I’ve read that we experience change in four phases: panic, adaptation, new normal, and ‘‘wouldn’t go back”. The first three are about being forced to make changes we wouldn’t have normally considered until, well, until we had to. The last one is when we realize how valuable the changes were. We start to say, ”I wouldn’t go back to the way it was before.”

I’ve spent over six years in prison and heard a lot of ”wouldn’t go back” stories. Some because the previous road would have led to overdose, suicide, or homicide. But now being clean and sober minded, these same people embrace different opportunities. They reconsider what they once thought was impossible. This is a powerful process but also a humbling one.

I’ve learned that for myself.

Maybe my ”wouldn’t go back” moment is what I learned about myself: that I am more flexible than I thought, that I can find the positive in many different environments, and that I can still be loved not because of who I was, but because of who I continue to be through all the turmoil.

Now my challenge is to do something with all of that. To take the very best of what I knew before, combined with what I have learned, and create something even more powerful for my future. This time much wiser.

Author and professor Adam Grant says this of wisdom: ”A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it is time to abandon some of your most treasured tools – and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.”

What about you? Have you struggled? Been forced to make a change? Felt like you’ve hit bottom? Well, you’re still here and you still have opportunities.

So go…embrace the change…find the good…you too can find your, ”wouldn’t go back” moment. They are never what we expect, but maybe they are just what we need.

-MB

*You know my story…I am fighting to get home. If you are not that familiar with my story, you can read it here: (GoFundMe1 & #2 GoFundMe2 (most recent)).*

It’s been a few months since I’ve put any thoughts on paper. I had a problem: I was stuck. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get one thought to expand into anything worthy of being read. Then I read what writer Donald Bathelme wrote of his own block: ”Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.”.

I felt the same anguish. But I was recently challenged by something I read. I put myself in the reader’s shoes. Everybody is really busy, and I’m asking for people’s time, which is their most valuable asset. So why should someone read this?

Well, one word: INSPIRATION

After all, whether you like it or not, the reality is that we are all in a ”prison” in one way or another, be it a career, a marriage, an addiction, or just living with a fear of change. We are all limited. I’m just different because I am behind a physical wall.

So for one minute of your time, I will share a perspective that aims to inspire. Inspire who? Easy, you. And me. Let’s call it A Monday Minute.

What you do with the insight is up to you. But if you’ve read my blogs before, you know I will provoke you to think. Maybe you’ll come to rethink something you once thought impossible: accepting change for what it is, maybe not what we expected but what we needed.

I’ll share my experience of how I went through four phases of accepting change: panic, adaptation, new normal, and ”wouldn’t go back”. Would it make sense that I don’t want to go back to ”the way things were”?

That’s where I’ll start…check me out next Monday. MB

You know my story…I am fighting to get home. If you are not that familiar with my story, you can read it here: (GoFundMe1 & #2 GoFundMe2 (most recent)).

You can regularly visit my blog to get weekly updates and some behind-the-scenes stories. (http://mylifeinside.home.blog)

Please share this page….please pray for my family… please help me he home.

Thank you.

It’s that time again: time for me to tell my story again. If you’ve been following this blog and my legal battle, you know how it goes. To the newbie, the story seems complicated – or made up. But the story they say, is how you will or will not relate to the struggle my family and I are working through. You understanding my story is vital. So, I continue to tell the story, respond to questions, revamp the story, and tell it again. All this in an effort to gain the support of some of you so I can continue my fight for the judicial system to do the right thing.

Recently I was reading an article titled, ‘Tell Your Story The Right Way”, by Jason Feifer in June’s Entrepreneur magazine. In the article he states that when we are telling our stories, we might be leaving out the best parts. He puts it like this:

”Every great movie you’ve watched, and every great novel you’ve read, and probably every great tale you’ve ever heard all follow the same simple three-part structure:

1. Our hero sets out to do something
2. Our hero experiences a setback
3. Our hero overcomes

That’s it. Simple, elegant, compelling.” But he also states that when some people tell their story, he often hears this:

1. I set out to do something
2. I succeeded

”They skip the second part!”, he writes. He says he understands why. The second part is where the teller of the story is most vulnerable. It is where they are most embarrassed. The second part is where we crash and burn. Its where we’ve made mistakes.

