For readers who don’t know Stephen Covey’s work, let me begin by endorsing it wholeheartedly. Dr. Covey studied leadership as a university educator. Through his work, he discovered that successful people from all walks of life, and from all eras, held seven habits in common:

• 1) They were proactive
• 2) They began with the end in mind
• 3) They took first steps first
• 4) They sought first to understand, then to be understood
• 5) They thought win/win
• 6) They synergized
• 7) They continuously sharpened their approach

These principles became habits for me, a “second nature” or integral part of my adjustment. Because I’ve embraced the habits, I’ve opened many opportunities that have enriched my life through this long journey of imprisonment. As my work shows, I’ve frequently relied upon what I learned from Dr. Covey to help my fellow prisoners overcome the struggle of imprisonment and prepare for law-abiding lives upon release.

Now I turn to the questions Dean asked:

When did I come in contact with the seven habits?

I found this book in the library when I was locked inside the high walls of a United States Penitentiary during the late 1980s. In my early 20s at the time, I was in my early adjustment of a sentence that would keep me confined for decades. A pursuit of education helped me avoid the negative influences, and when a friend recommended the book to me, the seven habits sounded like a concept I could embrace. I read it several times, memorized parts of it, and I began relying upon it frequently in my writings and in my efforts to teach other prisoners.

How did I begin teaching the seven habits?

In the prisons where I’ve been held, administrators have allowed prisoners to submit lesson plans for courses they wanted to teach under the Adult Continuing Education program. I have modeled several courses on the seven habits. I designed the courses in a way that would allow me to teach them in 10, two-hour segments for a total of 20 classroom hours. At the completion of the course, administrators issued certificates, though I always emphasized that the real value came by internalizing the lessons. Many people returned to pass through the course for second and third times.

How did I incorporate lessons from the seven habits into my teaching?

As long-term prisoners move through their sentences, a debilitating apathy can take root. I relied upon the seven habits as an antidote, showing how those who advanced through prison with proactive adjustments could lead richer lives. The individual had to envision how he wanted to emerge from confinement. With that end-in-mind perspective, he could take first steps first. If he could understand the complexities of confinement, I explained, he could educate himself and use that education to open new opportunities. Such a strategy would keep him out of disciplinary problems and help him build a resume of accomplishments to ease his transition into society, thus everyone won by his adjustment. Prisoners who embraced these lessons found the lessons turned into personal habits, working together in synergy to guide their every step through the journey to a better life. In time, the investment each man made in his adjustment inspired him to work harder so that he could achieve more.

How many people in prison have I taught using the seven habits?

I have been in prison for 22 years, and I’ve taught structured courses since 1995. During that period I’ve taught about 50 courses, with 20 to 30 prisoners in each course. A conservative estimate would exceed 1,000 prisoners. Motivating the prisoners to participate in the courses I taught based on the seven habits helped me as much as it helped them. I lived this program and derived a sense of fulfillment in showing others how such habits could enrich their lives, assist their prison adjustments, and prepare them to emerge successfully.

Has anyone from the classes I taught been released early because of what they’ve learned?

One of the lessons I teach is to focus on and expand our sphere of influence. That means we do not think about being released early as much as we focus on preparing ourselves to enrich our lives now, despite the limitations of confinement. In federal prison we do not have access to parole or opportunities to earn freedom. Those who participate in my leadership classes learn how to embrace the seven habits in ways that empower them to thrive through the adversity of confinement, develop skills and values that will help them triumph over the obstacles that await release, and lead fulfilling lives wherever they go.

Any other ways this book may help?

I intend to rely upon lessons from the seven habits as a resource that will help me show people how to overcome every type of adversity. Many consider imprisonment as one of life’s great stress inducers. By relying upon the seven habits, however, I have led a fulfilling, productive life through 22 continuous years of incarceration. I will share these experiences upon my release through speaking, writing, teaching, and consulting.

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Highly successful prisoners see themselves as a part of the broader community. Prison boundaries may separate them from daily interactions, but their sense of connectivity never wavers. To the prisoner focused on emerging successfully, nurturing that connection drives his every action and thought. An essential component of that plan requires that he hold himself accountable.

In writing out both the values and goals that govern his life, the successful prisoner can clearly define success. He structures his day to avoid meandering through in a haphazard manner. Every hour is counted, and at the end of each day, week, month, and year, he can evaluate whether he is making progress or if his course needs adjusting.

