When I began serving a 45-year federal sentence, I prayed for God to strengthen me. I’m grateful that those prayers helped me understand the power of efficacy.
I could allow the system to define me. Or I could define myself by decisions and actions. Prison stripped away liberty, with rules governing where I lived, what I wore, when I ate, and how I spent my time. But it could not prevent me from preparing for a better future.
From that experience, I developed what became the Straight-A Guide. These ten principles are practical tools for anyone, at any stage of the journey. They don’t require money, connections, or external conditions. They require clarity, discipline, and consistency.
Below is an overview of the ten principles. In the coming blogs, I will write about each one in depth.
Define Success: If you do not define success, someone else will define it for you. Many people measure success in the short term, without an end game in mind. It may be better to focus on values and long-term outcomes. Ask yourself: Who do I want to become? / What do I want my life to represent? / How will I measure whether I am advancing?
Set Goals: Once you define success, convert that vision into SMART goals. Goals create measurable milestones. Write your goals. Separate them into short-term, mid-term, and long-term categories. Make them specific enough to track.
Attitude: To advance prospects for success, make a 100% commitment to success, as defined by you. That’s when you show that you’ve got the right attitude. Don’t talk about wanting to be successful. Make intentional decisions.
Aspiration: Aspire to something more than current circumstances. With decades to serve, I envisioned life upon release. I aspired to build pathways that would help more people work to earn freedom. Those aspirations influenced my adjustment.
Action: Take incremental action steps every day. To succeed as I defined it, I had to prepare. For example, I read books and wrote reports on the books to show that I was intrinsically motivated to prepare for success.
Accountability: Create tools to measure daily progress. Don’t wait for the system to tell you whether you’re “extraordinary and compelling.” Build accountability resources to measure how hard you’ve worked and use that asset to advance your self-advocacy.
Awareness: Stay aware of every opportunity to grow and to advance you as a candidate for the highest level of liberty, at the soonest possible time. With your commitment to pursuing excellence, others will become aware of you and may support your efforts.
Authenticity: Do not attempt to fake your commitment. Others will notice whether you’re acting as if you’re the CEO of your life, or whether you’re a person who is filled with happy talk about what you’re going to accomplish.
Achievement: Recognize that the small, incremental achievements will put you on a path to higher levels of responsibility and opportunity. The harder you work on yourself, the more resources you will build and the faster you will accelerate progress.
Appreciation: Live in gratitude, appreciative of the blessings in your life. The Parable of the Talents teaches that we are entrusted with opportunity. God expects us to develop those opportunities. To the extent we do, more opportunities open.
The Straight-A Guide became a framework to help me climb through 26 years in prison, and to become successful upon release. I’ll write a series of blogs to offer more insight into each principle. Perhaps they will inspire you to write a framework of your own.
Self-Directed Questions
Consider using the questions below as prompts to develop your profile and document your self-directed preparations for success:
How do I currently define success? Is that definition clear, or vague?
What would success look like five years after my release?
What daily actions am I taking that move me closer to that vision?
What tools or skills do I need to develop?
How can I begin measuring my progress?
What recent setback required me to adjust my strategy?
In what ways am I contributing to others today?
Who belongs in my support network? How can I strengthen those relationships?
What documentation have I created that shows my growth?
Where am I thinking too short term?
For more insight, I encourage readers to go through our self-directed course on the Straight-A Guide.