the name given by Greek rhetoricians to an illustration in the form of a brief fictional narrative.

Self-help books, the bible, and zen texts are all filled with parables, and just reading one every now and then can do wonders for a person’s powers of positive thinking. Here’s one I came across that has stuck with me for a while, reminding me that simply deciding something one way or another in advance has enormous power over the outcome. read more

In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was sent to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family had perished. But he, prisoner number 119104, had lived.

In his bestselling 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes people who would walk through the camp giving words of comfort to others, even though their circumstances were no better. He concluded that the difference between those who could give comfort and those who couldn’t came down to one thing: Meaning. read more

According to biographers, Winston Churchill did not have the happiest of childhoods. Neglected by his uninterested parents, he was sent to boarding school at a young age where he would write letter after letter pleading for his parents to come visit him. Most of his letters went unanswered, and he ended up spending a succession of holidays alone at school without even the company of classmates.

Churchill would go on to suffer many failures both at school and in his political life, failures that would have defeated most people. But Churchill kept sticking his neck out, overcoming great odds and eventually leading his country in its finest hour. read more