The successful prisoner understands that achievement does not come by accident. By announcing his goals to others, he invites the world to hold him accountable. This strategy helps him define the level of personal commitment invested in both the goals and values he identifies as being crucial to his success.

Accountability is the essential component that distinguishes a successful prisoner from the one who surrenders control of his life to outside forces. Rather than making excuses or listing all the reasons he cannot succeed, the successful prisoner understands that his goals serve as a guide, and when circumstances dictate an adjustment, he adjusts. The focus is to ensure that he makes the best use of all his resources, all of the time. By reviewing his accountability records and logs, the successful prisoner can see that his success today is a direct result of the choices he made yesterday.

The successful prisoner understands the importance of keeping his word. If he says he will do something, he does it. Rather than living as a victim of the prison experience, he advances forward, holding himself accountable to the goals and plans to which he committed. Accountability drives the successful prisoner to evaluate his progress consistently.

Effective prison reforms that include mechanisms through which individual prisoners can earn graduated levels of freedom would encourage more prisoners to embrace accountability. In my article Master Discipline, Expect Nothing, I describe the strategies that have guided me through my first 21 years in prison.

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By practicing each of the seven habits of highly successful prisoners, remarkable goals can be achieved. When prisoners apply the strategies consistently and deliberately over time, however, a synergy ensues. Synergy creates conditions that make the total effect greater than the sum of the individual effects.

When people in prison launch proactive adjustment patterns, they remove a measure of dependency on prison administrators. Instead of yielding one’s success, or the potential for success, to administrators who set policies, rules, and dictate the infrastructure, the proactive prisoner charts his own course to success.

Prisoners who possess a clear vision of how they want to emerge will focus instinctively on the steps they must first take. They also understand the steps that must follow. Successful prisoners recognize that the surest and shortest distance between two points is a straight line. They advance through their sentences with purposeful, deliberate decisions, ensuring that each step advances their course.

By understanding their environment, prisoners who serve their sentences with a deliberate focus can position themselves to make each day productive. Neither the environment itself, nor their perception of the environment will block their progress. Rather than lamenting over the deprivations through which all prisoners must endure, they focus on the advantages available to them.

In their adjustments, successful prisoners are able to set goals that co-opt others. By creating strategies that enhance the lives of others, the successful prisoner invites others to accept a vested interest in his life. In so doing, prisoners succeed in bolstering their network of support. Rather than serving his sentence as a helpless whiner, complaining about all that has been taken away, the prisoner who adjusts with deliberate focus strengthens those around him while simultaneously strengthening himself.

Each strategy in and of itself will ease a prisoner’s adjustment. When the prisoner embraces them all, however, he can achieve specific goals that others deem impossible for anyone living within the restrictions of confinement. Synergy empowers the individual to serve his sentence from a position of strength rather than weakness.

In my article describing the Quadrant Theory, I offer lessons on how synergy and positive adjustments have powered me through more than 21 years in prison.

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Prisoners who succeed on a high level commit to adjustment patterns that bring victory to all parties. Success necessitates a focus on much more than the prisoner himself. Successful adjustments require the individual to enhance the lives of others, not just his own life.

Too many prisoners serve their sentences without concern for the broader implications of their imprisonment. By dwelling on the difficulties of confinement, they drown in self-pity. All prisoners miss their families and communities, and all prisoners have to cope with the deprivations that accompany confinement. The successful prisoner responds to adversity differently from others.

It is not enough to rely on exercise, recreation activities, and television to carry the successful prisoner through the months, years, or decades of confinement. A focus on the self can help a prisoner only so far. Those who limit themselves when coping with the world of confinement adjust in ways that help ease their stay through prison. Unfortunately, such adjustment patterns frequently condition these men for continuing cycles of failure upon release.

The successful prisoners I’ve met were self-directed, though they also kept perspective for their responsibilities to contribute and to interact with the broader community. They contemplated steps they could take to prepare for the challenges they would face upon release and pursued them. Just as they sought to understand the prison environment, successful prisoners also thought about the needs of their wives, their prospective future employers or business associates, their probation officers, prison administrators, their fellow prisoners, and everyone else connected to their community. Those successful prisoners pursued adjustment patterns that would ensure they contributed in positive ways to all.

