This little core message is meant to draw a line between two things:
- What was done to you (“acted on you”) = the passive part of your story: trauma, abuse, betrayal, neglect, injustice, bad luck, etc. These are things that happened to you, often without your choice or control.
- How you act = the active part: your choices, behavior, responses, habits, and character is the present and your future.
The sentence is basically saying:
Your self and who you truly are as a person is not permanently defined or reduced to the act inflicted on you.
Instead, you are defined by what you choose to do with what happened — by your actions, your responses, and how you carry yourself forward.
This idea shows up in many forms across self-help, therapy, Stoicism literature, and even in modern romance novels:
- Very close version: “You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.” — Abby Jimenez (from Just for the Summer)
- Classic Stoic ancestor: “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” — Epictetus
- Related emphasis on action defining us: “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” — often attributed to Carl Jung
My slightly unusual phrasing (“acted on you” instead of “done onto you” or “happened to you”) I am attempting to makes the concept more precise in some ways — I highlight the passive, object-like position of a trauma and how it can put someone in (“I was acted upon”), contrasted with agency (“I act”).
It makes good sense, especially if the context is healing from trauma, breaking cycles, refusing victim-identity labels, or reclaiming personal responsibility without blaming the person, animal, plant, illness, luck – that caused the hurt.
It’s empowering without being toxic-positivity mierda. It acknowledges the real damage (“you are not untouched by what was done”) while insisting the story doesn’t end there (“you are how you act from hereon forward”).
You are not what was done to you. You are what you do.
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