”But it’s also the part everyone can relate to…(it) contains humanity. Struggle, shame, bracing against the impossible – these are universal experiences.” Do you agree? Would you rather hear about someone’s continued success, or are you like me – a rubbernecker? Are you someone who slows down to look when someone else crashes? Funny. Me too! But when it comes to life stories, I want to know what happened AFTER THE CRASH. How did they overcome, rebuild, and start living again? That to me is the real story.

So how about you? Do you skip part 2 when you tell your story? I would like to, but the rubbernecker wouldn’t care to read the story. I wouldn’t be able to inspire anyone to push through the hard stuff. I wouldn’t have any way to get to part 3…and I really, really want to tell part 3 someday!!

So I’m stuck in part 2 of my story. I’m asking for your help to get to part 3. It won’t be easy and there are a lot of moving parts. But what great story is really that simple? Not mine. Not yours either. But we all have beautiful stories to tell.

So tell yours. Proudly. You will inspire someone. And that is awesome! And please help get my story to others. Share this with two friends this week. Got more than two? Fine. But save some for later. My part two is still being written and may need more characters.

For now, read my story and please share it. Join the list of ”thank yous” I will post next week. I would love to include you in my story…especially the end where I can say ”WE” succeeded.

God bless. Stay safe. Keep breathing.

Per Curiam, Affirmed

Those three words are lethal in the world of the appellate court. Lethal if you are seeking a favorable review from the court. It doesn’t matter what it means in Latin. Those words could easily mean, ”NO! And I’m not telling you WHY!”. When you receive those words from the court, it means nothing will be done. You are out of gas. There will not be a reversal in your case. Kick rocks! Take it up with another court if you want anything done. That means spend more money and watch more time go by.

I received those three words recently. News not well received, as you can imagine. I was very aware that the odds were against me in my complaint to the higher court. After all, the reversal rate in the state of Florida is extremely low. But I thought I was the exception. I had facts backed up by court procedure and state law. I had rock solid evidence showing error by the trial court. But with those three words my case is on life support. And here’s the kicker: I don’t get to know why. Judges in Florida get to hide behind those three words. They are not required to give you a legal explanation explaining why they deny you. They are not required to explain error in your arguments. Nope. They can just say ”NO!” and move on to their next case. As a citizen protected by constitutional rights, I find this appalling.

But what can I do? I do not have the means to fight anymore. I have had a great amount of help from many people, but I really dislike asking them to support me anymore. What guarantee can I give anyone that the money they give get the result we work for? None really. I can’t even explain the results to this point. But I believe in my argument. My attorney believes in it. My family has backed me and tried to follow the proceedings hopeful of a ”fair” review by the court. But the system has let me down. I no longer have faith in the ”justice” system. Struggling to find faith. There is no way I can justifiably ask anyone to partner with me in this fight.

But ask I will. I have to. I can’t quit now. While there is even the slightest chance I could get a favorable ruling, I will work to get it. Wouldn’t you?

Thank you for sharing my struggle with me. Thank you for your support and positive, uplifting comments. I do get to hear them, and they are appreciated. I will continue to update regularly. What do I ask as this point going forward? Please share my current GoFundMe (GFM LINK) page with everyone you know. Please pray for and show kindness to my family. Both requests are greatly needed and appreciated.

Perspective is an amazing concept. It affects our view of the world, our lives and even our impression of other’s lives. For this reason alone, we should be very careful to try to judge others without taking a change in perspective into consideration.

Case in point is a recent interview I read recently that changed my perspective of YOU…the reader. It was an article in this month’s Entrepreneur magazine regarding the difficulties of Oded Brenner, the founder of Blue Stripes, a specialty chocolate cafe. After being sued for breach of contract, he went broke fighting a lawsuit and was banned from creating anything chocolate-related or putting his name or face on any brand for five years. In the article, he opened up about how he came to view that devastating time in exile as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I won’t go into the details, but you may want to look it up at entrepreneur.com. Maybe I could entice you with this short take on how it affected my own perspective. So, the guy creates a dream concept and company. He sells to a bigger company to help the concept grow. It does. He’s the Dude! Then he wants to change something. Big company doesn’t like it. They sue…they go to court…the dude gets squashed. He’s broke, unemployed, and stuck doing nothing he loves for five years. It took him a while, but he is back in the cafe game and doing well enough to be interviewed by the magazine. PERSPECTIVE POINT #1: There are a lot of ‘failures’ out there who got back up, got back in, and got back on top.

