What Damon West Learned in PRISON That Changed His Life Forever

Damon West's journey from a life sentence to becoming a beacon of hope is nothing short of extraordinary. In this episode of the Rise Up Kings Podcast, Damon shares his transformative "Coffee Bean" philosophy—a powerful lesson he learned in prison that teaches us how to transform our environment from the inside out. Discover how Damon turned his darkest moments into a mission of positive change, inspiring thousands worldwide. Tune in to learn how you, too, can become a catalyst for transformation in your own life and community.

Connect with Damon West: 

Website: https://damonwest.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/damonjosephwest/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/damonjosephwest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/damonjosephwest/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@damonjosephwest
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonjosephwest/

For more information on Rise Up Kings, go to https://riseupkings.com

For more information on our 3 Day experience for Christian Men, go to https://www.riseupkings.com/event

Rise Up Kings Podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

Rise Up Kings Podcast on Spotify: ...

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;01;27
Unknown
Damon, welcome to the show.

00;00;02;03 - 00;00;18;06
Unknown
Thanks, Guy, but thanks a lot for happy man. What's going on, brother? Well, it is, we're out here. You're going to be speaking shortly at our record convention, so I'm excited to have you talking. Yeah, I can't wait. It couldn't pick a better place. This is, the Dallas area. I know the Dallas area well. Yeah, you're about four hours away, right?

00;00;18;08 - 00;00;33;00
Unknown
Yeah, about four hours away where I live now. But at one point in my life, this was, this is the place where a lot of transformation took place for me. This is, kind of ground zero for Damon West. Really? Well, let's let's start out, man. Where does your story start? Let's start my story off right here in Dallas.

00;00;33;06 - 00;00;54;22
Unknown
Although, July 30th, 2008, start off 16 years ago. Okay. That day on July 30th, 2008, I was sitting in a little rundown apartment in Dallas, and I was sitting on this little radio couch, and I was sitting next to my meth dealer smoking meth. 16 years ago. I'm not the clean cut, polished looking guy you see in front of me now, running for best selling books, movie deal, the family and all that.

00;00;54;24 - 00;01;13;16
Unknown
None of that stuff was going on 16 years ago because I'm a football and meth addict, the head of an organized crime of the top criminal in this criminal operation. And that day, on the couch, I'm telling Tex my dope that he needed to get out of there, that I knew the cops were closing in on me. They picked up my my partner in crime ten days before, so I knew it was a matter of time.

00;01;13;16 - 00;01;21;20
Unknown
But they got me. Hey, man, just about that time, that window on my right blows up, shatters in the Dallas Swat teams and all their guns everywhere. Flash bang grenades

00;01;24;02 - 00;01;39;27
Unknown
They took me to Dallas County Jail that day. They processed me, and they set my bond at $1.4 million for engaging organized crime. Rigo. But ten months later, I go to my trial and I'm sentenced to life in prison for organized crime 65 years, which is a life sentence here in the state of Texas.

00;01;39;27 - 00;01;59;14
Unknown
So like I said, Dallas has a lot of meaning to me because it was on that day that I got sent to life in prison. May 18th, 2009, that a lot of changes happened. You see, whenever I got sentenced to life in prison that day, I knew that something had to change and that something was me, but I just didn't know how I was going to do it.

00;01;59;17 - 00;02;13;26
Unknown
I had a conversation with my parents right after the trial. They gave my parents five minutes with me in the little side room. There's a bulletproof glass between us, and my mom gives me this ultimatum. She's telling me, you know, you can't go into one of these Aryan Brotherhood gangs, these white hate groups. You can't go in there.

00;02;13;26 - 00;02;31;19
Unknown
And she said, no gangs, no tattoos. You know, she's like, come back as the man we raised. Get on God's back like God care you. She reminds me of footprints in the sand. This little prayer, like she had a wall as a kid growing up. But she's reminded me, Let God carry me through this process. And she gives me this line in the sand, tomato man.

00;02;31;19 - 00;02;50;18
Unknown
She says, you come back as the man we raised or don't come back at all. She said, that's your option right now. So man I'm like I'm stunned. I don't know how I'm going to do this. And I'm running around Dallas County Jail. I've got two months before the prison bus comes get me. It's the summer of 2009 and waiting for the transport bus to come get me, to take me to a supermax prison.

00;02;50;20 - 00;03;08;25
Unknown
And I run into this old black Muslim guy in Dallas County jail. Got him. Muhammad. Mohammed Zab. He's a career criminal man. He's been in and out of prison his entire life, but he was the most positive guy ever met my life. This guy had a smile on his face everywhere he went. And, every morning he'd come up to my cell, come into my bunk, and he would always talk to me and check on me.

