I spent four more years in crime and prison after my epiphany experience with Babe Dillard. During those four years, I transformed prison, for me, from a crime college to a change center.
I remember setting around various cellblocks, over the years, swapping crime stories with other criminals, and thinking, um, I could make that work for me. I remember dreaming about the "big score," every criminal's ultimate fantasy. You get away with hundreds of thousands of dollars and chill out on some tropical island with beautiful women and a life of luxury.
After my experience with Dillard, the nightmare of that potential future--wasting 40 years in prison haunted me relentlessly. Looking back now I see clearly the huge and deadly bullet I dodged. If I had not changed, I would be 65 years old in October 2007, and would have spent the last 39 years in prison, probably as battered and broken by now as Babe Dillard was then. I would be hobbling down some prison trying vainly to convince some ego-driven, blind and dumb criminal not to make my mistake.
Fortunately, I took this old criminal's advice and began learning how to change.
Please note, the system didn't change! Prison remains as brutal and inhumane as it has always been. Society, by and large, has not changed! Some people who have been victimized by crime are just as opposed to the idea of changed criminals as they have always been. Others, who try to help, remain as inept as they have always been. The issue remains: criminals must change.
In the remainder of this article, I am going to write directly to criminals who want to change, but because of the rules in prison, most of them will never see this article unless you help. Okay, FLOC (Families and Loved Ones of Criminals), here is your chance to launch your active role in helping your loved one change. You are reading this. I challenge you to not just agree or disagree with me. If you do not personally have a relative or loved one in crime or incarcerated, then give this article to someone you know who does. You won't have to look far.
During my final four years in crime and prison, including a fruitless parole stint, I learned seven valuable lessons about this process of change. They are as follows:
Change from crime begins inside. This means two things. First, it means that incarcerated criminals must begin changing while incarcerated. Second, it means that personal change begins inside the person. For additional details, please read my article "Tired of Prison? Break the crime habit!"
Change from crime manifests itself outside. This also means two things. First, it means that you must not only "see" yourself changing, others must "see" the change, too. Your fellow inmates, for example, must see the difference in you. Your new thinking, beliefs, expectations and attitudes must be so shocking and challenging that they talk about your changes. Yes, many of them will likely disbelieve, even oppose your changes. For additional information about this lesson, please see my article The 14 Laws of Success. This lesson also means that when you are released, the changes that occurred inside of you will also be reflected in your life on the outside. Both your talk and your walk must demonstrate difference.
When changes are wrought in you and manifest themselves outside you have become a change activist. In fact, you must become a change activist while incarcerated.
Change activists must have the courage and perseverance to withstand opposition to change inside so they can conquer more severe opposition after release. If you shudder and recoil from the opposition to change you experience in prison, you will never survive the intense opposition you confront after release. Despite, our protestations to the contrary, most law abiding citizens do not believe that criminals can and will change. How do I know? We, as a society, continue paying huge sums to punish criminals, at least we believe we are punishing them, rather than insisting that criminals change. As a society, we generally do not support strategies designed to help criminals change.
Change from crime requires a team. Face facts! If you have been a criminal since you were______years-old [put your age in the blank], you know nothing about changing from being a criminal to becoming a community contributor. Chances are you do not know anyone who made that transition. The rule, though, is simple. If I want to become a millionaire, I would not take a college economics course from a professor earning $75,000. I would find all the instructional information I could from millionaires and learn to do what they do. In 2002, Mike Litman and Jason Oman published a neat little book entitled Conversations with Millionaires. This book is a collection of radio conversations with millionaires such as Jim Rohn, Mark Victor Hansen, Wally 'Famous' Amos, Jack Canfield, Robert Allen, Sharon Lechter, Michael Gerber and Jim McCann, among others. I know, you've never heard of these people, but you know Ray Rae, Skeeter, Boom Boom and Rap Man. They all have one thing in common, they are broke and cannot help you. So, to be a millionaire, learn from millionaires. To become a change activist, you must learn from change activists. Therefore, you need a team of change activists. Begin at home with the people close to you. Challenge them to help you make the arduous trek from crime to contribution. This group of mentors become your Change Advocates.
Change advocates must also be change activists in their personal lives. No one can teach you what they do not know. They cannot help you go where they've never been. Therefore, as you speak with potential team members, stress the fact that you need people who are either already change activists, or who are willing, for your sake, to become change activists personally.
The change team must build their relationship on the following four fundamental principles: commitment, cooperation, communication and contribution. Everyone on the team must be committed to the proposition that this specific criminal can become a community contributor. Everyone on the team must learn to cooperate in the change process, rather than compete with it. Everyone on the team must vow to communicate honestly and openly with each other and everyone else. Everyone on the team must contribute to the process. These constitute core principles of the change process.
Here's the final lesson I learned during those four years, and it might well be the most important: change constitutes life's only constant and all conflict develops from the clash of two or more mindsets that refuse to change.
As far as I know, Babe Dillard died in a North Carolina prison, a battered and broken man who will never know how much he accomplished on that day in 1964 when he advised me to stop being a fool and to not make his mistake. As far as I am concerned, Dillard balanced the books that day. Therefore, in honor of his contribution to me, I did something that many of my fellow inmates thought to be silly. As I sat on my bunk in a now defunct prison unit in Creswell, North Carolina on Dec. 9, 1968, I pronounced sentence upon myself. "Milton C. Jordan," I said aloud, "I hereby sentence you to life in freedom. You must serve this sentence without any possibility of parole."
I'm still serving that sentence. It's been a great 39 years, and the best is yet to come.
See you at success!
I have spent almost 40 years mastering the principles of how to stay out of crime and prison. I am now an expert and I want to share this expertise with others. For more information, please visit [http://www.miltoncjordansr.com/]