So here’s the question he answered that started this whole perspective thing for me:

”What do you know now about pulling yourself up from rock bottom?”

I won’t paraphrase what he said. I can’t. It is really powerful. If you’ve ever been knocked down hard, you’ll feel this answer. Here is what he said:

”At a certain point, you just want to collapse. You’re angry at the world, angry at God, angry at everyone. You ask, HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ME? Even though you know that part of it is probably your fault. But hopefully – and this is what I told myself – this is a one-time experience. I would say it even stronger: This is a one-time opportunity. Hell has benefits. It has benefits on your ego, and ego is a very destructive element in our personalities. Hell has benefits in the way you talk to other people and how you think about business. Mostly, hell makes you think a lot. It can change your personality. It is not there coincidentally, and this may sound maybe a little bit too spiritual and mystical, but I would say listen to it very carefully. Give it all the room and time it needs. Feel sorry for yourself be angry. But use this period to build yourself for the next stage in your life, which can be unbelievable… you will be able to come back and do it again, and the next thing will be better.”

BOOM!! Mic drop!

What did this speak to me? Did you read my last few blogs? Did you feel the pain? The desperation? The loneliness? I was visiting hell. This man says he was there too, and he said the very same things I wish I could be smart enough to speak. Hell has benefits? Wow. If I had just changed my perspective a bit, I might be able to understand the takeaway like he did. And here’s the amazing thing…he wasn’t in prison, but he sounded to me like he had been. PERSPECTIVE POINT #2: There are real prisons like the one I’m in and then there are other prisons that people on the outside deal with daily…just like me. You, my reader, may be dealing with a time in prison of your own. You just don’t necessarily see the fences.

If that is you, I apologize for being one-sided in my pain. Today I’ll just say that I share your pain. Maybe this guy’s pain, suffering, and resurrection of sorts can be an inspiration to both of us. It helped to change my lenses to the world I see every day. This change in my perspective has allowed me to change my attitude. The attitude change has helped me see that this is part of a process and I really need to trust the process.

Hell has benefits. Before you leave, get everything you can out of it. Make it an opportunity of a lifetime. Make it a part of your awesome story. I know I will.

The last blog was written with the help of a Jonathan Cahn piece that had to do with the significance of a line connecting the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, living from one to the other fulfilling a purpose. If you didn’t read it click here (https://mylifeinside.home.blog/2021/04/05/the-state-of-throughness/?fbclid=IwAR26DRngt8Lv3V_544uAtq7s5_H67MZ-puy8PIbZpiqhlDqKicB1WSH-QfA) to read it now. I can wait. I’ve got a little time. (Ha…prison humor!). Ok, so the story was a metaphor of how our lives should be reflected in the line connecting the two letters, Alpha and Omega. It is similar to a chain letter sent over email throughout the years. You probably read it. It was the one that directed our attention to the dash (-) set between the date of birth and the date of death on headstone.

The stories are intended to have a similar affect…for us to check ourselves and to ask the question, ”When I am gone, will I have lived an honorable life? Memorable? Worthy of the blessing it as supposed to be? Did my life have a purpose? If so, did I fulfill that purpose or did I waste the opportunity? You get the idea.

So here I sit…in prison…fighting to get out…and I read the gut-check story of The LINE…philosophical as it may be, it hit me hard. Why now all of the sudden, you may ask? After all, I’ve been in prison since 2015…yeah really, 2015. I know.

Here’s why. Check this out. I picked up a book titled, Void, by James Owen Weatherall. It piqued my inner nerd. Yes, there it is. But if you know me, you KNOW me. Anyway, the book is about the physics of ”nothing” and how scientists and thinkers from Aristotle and Newton, to Maxwell, Bohr’s, and Einstein all wrestled with the philosophy and mathematics of empty space. It turns out, this was something of a topic for hundreds of years with countless debates and papers exchanged with the scientific communities taking different sides, each trying to out-smart the other. SPOILER ALERT: There really is something in the nothing! Really! But I won’t bore you here. Maybe another time.

