I recently met Adaku, a Nigerian woman who grew up in Italy. Her life wasn’t going well, so she immigrated to the US to get a fresh start. Before long, she had recreated the same problems here that she had in Italy.

“After two years, how have I ended up in the same situation I’ve been trying to get away from? Nonsense! And then I said to myself: ‘Stop everything!’ I picked apart every inch of how I was living and, more importantly, of how I was thinking.”

Of course, none of us intention...