“If you were 25 years old again what would you do differently?”, someone asked me. In prison I thought a lot about that ?. #prisontiktok #lifelessons

One year to the day after I was released from prison, I had a big speaking event in front of thousands of people and as soon as I began speaking, I was embarrassed, humbled quickly. I said to this large audience that anyone could make bad decisions that could derail their life and lead them into trouble and as I said that, someone in the back row stood up and I'm thinking to myself, "Sir, I'm 27 seconds into this presentation. It's not time for Q&A." And he said, "I suspect you're trying to help us, but let me be clear, don't presume I can make bad decisions. I have to be here today to get my continued education credit, but I don't make bad decisions and all eyes were on me like my goodness. What's this kid from California going to say?" And I said, "You're right. It's wrong for me to presume that you need to change and it's wrong for me to indict everyone in this audience. This is my story and I'm here to share bad decisions than I made because I'm not perfect and I want to do better." The idea for this video popped up because someone who watched some TikTok videos called and the first question was, "I like the videos how older you and I said I'm 47." They said, "Well, I'm 27. If you can go back to when you were like 25 years old, what advice would you give yourself?" And I said, "Well, you may not need to make any changes. I've learned that lesson in the hard way, but if I were 25 years old again, I would, wow, I'd love to go back. What I would tell myself follows. Don't wait until something so significant happens in your life until you need to make a change, examine your strengths and weaknesses, pay more attention to people with whom you associate because I do, I find it ironic that I had to be in federal prison separated from my family to embrace ethics and integrity and I began to study the motivations behind my choices. The choices themselves. I was on the wrong side of prison boundaries before I made that change. Close friend of mine, I love him. He's going through a miserable, expensive divorce. Why he got caught cheating on his wife and guess what? Now he wants to go to a couple's therapy after she's filed divorce. My father, the greatest dad in the whole world, I'm so fortunate, had his knees replaced. Why chose not to exercise for a long time as we'd like to say may have had one too many dodger dogs. He'll tell you that. So I would encourage all of you, if you need to make a change, don't wait until you get that punch in the face like I did in federal prison, examine your strengths, examine your weaknesses, reevaluate your days, your weeks and your months and hold yourself accountable and ask yourself, are you living faithfully to the values that you have identified as educational as that may sound or as a preface or a prephysorial as that may sound if that's even a word? If I can go back to 25, I'd examine my strengths and weaknesses. I encourage you to do the same. If you need to make a change, make it, don't wait till it's too late.