“MAN, I CAN’T BELIEVE that they arrested me for a couple of little
blunts in an ashtray that were already smoked. That’s bullshit.” This is not a conversation you have over a latte at a coffee shop—at least, not in 1988. I was locked in a cell with a man only a few years older than me, who complained about being unfairly arrested over a few small buds of marijuana in the ashtray of his car. I would think that the penal system should be obvious enough. Short list: federal, state, and local. Jails and all activities that would put you into one. I spent a night in a jail once for having drunk too much and then driving a half mile while in a microscopically small town in Nebraska. Regardless of my opinion, I could only agree with him, because why would you start an argument, drunk, with a man high on marijuana in a postage stamp-sized locked cell in Nebraska? I digress. The obvious point: don’t do any activity that will put you in any way in the penal system. As awful as those prisons are—and my brother and friends have worked in them as a part of their ministry, returning with horrible and depressing stories—there are other prisons. The prisons I am talking about we build for ourselves. We piece together five walls, put a staircase down to the interior, set the lid in place, and pull it shut. You look around you, and you will see people walking around wearing prisons all the time. The boxes are heavy and grow heavier. At first there was only a bit of string on the
lid to keep the latch in place. Every day, there is growing steel lock that seals the top shut for good. I’ll give you a couple examples. DEBT Everyone says that you should not get into debt. Right. And I
should drink more water, eat more fiber, and wear 200 SPF when I am outside. The advice is accurate. The explanations are understandable. It is a seduction: have the real thing now for a murky and what appears to be a small monthly bit of tomorrow. I have been in debt, and it is prison. You feel the debt-guard every day. He is pacing the hallways, waiting for the payment at the end of the month. To enjoy another good meal, nice bit of clothing, vacation, new car, house, or any other item that gives comfort, distraction or immediate happiness, it takes a trade of payment for a thing. I know! I’ve been $100,000 in debt at one time, and that didn’t even include a mortgage. Debt is a prison you put yourself in and then add the weight of the lid. ADDICTION The easy answer would be drugs, alcohol, gambling and
even sex. Do you need me to tell you that these are ruining addictions? What can I say that has not been said? What advice can I give you? You have already read about, or been lectured on, the risks of these things. You have seen what it has done to friends and acquaintances. It ruins them. It ruins their lives, bodies, family, and even kills them. When you dip your toe in the water, you never think you will dip your foot. When you dip your foot, you never think you will slip and fall in. As my mother said, “Don’t make the decision about birth-control when you are in the back seat of the car.” You have to make your choices up front. I cannot write a pithy paragraph here on a topic that people have struggled their entire lives with. PLACES There are cities or parts of the country or even countries where
you just don’t feel like you fit or want to fit. Because of jobs, spouses or houses, you get imprisoned. The kids get into school, the in-laws are there, you have made commitments, and so on. What was an exciting
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opportunity has now become an “It’s not so bad” description of the place you live. They are not bad places, they just do not fit you. You cannot trade short-term jobs or assignments for long-term payoff. Here’s the thing: In the olden times, you rose the corporate ladder based upon your willingness to move. I moved six times in three and a half years. You don’t have to do that anymore. At some point in my life, I stopped moving, and my life came to me. Places, or the chasing of places to find happiness in a new place, is a prison. PEOPLE Jen and I used to take retreats every year, and we would look
at our lives and talk about money, time and people. We discussed where and how we wanted to invest and spend each dollar. An interesting part of this was people. Who did we want to spend more time with, and who did we want to spend less time with? Who brought energy, and who took energy? This isn’t about the friends who were going through tough times or were always perky. It was about connection and growth. With the wrong people, you get energy vampires. I have heard it said that your thinking is the sum of the thinking of the six people outside your family you spend the most time with. I don’t know if it is true, but I do know that if I am the smartest person in the room every time, I should start looking for some new or different rooms. We also knew that there were people that we had started connecting with that we wanted to become better friends with. People in your life can be prisons when they move from “want to spend time with them” to “have to spend time with them.” BUSYNESS My worst addiction is busyness. When I was a kid, I was