It wasn’t the theories of relativity or quantum electrodynamics that got me thinking about the subject I’m about to get into. It was a line by the author, Weatherall. He was discussing the findings that Einstein and others that there are infinitely many ways the empty universe could be. Here is what’s he wrote: ”This just shows how little control we have over the physical theories we create: in many cases, even as we build theories with certain goals in mind, the mathematics – and the world – just doesn’t cooperate with our hopes and expectations.”

The math and the world just doesn’t cooperate with our expectations…the math…doesn’t cooperate. Wow! I could puff my chest out, get red in the face, and blurt out, ”What about GOD, brah???”. But my own heart aside, I took his comment at face value and reflected on my time in prison…and I have to admit that he has a point. The world certainly hasn’t cooperated…I’ve lost everything. But you already know that. Lately, all of my attempts at improving attitudes or increasing positive perceptions in some inmates have failed. Inmates just don’t have hopes in much. Attempts to reconnect with some lost relationships have fallen on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the prison system is reeling from the effects of Covid. Budgets are bleeding red. Staffing is at an all-time low and morale of the staff with it. Prisons are dangerously overcrowded with tensions and violence exploding daily. I used to brag that I was in the best place to be in the Florida system… not anymore. So much for the world cooperating.

How about the math? How about a 3-5% success rate in the appellate courts? 3-5%! Even if I have 100% proof positive of trial error which prevented my trial from being fair. Here’s some more math…$25,000-$30,000…and that doesn’t include another opportunity in front of a judge….add some more $$$ to that if I ever get the chance. Oh, I won’t even get into the unbearable delays from the court. The court is like God in the Bible…”a thousand years is but a day”…really?

Mr. Weatherall may be right, and I’m tired. I’m losing hope and losing faith. I’m obviously falling into the category of the forgotten, misfits of society. And we are on our own little island. There are days I just want to quit all of it. There are days I want to tighten my seatbelt and just ride out the rest of my time. I don’t want to be a burden anymore. 2025 is just around the corner, right? Whats another missed wedding, or birth, or graduation ceremony anyway? Who needs a relationship with someone who might actually love you? Why should I care about anyone anyway? The math just doesn’t cooperate with hope.

Its strange. I used to like math!

We were sitting on the sandy plain just beyond the school grounds. Using a wooden stick, the teacher began drawing symbols in the sand. The first appeared to be the capital letter A. The second looked something like a horseshoe.

”The Alpha and the Omega,’ I said, ”The symbols of God.”

”Yes,’ said the teacher. ”The Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. So, God is the Alpha, the beginning of all things and the reason all things exist. And the Omega is the last letter. So God is the Omega, the end of all things and the purpose for which all things exist.”

The teacher then drew a horizontal line connecting the two symbols.

”And this,” he said, ”is everything else…including you.”

”Me?”

”If God is the beginning and the end, what does that make you?”

”I guess it makes me not the beginning and the end.”

”But it’s human nature not to know that. If you live from yourself, you’ve become your own Alpha. If you live as if you yourself are the reason and the motive for everything you do, then you’ve made yourself your own Alpha. And if the reason for your living is yourself, then your living has no reason. The line becomes a circle…On the other hand,” he said, ”if you live for yourself, to serve yourself, with yourself as your own goal and end, then you’ve become your own Omega…which is likewise to live with no real purpose…another circle.”

”I guess then most people live as their own Alphas and Omegas,” I said. ”So how then should we live?”

”As this line. You live as that which is neither the Reason or the Purpose, not the Beginning, nor the End…but the middle… Your life becomes the vessel for His purposes, the instrument to His end. You live for a Reason and a Purpose greater than yourself. And that’s when you find the Reason and Purpose for your existence. You make Him your Beginning and your End, the Reason and Purpose for everything you do. You do everything from Him and everything for Him and to Him. You become the vessel through which flow His love, His power, His purposes, His Spirit, His life, and His blessings. It is the state of throughness. Discover it, and your life will be filled with the blessings of the Alpha and the Omega, from Beginning to End.”

I felt compelled to send along something I read this week. It was very powerful to me and I felt it was screaming at me to be shared. It is something I feel we all need to consider in our current state of affairs. It is a short story from the collection written by author Jonathan Cahn in his ”Book of Mysteries”…I am curious for your feedback…I will give you mine next week.

