Your Prison Sentence

No one in their right mind chooses to act a certain way which results in a prison sentence.

Yet a lot of us do.

A prison doesn’t necessarily have to be of the jailbird type, locked up in one of HMP’s finest.

We can create our very own prisons and become prisoners of our own lives.

Created as a result of our thinking and doing, of our habits, our attitude and perspective of life.

Created either consciously or unconsciously.

And as that cool guy Carl Jung said:

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.

Consider this PRISON:

• P = Permanent (how you view your current state or problems)
• R = Resistance (you what you should be doing but you resist change, you stay put because you think change is too hard and you’ll fail anyway)
• I = Isolation (you hide away from the world, from the help and support available and you stay silent)
• S = Seek pleasures (you choose to do the easy things that provide some instant relief but are a negative spiral of doom, be it food, booze, drugs, gambling, shopping)
• O = Outrage (you become angry with yourself, with others and with the world)
• N = Neglect (you neglect the truly important things in life; your health and your relationships, you neglect living)

Now that is a prison.  A living prison.

At least in an actual prison there’s an element of care and support, there’s food, there’s wellbeing facilities, support, teaching programs and all the good behaviours are noticed and rewarded; there’s even rehabilitation and leaving a changed person.

But your own living prison is something else; it can be a brutal place and to regain your freedom can seem impossible depending on how deeply in prison you’ve become.

Your freedom is entirely possible though, do not forget and do not lose hope.

No problem is permanent (we’ll always have problems but no one problem is permanent).

And with small courageous steps at first, a day at a time, seeking the support available, you start to break free and one day you’ll look back and be amazed at how far you’ve come and how resilient you are.  And you will be able to help others too.