Break Free of Your Prison Without Walls

Are you ready to break free of your prison without walls?

Everybody has a story. Everyone is fighting a battle. Everyone has walls that imprison them. We’re all inmates.

When I was about 18, I started binge reading. I would always have a book on me. It was the rope to guide me to another world.

To be honest, I didn’t really have a huge interest in reading novels. My preferred method of escape was into the lives of other people. I was fascinated with learning what made them tick, how they overcame adversity, how they dealt with fear and how they survived the unthinkable. What makes us the same and what makes us different.

Success Leaves Clues

I still read about people constantly (although I have a not-so-secret obsession with the Outlander series).

This morning I found myself sitting at my computer, looking out across the still water of the harbour and reading a few of the stories on Humans of New York. Real people, real stories.

These stories were about prisoners.

The one I was drawn to was a man, now in his early 60s, who was imprisoned for dealing heroin when he was 34. He had 40 people working for him when he was caught and given a prison sentence of 40 years.

He said that he just wanted a better life using what he knew at the time, and as he really didn’t know any better, so he “pulled the wrong rope”.

Life On The Inside

He said that he could never have understood what prison was like inside the walls — the touch of the cold prison bars, the cries of the other prisoners at night, the sameness of each day.

But, he is also in a prison without walls. The fear of an uncertain future, the regret of his actions, the loss of time with his family now passed on, and the loss of dreams he once had.

In trying to live with what happened, his mind kept going back to it, picking at it like a festering sore that just wouldn’t heal.

He watched kids return to prison and gave them this advice: “Don’t let me be your future”, he says.

His response was to learn skills to deal with the prison walls he could see and the invisible ones he felt but couldn’t see.

A Better Rope To Pull On

The skills he learned led him to take action, and his view of life improved, as he was no longer looking backward. The actions he took gave him the confidence to help other prisoners in the hope that they would have a life outside the walls, a better rope to pull on and knowledge to make different choices.

He has now taught those skills to 250 prisoners. The impact has been amazing. Only one of his students has reoffended. The others were able to use his teaching to improve their confidence and lives.

He truly has given them a different rope to pull and knowledge to lead them down a different path…the one he wish he had had 38 years ago.

Which Prison Without Walls are You Stuck In?

A common prison without walls is living with uncertainty in the wake of a life-altering experience. Uncertainty has other names: fear, self-doubt, anxiety, distress, or others I’m sure you are well acquainted with.

The antidote to uncertainty is growing your confidence, by building new skills through a step-by-step process.

New skills can be tricky to navigate on your own. You know from experience that the do-it-yourself method takes far too long to show any real results, with more fails than wins most of the time…with you sinking a little further down with each failed attempt.

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