"Set Me Free"

Whenever I have a chance to write, or speak, about effectively dealing with change, challenge and adversity, the message always includes this thought: “be limited only by imagination, not fear, in creating productive choices to the challenges we face.”

It’s my belief that type of attitude is the key to success to whatever ails us: at home, work or community. We have to put fear and self doubt aside, and as the Comeback Coach likes to say “allow wonderment to win.”

That’s an accurate description of the attitude a busload of men took with them recently while heading from Denver to Sterling, Colorado. These men – I was invited to join them - shared many traits: faith, membership in the same church, passion to help other men and past experiences. Moments in life that, except for grace or luck, would have had them inside our destination: the Sterling Correctional Facility where more than 2,500 men are “in the joint” for crimes against humanity.

A powerful moment was early in the visit, when one of the offenders asked our group, “Who are you and what inspired you to drive 100 miles to visit with us?” That question unleashed a torrent of honesty from more than a dozen men about addictions and challenges – usually centered on alcohol, drugs or lust – that, again, for whatever reason, grace or luck, had us inside the walls with, clipped on our shirts, a pass to freedom.

I shared my story of a severe head injury ending a promising athletic career. I also shared about deciding to drown my sorrow in booze and many nights of having no clue, or recollection, of how I navigated a car home safely from the college hangouts. It was not until a few years later when I went back to graduate school and earned a master’s degree in journalism and began my sportscasting career that I truly regained a focus and purpose for life. I was struck by the irony of it all: Human beings, you, me and others usually have challenges and addictions that have us feeling like we’re “locked up” with no escape, whether we’re physically incarcerated or, mentally and emotionally, prisoners of our minds.

What’s your prison? Are fear and self-doubt hijacking your dreams? My thoughts are interrupted by a voice from the facility’s loudspeaker: “Time for the 11:15 headcount!” Time. In prison it’s always about time: headcount, chow, yard and lockdown.

Perhaps it’s also time, in our lives, to break free from the incarceration we’ve created via thoughts, words and actions that don’t honor us, nurture those dependent upon us and add value to the communities we serve. Where’s it time to go before the parole board of your mind and say, “Set me free!”