This module uses Michael Santos's early experience in solitary confinement to show how transformation can begin with responsibility, reflection, and a new way of thinking. Participants learn how adversity can become the starting point for discipline and change.
The first year I spent in the criminal justice system was unlike anything I had imagined. Authorities arrested me on August 11, 1987. My case did not involve weapons, violence, or gang activity. Yet Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and we were at the beginning of the War on Drugs. Because prosecutors charged me as a kingpin, jailers in the detention center locked me in solitary confinement.
I was 23 years old. Until that point in my life, I had lived recklessly, with little regard for the long-term consequences of my actions. In solitary, I had time to think, though it took me a while to accept responsibility, even though I knew I was guilty.
The lawyer I hired told me what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to hear. I knew I was guilty, but I still pushed the government to prove the case to a jury. During the trial, I took the witness stand and perjured myself by testifying that I was innocent. The jury convicted me on every count. Those convictions exposed me to the possibility of a life sentence.
Following my conviction, I began to accept that life had changed. I had lost my liberty, my normal routines, and all my ill-gotten gains. My wife at the time had gone her own way. I lost the illusion that my attorney, or anyone else, could save me from the consequences of decisions I had made. I was left with time, silence, and questions about the future.
That kind of isolation forces a person to think. If I did not learn how to think differently, the prison system would consume me. That first stage of confinement became the place where I began learning some of the most important lessons of my life.
What are you learning from your experience?
In that era, and in that facility, authorities only allowed a person to have a book of faith in the cell. I had a Bible. Still defiant, I spent the first seven or eight months doing pushups, running in place, and reading from Genesis to Revelation. I searched those pages for meaning and for lessons on what I should do next. Several stories had meaning for me, likely because of the predicament I had created for myself.
These stories helped me think differently about responsibility, loss, and the possibility of rebuilding.
Reading a few Biblical stories did not make me disciplined, patient, and accepting of the changes in my life. But those stories helped me stop living in denial, and they opened my mind to the possibility of change and accepting responsibility.
I accepted that if I wanted to grow, and reach my full potential, I would have to focus on what I could control, regardless of what decisions others made. I’d have to become a good steward of:
Before my arrest, I failed to assess the magnitude of my crimes or the risks I was taking. The combination of solitary confinement and my conviction stripped away excuses. The steel door, the isolation, and the sentence I faced made it impossible to depend on an attorney, or anyone else, to solve problems that my own decisions had created.
I started accepting responsibility.
I began to understand that I would have to become the person responsible for rebuilding my future. Nobody else could think for me. Nobody else could serve the time for me. Nobody else could write the next chapter of my life. Either I could let my crime and imprisonment define me, or I could start learning how to recalibrate.
That understanding became the foundation for everything that followed.
When a person faces life in prison, the future can feel too overwhelming. I remain grateful to an officer in the detention center, Officer Wilson. Although rules prohibited my family from sending books to me, he had access and discretion. I credit him for helping to change my life, because he brought me books that helped me learn from people who suffered through conditions far worse than mine. For the first time, I began reading about Frederick Douglass, Socrates, Viktor Frankl, Nelson Mandela, and others. Their stories helped me think differently. Instead of asking only, “How will I survive the sentence I receive?” I began asking smaller, more productive questions:
Those questions forced me to think differently. Instead of dwelling only on the pain I would endure, I began to contemplate a better future. I had been feeling trapped in a dark maze. The discipline of thinking, and of asking Socratic questions, helped me develop a plan. While incarcerated, I would work toward a three-part plan:
I believed that commitment would help me make better decisions about the next week, the next month, and the next season of life. I could read intentionally and develop more skills, including writing, math, and critical thinking. I could document the steps I took to show progress. This plan, I believed, would help open new skills, relationships, and opportunities.
That plan became the compass that carried me through the journey.
While in solitary confinement, I learned a valuable lesson: a person may not be able to control the sentence, but he can begin controlling the response. He can decide whether time will become only punishment or whether it can also become preparation.
In solitary confinement, I began learning from people who changed the way I think–even though I would never meet them. They helped me understand that if I wanted a different future, I would have to become a good steward of resources, and govern the part of life that remained within my control:
That did not mean life suddenly became easier. It meant I stopped waiting for lawyers or anyone else to create meaning for me. I stopped assuming that time alone would improve me. I began seeing that progress would require deliberate effort.
Many people enter prison, or even the pretrial stage, expecting that lawyers will solve the problem. They hope some external force will restore life as they once knew it. Some allow others in the system to dictate how they will serve the sentence, forfeiting their ability to engineer a strategy that may lead to better outcomes. Growth begins when a person responds to adversity with more honesty, more structure, and more intention.
The first lessons I learned in solitary confinement were not only spiritual. They were also moral and practical.
Those lessons became the seeds that restored meaning in my life. As I describe in later chapters, growth through the journey would eventually lead to the Straight-A Guide, a ten-part framework for making better decisions:
Time in solitary forced me to sit with what I had done, what I had lost, and what I would have to become if I wanted the years ahead to mean anything. In that sense, solitary introduced me to a new way of thinking. Instead of dwelling only on the challenges I faced, I began thinking about the steps I could take to build a better future. That confrontation became the first step toward change.
Many readers may still be in the earliest stage of their own journey. Some may be pretrial. Some may be preparing to surrender. Some may already be in prison but still resisting the internal work of reflection. I encourage readers to begin where they are, but to begin. Start with the truth as you can presently see it:
Those reflections may become the beginning of your biography. They may become journal entries. They may shape the way you later define success and build a release plan. The point is not to wait until the language is perfect. The point is to begin documenting the earliest stage of transformation honestly. By recording your pathway to change, you build an asset you may later leverage in many ways, as I did.
Participants in our courses should understand that the first stage of change may not look impressive. People may not notice, or they may not see you differently from the status you occupy now. That does not mean the act of writing your plans lacks value.
A person who begins accepting responsibility, learning from adversity, and documenting what he is beginning to understand has already started moving in a better direction. That movement may be slow, but it changes the foundation from which you will make future decisions. There are always more opportunities in the future than in the past, and I encourage every member of our community to become part of the change he wants to see.
The lessons I learned in solitary confinement gave me a different mindset. That new way of thinking influenced the books I later read, the plans I later built, the records I later created, and the opportunities I later pursued.
Everything that followed began there.
The first stage of transformation often begins in the hardest place. When a person stops resisting reality, accepts responsibility, and begins learning from adversity, he starts building the foundation for a better future.