00;03;08;28 - 00;03;25;02
Unknown
This particular morning, he comes up. My time is limited. He's getting ready to bond out of Dallas County Jail. He said, I need to tell you what prison's going to be like. And that's when he starts telling me about the dynamic of prison. He said, prison's all about race. He said, you're going to fight, fight, fight. The white gangs get the first dibs on you.

00;03;25;02 - 00;03;39;18
Unknown
Then it'll be the black gangs. And if you survive that, you earn the right to walk alone, he said. The strongest man in prison always walks alone. And he tells me the truth about fighting. He said, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights. Some days you win, some days you lose.

00;03;39;20 - 00;03;55;15
Unknown
Get back up. And that's what he's telling me. I like get back up, but but man, I look back. This guy like a deer in headlights. All those violence and terror about to walk into. And that's what he's like. Let me break this down for you a different way, he said. I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water.

00;03;55;18 - 00;04;13;04
Unknown
He said, anything we put into the pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot, he said, I'm gonna put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they change a carrot, an egg and a coffee bean. And that's when he walks me through one of the most amazing inside out stories I've ever heard of.

00;04;13;04 - 00;04;32;06
Unknown
My wife, he says. The carrot goes in hard but becomes softened by the water. He said, you're going to see a lot of carrots in life. The egg goes in with the shell that protects it on the outside physically, but inside that shell, that soft liquid core, the yolk, the heart becomes hardened. And he said, if your heart becomes hard in there, you're incapable of giving a receiving love.

00;04;32;08 - 00;04;48;17
Unknown
You're institutionalized, he said. With the coffee bean was something different altogether. It had the power to change the water around it. With the power inside of it, the coffee bean changes the water to coffee. It's the only thing that changed the water. It's the change agent, he said. That's what you're going to have to become the change agent.

00;04;48;24 - 00;05;02;23
Unknown
You're going to have to change the water around you with the power inside you. And so I remember, man, how I felt when I heard it. It's the same thing. I see you in people, in the audience, as I go speak in front of, I can see it's that light bulb moment where people like, oh my God, I've got a choice.

00;05;02;28 - 00;05;24;28
Unknown
I've got three choices, actually. Anybody from 5 to 95 years old understands the allegory of the Coffee Bean, because everybody can understand the concept of physical change that can happen to all three of those things. When the application of hot water life is applied, life is the pot of boiling water. And, understanding the coffee bean and becoming a coffee bean.

00;05;25;00 - 00;05;40;07
Unknown
Big, big stretch. There's a lot of stuff that happens in there before I go to that prison and have to become that coffee bean. It was all the hardest things I've ever been through in my life. You know, people are fascinated by prison stories. Scholar. And it's fortunate for me because I've got a really good prison story to tell.

00;05;40;07 - 00;05;57;22
Unknown
You know, it's like Shawshank. Everybody loves Shawshank Redemption, right? It's the best prison movie ever made. But Shawshank was a movie about hope. And the title of the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, The redemption part of the title. It wasn't even about the character you think it's about, because the movie Shawshank is not about Andy. Do frame remember Andy?

00;05;57;22 - 00;06;16;06
Unknown
Yep. Oh yeah. The innocent guy goes to prison, right? Yep. Yep. Andy. Yep. Yeah. Andy, your friend for 19 years. Andy tunnels through a wall. He swims through 500 yards of sewage to get to his freedom. But Andy didn't need redeeming. And in the end, and escaping the redemption. Part of the title was about the character named read.

00;06;16;09 - 00;06;30;29
Unknown
Read. Morgan Freeman's character is who the whole movie's about because when you meet read for the first time, reads are narrator there. It's going to tell us everything when you meet read for the first time. He's a dead man walking read has no hope. You meet him for the first time. He's in that parole interview. He's denied parole.

00;06;31;01 - 00;06;45;21
Unknown
You meet the other guys, and they're all dead on the inside. All they do is wager on who's going to break on the prison bus first. Brooks Brooks made parole. Took him 50 years, right? Brooks lasted two weeks. In the free world. He hangs himself. He wrote. He write. He wrote a letter back to the boys in Shawshank.

00;06;45;24 - 00;07;02;20
Unknown
I told him what he did, why and why he did it in. Is Andy read that letter out to the minute? Shawshank prison. Every man in Shawshank understood why Brooks did what he did. Because they had the same hopeless mindset. Read our narrator. He explains it all for us. He says, Andy, I couldn't make out to either. Andy, I'm an institution.

