Daily Inspiration Quote by Alfred Adler

Adler’s line is a quiet provocation aimed at the most seductive excuse humans have: the belief that life simply happens to us and our reactions are just weather. He flips that script. Situations, he implies, are raw material; interpretation is the real engine. And interpretation isn’t just a private thought-bubble - it’s identity work. The “we determine ourselves” clause is the dagger: your meanings don’t merely color experience, they manufacture the person you become.

The intent is distinctly Adlerian. As a founder of individual psychology, he pushed back against fatalism - biological, social, even Freudian. People aren’t trapped in a deterministic maze of drives and childhood scenes; they’re goal-directed meaning-makers, steering toward belonging, competence, and significance. That’s the context behind his emphasis on choice: not naïve optimism, but a moral psychology. If meaning is your responsibility, then so is your character.

The subtext is also a warning about the stories we cling to. If you read a setback as proof you’re doomed, you’re not describing reality; you’re rehearsing a self. If you frame it as feedback, you’re practicing agency. Adler doesn’t deny pain or inequality; he denies their authority over the narrative. The quote works because it relocates power from the uncontrollable to the interpretive - and then makes that power consequential. It’s less self-help than self-indictment: if your meanings shape you, you can’t hide behind circumstance forever.