A superficial glance at the prison environment would not be sufficient to identify all of the opportunities to enhance the richness of life. Successful prisoners, however, find meaning in all that they pursue. Their activities empower them because each activity contributes to a greater mosaic than the simple passing of time.

Successful prisoners who pursue win-win adjustment patterns never experience boredom. They manage to live alone and respond with strength to the loneliness that cripples others. Successful prisoners live without the crutch of psychological counseling or the narcotizing influences of medication. Where an individual serves his time is not as relevant as the attitude with which the individual serves his time. Whether he is locked in a SHU cell of a high-security penitentiary or walking freely within the confines of a minimum-security camp, the successful prisoner knows he can create meaning in his life by committing to win-win adjustment patterns.

To lower rates, we need prison reforms that would make prisoners who utilize such adjustment patterns more visible.

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Prisons differ from other communities in America. Those of us who live inside the boundaries must contend with administrative rules and policies that frequently seem ridiculous. We, as prisoners, do not see the logic in restrictions that preclude us from nurturing family and community ties while we serve our sentences. Similarly, we experience frustrations as a consequence of sharing crowded, intimate spaces with so many others.

Thriving through prison environments requires prisoners to understand as much as possible about both the infrastructure of confinement and the mindset of other prisoners. Those who walk into prison with expectations of living as they did in society will meet resistance from both administrators and other prisoners. The better strategy, my experience convinces me, is to begin a prison term like a submarine. The prisoner should pass his first months in any prison environment maneuvering his way amidst the currents, undetected, keeping his periscope up in order to learn as much as possible about the perils in which he is immersed. Once he has mastered his environment, he can begin to reveal more of himself.

Some prisoners coming into the prison environment for the first time do not grasp the wisdom of this strategy. They arrive with expectations that the values of the free world are consistent with the values that dominate the prison culture. Such misconceptions frequently lead to altercations with prison staff and conflicts with other prisoners. A successful prison adjustment, in my estimation, prepares an individual to emerge from confinement stronger than when he began serving his term. Making conscious efforts to understand the prison environment goes a long way toward preparing offenders to achieve such a goal.

Prisoners who choose to thrive understand that administrators place only negligible value on individual efforts to prepare for success upon release. Similarly, the overall prison population concerns itself more with easing the pains and inconveniences of confinement than preparing for the obstacles that arise after release. By understanding their environment, prisoners who possess the necessary discipline and inner determination can make proactive adjustments that will enable them to achieve the goals they deem important to their lives, obstacles notwithstanding.

We need prison reforms that open opportunities for prisoners to earn freedom through merit. Succeeding through these environments requires the individual to empower himself. Successful prisoners overcome the obstacles by first understanding their environment, then making the adjustments necessary to thrive.

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Once prisoners understand how to begin with the end in mind, they can advance to the next stage of a successful adjustment pattern through prison. That strategy requires prisoners to put first things first. It means developing a timeline from which they can measure their progress.

For example, if a prisoner who was scheduled to serve a five-year sentence knew how he wanted to emerge, then he could work backwards to develop a clear understanding of where he needed to be at various stages of his timeline. By knowing where he planned to be at five years, the prisoner could identify the growth he would need to embody at the four-year mark, at the three-year mark, at the two-year mark, and at the one-year mark. With such clearly defined goals, he could measure his progress quarterly, monthly, and daily.

This strategy for prison adjustment does not differ from any other strategy for success. When a child begins his educational journey, the course follows a specific structure. First are the primary years, when the basics of reading, spelling, grammar, and math are learned. Next, the child advances through secondary school, followed by high school. The overall goal would be to earn a high school diploma, though students mark their progress by completing the requirements of each school year; report cards evaluate their performance during each quarter and semester to mark their progress.

Prisoners who know how they want to emerge will not struggle to pass through one season to the next. Instead, they use every day to grow with deliberate purpose. The will not abdicate their commitment to succeed to any outside force. Instead, they create their own niche and measure their progress day by day.

Those constant efforts empower the individual who is committed to success. By charting his own course, the successful prisoner is invigorated by each step he takes toward advancement. Successful prisoners who embrace proactive adjustment patterns, who begin with the end in mind, who put first things first, live meaningful lives in spite of the fickle and seemingly obstructive policies implemented by administrators. Rather than yielding to the pressures of confinement, the purpose-driven prisoner evaluates every step and makes continuous progress toward the goals he identified with specific clarity.

