Archive Episode #45: Gratitude and Redemption w/ Lester Young

How do we escape from the prison of our mind?

How do we acquire the mindset to transform failure into victory and success?

What do we want our life and our legacy to be?

These and other pressing questions are addressed when a Muslim ex-con, a Catholic shrink, and an Orthodox rabbi sit down together on The Rabbi and the Shrink.  Don't miss this episode with Lester Young!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lester-young-b1b6a0106/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Y3oh7l_wqJSCPtitB9BFw

1:30 How a life sentence became a life’s mission

What do we want our life and our legacy to be?

One man, one book, made all the difference

We are all masters of our own fate

Authentic leaders inspire us to challenge ourselves

4:00 Free will: the past does not have to define us

We can’t necessarily change our circumstances but we can change ourselves

Dissociation started a process that ended with prayer

A perpetrator can honor a victim by becoming a new person

The path to reconciliation and redemption

14:00  How do we truly make amends?

The most horrific failures can be transmuted into unimaginable victories

When we can resolve our differences and errors we don’t need the justice system to do it for us

17:00 Witnessing a victim’s pain evoked empathy

Victims of pain and violence can become perpetrators

We can always grow to recognize how to reinvent ourselves and take responsibility

21:00 When you prepare yourself, providence provides the opportunity

Journaling and gratitude

Five stages of incarceration:  denial, anger, victimization, asking forgiveness, self-forgiveness

The need for prison reform:  Recriminalization vs. Decriminalization

25:00 Wisdom attracts adherents

Change yourself, change your environment

We are all living in prisons of one kind or another

29:00  We all need advocates and support

Rehabilitation begins the day you walk into prison

Addressing the collateral damage victims

Why aren’t our correctional facilities corrective?

35:30 Word of the day:  allyship

the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership:

Genuine allyship does not come with special recognition—we do not get awards for confronting issues people have to live with every day.

the relationship or status of persons, groups, or nations associating and cooperating with one another for a common cause or purpose:

Joseph went from prison to king of the world in a day

Nelson Mandela

Never lose hope -- break out of the mental prison walls and the opportunities that will appear