raised in a house that valued productivity above all other things. My brother, sister, and I were praised and thought to be doing well based on how busy we were and what we were accomplishing. Every Saturday, we received a 3 x 5 card with our list of chores that we had to complete before we could play. These chores took between 2 and 3 hours to accomplish. From 14 years of age on, we all three had jobs. At 16 years we had 2 jobs during the summer that would keep us working 70-80 hours per week. And so the sad tale goes. As adults, we all three have a very difficult time P r i s o n : N ot as C o o l a s J o hnn y Ca sh
relaxing and enjoying the ability to just be. There is a sensation that we should be doing something productive rather than just sitting around, watching TV, or playing a game. As an adult, I have become addicted to feeling uneasy, even guilty, that I am not doing something, especially something for the family. I have worked too much, wandered the house straightening, doing laundry, cooking, and mostly fidgeting. Before you think that I am an ideal modern husband who is sharing the workload, I have to admit that I don’t do any of them well. I just do them so that I am doing something. The sense of guilt and responsibility is what drives me. I see the same type of drive in families with multiple kids in multiple sports. Perfectly manicured lawns are a tell-tale sign. (OK, that one is just personal envy because I can kill silk plants.) I think of busyness as an addiction because it becomes this self-feeding need for more that is very hard to satisfy, and when you go without the busyness for very long, it haunts you. I was miserable on vacations for decades. I always felt that I needed to be back at the office working on something. I was tortured by a sense that there was something going wrong or that I would need to take care of when I returned. Lists are the daily fix for the busyness addict. I had lists of my lists. It is easy just to attribute this phenomenon to the workaholic. I live in a neighborhood of stay-at-home mothers or fathers who are the worst junkies. COMMITMENTS My advice is to make as few as possible because if you have integrity, you will keep them absolutely. Each one is a lock that in the nature of the commitment excludes other choices until you fulfill the commitment. It may not be a prison, but at its bare minimum it is a shackle. If you ask Zach what I said to him every day as I dropped him off at school after I told him that I loved him, it was, “Do your best, keep your promises.” I should have added, “…and make them few.” There are commitments that I have never regretted, like those to my wife and children. Those are so strong, they are vows. I’m not really talking
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about those, and you probably know that. The kinds that I am talking about are more about groups, committees, friends, and so on. I have a couple of friends who are each on three publicly-traded boards. They run their own very successful companies. They are also leaders in community organizations. They are cancer survivors, have children and spouses, and their regular complaints are that they do not have enough time for themselves or their family. These commitments were made one at a time. They were made without trading out one commitment for another, and without consideration of replacing any of the options for a new commitment with the time that each had wanted for themselves. My work has been with over 5,000 CEOs and executives. I could play this example as an audio track and over 75% of the people in the room would raise their hands identifying themselves as being similar. Commitments are prisons if you do not know what you want to keep untouched and are unwilling to trade for duty, obligations and guilt. THE PAST I wish I knew how to get out of this prison without tether or
scar. No easy answers here. I have identified a lot of my past, the cords and cables that trace back to why I am the way I am. I have forgiven myself, others, the world. Yeah, me. I have forgiven in my heart, truly. Yeah, God! Could not have done it without God. Why can’t I forget it? Why do I yell at my kids the same words that my parents yelled at me? Why am I afraid of dogs, scared of heights, and why do I love dirty mashed potatoes? Habits, traditions, programming. I went through counseling to break through some of my big prison walls. I spent time with God to break through others. Some other ones I just started making a list of, figuring out the triggers and then what I wanted, not what I just did in reflex. All I am saying is that your past is a prison—your prison. You have to break out of that prison. TRADE #1 You make most of your own prisons. The most insidious thing
about your prisons is that they are usually a bigger decision made on a
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smaller decision made on an even smaller decision. Seeing where the biggest decisions might have to be made later keeps you from making the first small but dangerous decision now. TRADE #2 Prison Breaks Are Necessary. Once you know you are in
prison, you have to start planning to break out. In the prison, you have few creative energy choices that don’t include survival.
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