Instead of meandering through lengthy prison terms, successful prisoners know that each step will lead them closer to their goals. They don’t wait for months to pass. Successful prisoners know what they have to complete, and that knowledge infuses them with passion and enthusiasm. It empowers them to power through every circumstance.

Administrators ought to implement prison reforms that would motivate prisoners to embrace adjustment patters to help them emerge successfully.

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Prisoners sentenced to serve one year or 25 years share at least one eventuality in common. Both have scheduled release dates. As such, they can both begin serving their sentences with the end in mind.

Those prisoners who envision how they want to emerge can chart a course that will ensure that they reach their destination. They might think of themselves as captains of a ship on course that they must navigate. Those with short sentences might only cross from one island to another, while those with long sentences would have to cross entire oceans. Once at sea, however, anything could happen. Storms and rough seas could erupt without warning. Those who tried to navigate their way through storms without a compass could easily drift off course. The man who knew where he was going, on the other hand, could advance with confidence, measuring his progress daily.

In prison, it is easy for a prisoner to lose his way. He must live amidst hundreds of different personalities–each of whom feels the frustration of confinement–forced to live locked inside societies of deprivation. Whether the prisoner is confined inside a minimum-security prison camp or a high-security penitentiary, volatile situations can erupt. The prisoner who has a plan, who knows where he is going, can figure out how to succeed in spite of the turmoil around him. The prisoner who truly applies himself toward thriving through turmoil can emerge stronger than he was upon his arrival into confinement.

Prisoners who live with clear visions of how they want to emerge will never suffer from boredom or lack of direction. They have both short- and long-term goals to guide them. Every quarter they review what they accomplished over the past 3 months, and schedule themselves to meet new goals for the ensuing quarter. With specific goals to achieve, they always have tasks to complete. Prisoners who set tiny goals can make incremental progress while those who strive for more significant achievements can change their lives.

Common goals that I’ve heard prisoners express include losing weight and strengthening relationships with their wives. Other prisoners said they wanted to educate themselves or become closer to God. In my experience, the prisoners who set more clearly defined goals enjoyed more successful adjustment during their terms of confinement. In other words, there is a tremendous difference between making a vague promise to lose weight and stating a commitment to reaching a target weight of 170 pounds by March 1^st, and remaining within a five pound range thereafter. Rather than a simple promise toward strengthening a relationship with his wife, he could outline specific steps he would take to enhance his marriage. A prisoner who says he wants to educate himself could identify the courses he will complete, the credentials he will earn, or the books he will read.

Clearly defined goals have helped me thrive through more than 21 years in prisons of every security level. I know that beginning with the end in mind can help other prisoners as well. We need prison reforms that will encourage more prisoners to adjust with the end in mind.

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Prisoners should not allow the obstructions of confinement to block them from preparations they had to make to succeed upon release. During the 21-plus years that I’ve served in prisons of every security level, I’ve listened to numerous prisoners complain about the lack of opportunities to add value to their lives. Some whined incessantly of boredom. Some griped about living conditions. Some argued that nothing mattered.

Those who thrived through prison adjusted differently. They overcame the challenges wrought by prison administrators by making proactive adjustments. Proactive prisoners understood that the onus was on them to lead meaningful lives, regardless of circumstances.

Rather than dwelling on the freedoms forfeited as a consequence of confinement, or what they had lost, successful prisoners focused on the privileges within reach. It was incumbent upon each to make the most of what he had.

I was 23-years-old when I began serving my sentence. The length of my term meant that administrators would not schedule my release until I had served more than 25 years. Life would go on. My parents would age. My sisters would build families of their own. I would live amidst chaos and negativity. The choice to determine my adjustment, however, would be mine. I chose to succeed.

Every prisoner had to make his own choice. Some men hung their heads in shame. Others rebelled. Weak prisoners sought medication in misguided efforts to assuage anxieties, loneliness, and the many demons tormenting their minds. Experience convinced

Administrators do not consider it their job to make life easy for prisoners. Their level of interest in preparing offenders to overcome the obstacles that come with release hovers between slim and none, and not necessarily in that order. Significant prison reforms are necessary in order to bring change to infrastructures that are designed to extinguish hope. Successful prisoners, however, will not allow outside forces to condition them for misery and failure.

Successful prisoners create their own opportunities for growth through positive adjustments. They understand the importance of bringing meaning to their lives in spite of prison conditions.

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