Being in prison with a generation of men a ”’few years” younger than me has caused me to wonder where the heck we are going as a society. They just want to complain about life being unfair and the constant pressure of living a life of ”someone else’s fault”. Talking to my sons and their friends, I see young men and women who are markedly different from their counterparts in the system. They are wonderful people, hardworking, trying to do their best. Their lives, like most people, have not been free of challenges and difficulties, and I am certain there may be more to come.

I am not writing about my family to draw attention to them or myself. Many people have had more difficulties than we have. My purpose here is to help anyone who may not yet realize that bad things happen to good people, life sometimes deals bad cards, and sometimes life just isn’t fair. But there is hope in a world of challenges.

Get ready for it.

Your life will not be free of adversity. Don’t fall into the trap of today’s society that your problems are always someone else’s fault, even though sometimes they are. If you always think someone else causes your problems, you aren’t likely to fix them. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror to see what’s wrong. And don’t wish for a life free of challenges and obstacles, because they are what make us better. The only way you can become good at climbing mountains is…wait for it…is by climbing them yourself. To become good at solving problems, you must work at solving them. It is said that success is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we are knocked down.

One more thing to remember: The only people who don’t make mistakes are the ones who do nothing! You must realize what the real danger is in doing nothing – if you do it a lot, you will get good at it! Someone wiser than me once said, ”Don’t just be good. Be good for something.” Good men and women don’t just come into existence. They are made. They suffer losses and setbacks, experience adversity, and are tested regularly. Oh, and they fail too! But they learn something from their failure and they move ahead better for it.

Each generation has the ability to solve the problems of its time. For the younger generation reading this you’re no exception – you can do it! But it won’t be easy and you will have to work at it. Do the work! One day you will look back at what you did today. Make sure you like the view.

What do you do when everything you are doing seems to not be working? How do you keep your joy??

This was a question I heard not long ago and it got me to think…is that right? Can you have joy during the tough times? Isn’t joy the same as being happy? Can we be happy when we are struggling? Does that make sense?

Yes, to some of those questions…and no, to the rest…as I found out by digging in.

Merriam-Webster defines ”joy” as the emotion evoked by well-being, success or good fortune. The Bible uses joy, joyful, and rejoice over 400 times. In ancient Hebrew the word is ”simehah”…in Greek, ”xapa”…but joy means the same…gladness, fullness, contentness, delight. Funny. Neither definition uses the word ”happy”

Happiness is not joy! The very same dictionary I used to find joy gave this definition for happiness: fortunate, pleased, satisfied, pleasant. ”Happiness” comes from an old English word (happ) that means chance, and a Latin word which means luck (fortuna). The word suggests that if things happen the way we want them to happen, then we are pleased, even satisfied. But if they don’t happen the way we want, then we are unhappy. Makes sense to me!

Here’s the secret I learned recently during a really tough stretch…listen now, this is important. I (we) cannot be happy without being joyful, but I (we) can be joyful without being happy!!!

Bypassing religiosity and philosophy, my explanation today will be short. But give me a few beers and some time and we can have an awesome conversation. But that is for another time.

While joy may be classified as an emotion, real joy is actually an attitude. Emotions cannot be chosen. No one can tell you to feel happy if you’re not. But you can choose to be joyful regardless of your situation. In my mind, Joy leads to hope. Hope gives a sense of optimism that endures with times and doesn’t evaporate with troubles. As Victor Frankl is known for saying: ”Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

We can choose joy over gloom, gladness over sadness, optimism over pessimism, and lead others to do the same. So, as I asked the question again, I found this answer:

With acceptance of the struggle I can find joy.

I lost a 20+ year career I loved, but I was blessed with the time I had. I may have lost a marriage, but I shared something special for almost 30 years. I’ve lost special years with my sons, a wedding, and most likely a birth or two. But they will be there for me when this is over and we will share even more precious times. I’m fighting to get out of prison, but I can positively affect people while I am here and even learn a thing or two myself.

So I’ll ask you…can you find joy in your struggle? Can you choose the attitude to give you fullness in a time of famine? Can you decide to be glad when it’s easier to be angry? I did and I didn’t think it could be possible. I think you can do it too. It’s worth the effort to try. Find your joy and you might just find that you are….well, happy!