I have reinvented myself more times than I wanted.

I have been a teacher in the Australian outback, worked inside a prison and lived through the consequences of a prison riot. I have taught, counselled, managed, trained and started again in new countries and new careers. In my sixties, I became a bestselling novelist.I have also survived cancer twice and the death of my son.

There are experiences that divide your life into before and after. They don't bounce off you. They can dismantle the person you thought you were and leave you wondering what, if anything, you are going to build from what remains.

I have never believed resilience means being untouched by what happens to us. I have been touched by all of it. Changed by it. Sometimes flattened by it.

But I have kept choosing.That may be the most consistent thread through my life. I have a deep and occasionally troublesome resistance to the idea that other people, circumstances, institutions, fear, age or convention should get the final say in who we become. It shaped the way I taught. It runs through the more than 75 novels I have written and the tools I created. 

And eventually it found its way into Greta and Choosing Adaptive Openness, where agency sits at the heart of everything.

At 72, I am reinventing myself again.Not because reinvention is easy. Not because I have mastered some secret formula for personal growth. And certainly not because I have stopped being afraid.I simply don't believe fear gets the deciding vote.

My life has taught me that we cannot always choose what happens to us. But while there is still a choice available, however small, we can choose what we do next.