Reinvention 101: How I Cultivated Resilience After Prison

How did I build and reinvent after prison?

There are many ways, but the core, the backbone of it, is resilience.

Resilience makes facing rejection after rejection and navigating the stigma of a criminal record possible.

Resilience is what makes the extraordinary possible.

Fortunately, resilience is a muscle and can be trained.

Here are 3 ways I cultivated resilience:

Drop the Outcome:

I’ll use the journey to the TEDx stage as an example.

I felt fear every time I submitted a TEDx application.

Fear of rejection and fear of acceptance (I’d actually have to do the thing — and be seen and heard).

I dropped the outcome and focused on the quality of my application. I focused on how good I felt every time I hit “submit” in the face of fear.

I’m not the outcome; I’m the effort and who I become on the way.

Have a Mission:

I had a mission (and still do) for the work I create.

1. To help one person who feels right now how I once felt. For the TEDx, I focused on someone consumed by shame and uncomfortable in their own skin who doesn’t…