Lesson 11: Action and Purpose
11.1 Being comfortable with being uncomfortable means that you are working towards your goals regardless of the circumstances around you. There are going to be times when writing or progressing towards your goals are not what you are motivated to do; you need to do it anyways. Staying focused and continuing to work towards you goals wont always be comfortable, but you do it because its important to you.
11.2- You can learn strength and the ability to succeed within adversity when learning about those leaders. How did they continue to succeed when faced with failures on their way to success, as well as how their path may have been difficult yet they succeeded anyways.
11.3- My release plan is to advocate for prison reform. I am currently taking incremental steps to get to this plan. I am researching laws and learning about individuals who are advocating for reform. I am writing them in hopes to find mentors to assist me in achieving my goals. To go along with reform I am also working on finding a way to assist with rehabilitation. i feel animals can be a great way to assist individuals in rehabilitating. I have secured a position upon release working with a non profit that rescues dogs and trains them as therapy dogs. Upon release I would be working on getting this program into the prison systems where justice impacted individuals could assist in training the dogs and then once released be offered a position with the agency.
11.4- The people I want to impress in a positive way are my judge, my case manager, my probation officer, my potential employer, publishers who I am hoping to have a book published with as well as the people who have supported me and kept faith in me while I was incarcerated.
11.5- Most importantly I need to believe in myself. If i do not believe in myself I cannot expect anyone else to .
11.6- The steps that will lead me through prison are taking small steps each day to worked toward achieving the goals I have upon my release.
11.7 The steps that will open options for me when the gates let me out are all the small steps I took that led to larger steps upon my release. Did I learn more, was I a better public speaker, had I reached out to individuals who could be mentors, did I write, did I work on my physical and mental health. These are things that would lead me to become the person I want to become upon release.
11.8 Incremental action steps I can start taking now are reading to change my perspective. Writing to authors about how the books helped me, writing to prison advocates to give ideas and make connections to work on reform, reading and training myself on animal training, writing to trainers I have learned form to build my community, writing about my experiences, writing articles about reform or mental health within the prison experience, and reaching out to university professors as well as journalists who are working towards similar reform methods.
