What decisions can you make today to influence more opportunities in your future?
Few people think about the future when they are young. I was no exception. Unfortunately, my youth was a string of bad decisions. And even worse, I wasn’t worried where the bad decisions would carry me or how they could cut me off from where I would want to go in the future because I didn’t bother to consider where I wanted to go. I didn’t even understand how one decision carried me to the next.
A trip to prison forced me to sit down and slow down the bad decisions. I had to consider how my decisions affected the next moment. I learned about cause and effect in real time, a lesson I’d never bothered to pay attention to prior to prison because I always walked away from the consequences. Now I am more deliberate about every action I take. I have also learned, as I started making good decisions, that one good decisions positions you to be available to make another good choice. Thus I am able to see how one good decision opens you up to the next one. Even if it is something as simple as stopping to ask someone if they are okay or offering a person a smile in passing, this adds to the perception that you are open and approachable. If someone approaches you and you respond positively, then they might share an idea or their thoughts. This may lead to something even better: an idea that could ultimately change your life. It is essential to be open and willing to listen to others. And that is the second most important part of creating a brighter future.
The most important part of changing your life for the better is imagining what you want, where you want to go and mapping a plan on how to get there. Creating goals is essential. The single most important thing we can do, not just prisoners but anyone, is to envision our future and then create goals. Prisoners, though, have so much time to sit around and dream about where we would like to be. Every prisoner does this – who doesn’t want to be cooking in their own kitchen, or in their parent’s home caring for them as they age, with their children at major milestones? Once we think about this, we must follow through with the realization of what we will need to do to STAY THERE. Getting out is a matter of a sentence expiration but staying out of prison, once you’re been inside prison, takes a lot of effort. It’s more than just not committing another crime. Often times there are meetings we must be on time for even though traffic is bad or we had to work late, the kids are sick or we can’t afford the bus fare. Then there are visits from a probation officer or trips downtown for monthly check-ins or friends who want to catch up with you and these are the friends you missed the most while incarcerated, even though they’re the friends you should avoid like the plague. So staying out of prison means changing our behaviors IN PRISON so that once you’re out of prison you won’t slide back in to old behaviors.
How do you change your own behavior? This is what the Re-Entry people mean when they talk about working toward Re-entry from the first day of prison. First you have to honestly examine why you’re in prison. Not just the crime you were charged with, but what thoughts led you to the behavior so that the crime was worth the effort, worth ignoring the possible time to accompany the crime. Once you realize the thoughts that led to the crime, you can begin to change. If someone struggles with greed, they can learn to live more humbly. If someone carries so much anger and hate, they can begin to work through that pain to find peace on the other side. If someone is addicted to drugs, they can turn toward others who know better about staying clean. For each avarice there is a way to overcome it. And prison is nothing but time to sit around and work on those problems.
This is where goals come in to play. Once the hard work of correcting the thoughts that lead to self-destructive behaviors has been acknowledged and dealt with, even if they’re still a work in progress, we can begin working toward our goals for where we want to go and who we want to be upon release. Perhaps some goals look like a better relationship with children or parents, then we can start working on rebuilding those relationships before we ever get out. Another goal might be obtaining a GED or taking some college classes so that an education box is checked off. Studying to make that happen is just a matter of discipline and putting the work in to finish the classes. The goals we meet while in prison become benchmarks to confirm our trajectory, and propel us even farther.
The concept of changing your own future hinges on the ability to tie your ambition to your dreams and remain open at all times. And once good decisions lead to changes happening, we cannot get off track by becoming satisfied or complacent with momentary success or simple financial success. It is essential to remain on task and continue to stay positive, despite minor setbacks or even momentary failures. In prison, failure or disappointment is a way of life. It must inspire resiliency and evolve into the choice to look at the failure as an opportunity instead of an end result. It only means pivoting one’s perspective to a new opportunity to do it again, differently, and maybe success is only ‘one more try’ away.
I have long believed that hope is a dangerous thing for prisoners. It can carry you through many bad days when you hope for a brighter one, but it can also leave disappointment and bitterness in it’s wake if the hope is unrealistic or unbridled, untempered by time or experience. However, after many years of constantly working toward bettering myself, building an impressive resume whether inside prison or out, and learning how to become the best version of myself I have finally finally FINALLY realized that it is not hope that is dangerous, it is hope without effort that leads to disappointment and bitterness. The unrealistic hope that something will be handed to you when you have done nothing to earn it. Yes, it is essential to put forth maximum effort for years to ensure a better future outside of prison. Re-Entry plans must be made long before the doors are ever opened, a support system must be put in place to ensure resources are available, and once those doors are finally opened, then the hard work really begins.