00;07;02;21 - 00;07;25;21
Unknown
I'm an institutional man. Now read, say the words out loud for you to truly understand, he said. Hope is a dangerous thing. Now imagine, Skyler, you live in a world where you believe, hope. The thing you have to have is dangerous. But Andy, to read, get busy living or get busy dying. By the end of that movie, when Red finally walks out of Shawshank 40 years later, Red walks out of prison.

00;07;25;24 - 00;07;40;19
Unknown
We don't know if it's going to make it. Red walks by the pawn shop. The guns are in the window. He stays in the same room that Brooks hung himself in. But Red makes it. He makes it that rock wall, the rock wall. And they told him to go to. Yeah. And he finds that letter. And in that letter were the words that he needed to hear.

00;07;40;19 - 00;08;00;16
Unknown
When Andy said, red hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies. You know, I would challenge your audience to go back and watch the end of Shawshank, the last scene. Remember the last scene on the beach in Mexico? Yep. Zihuatanejo. That's what kept Andy DeFranco alive for 19 years in Shawshank Prison.

00;08;00;16 - 00;08;20;22
Unknown
Andy could always see himself on the beach one day working on his boat. He envisioned that the whole time he was there. And that's what we have to do. Whenever we're in a dark place, we have to see ourself in the light, overcoming, surviving and thriving. Yeah, hope is a hope is critical. We have, so we live into the future that we believe is coming at us.

00;08;20;28 - 00;08;36;26
Unknown
Absolutely. That's the way that's what human beings that's how we operate. So in our marriage, we live into the marriage that we believe is coming at us. If we believe it's going to get worse, we're going to live into that. We're going to start making decisions in alignment, right. With that. If we believe our wife's going to be critical the entire marriage, we're going to live into that.

00;08;37;03 - 00;08;52;03
Unknown
If we believe the economy is going to shift and be negatively, negatively affect us, we're going to live and make decisions based on that. So we live into the future that we believe is coming at us. And that's really that's really hope. That's the importance. I love this, I love this conversation. You have to manifest what you want, right?

00;08;52;03 - 00;09;13;08
Unknown
And that's what you're talking about. Manifest in your reality. At last seen in the movie. It's so important. Yeah. Go back and watch it. Listen to the dialog or the character name read at the end versus the dialog with the character. And right at the beginning, every single sentence. Scholar that he says in the last scene starts off with two words I hope, listen to it.

00;09;13;08 - 00;09;30;07
Unknown
He'll tell you, he says, I hope I can make it across the border. I hope I see my friend again so I can shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is his boy. Was it was it my dreams? I hope that was the last two words of Shawshank. In the last two words. The movie. You understand what the whole movie was about?

00;09;30;09 - 00;09;49;05
Unknown
Red had his hope restored. Andy was a vessel for that. And that's where my life is. Today, is where I've become this vessel of hope, right? I've become this symbol that no matter what the situation is in life, you can always become a better version of you. No matter what the adversity is. There's an opportunity. And on the other side of diversity.

00;09;49;05 - 00;10;13;10
Unknown
But but here's the catch. We have to go through the adversity to meet the best version of us. I had to go through that supermax prison to become the man that I am today. And it was hard. Man was like when everything he said, everything Muhammad told me, it came to fruition. I mean, he it was like having a roadmap in my head, listening, replaying the conversations as I'm walking through this supermax prison, the most dangerous place in the world, a fight, the white gangs first, then I fight the black gangs.

00;10;13;10 - 00;10;30;11
Unknown
I'm on the rec yard earning my respect out there. Two months, man, of all this constant violence and fighting, it's finally over. I've earned the right to exist. And now I've got to get to work on myself. And what happened two months in, though, is I had a big problem going on, and it wasn't physical, like when the physical danger was gone.

00;10;30;11 - 00;11;00;29
Unknown
That was a good thing. Because here's the truth. There's a difference between fear and danger fears, not real fears in your head. It's this feeling you get, the emotion you feel in the situation you're in. Fear. Is it real dangers? Real? You have to respect danger, but fear is also something totally different. You can control the fear. Once the danger was finally removed, the physical danger, the threat to my physical life, I found out that I had a bigger threat to my life going on and it wasn't physical, it was internal.

00;11;01;01 - 00;11;16;00
Unknown
I was becoming the egg. Now, I didn't want to be the egg, but the violence and terror of prison was break me down and I was becoming the egg. Spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare means the battle for your soul between good and evil. And I'm losing this battle, man. One of the last conversations I've had with Muhammad in county jail.

00;11;16;00 - 00;11;34;06
Unknown
I asked him to. I said, what will I find more of when I get to prison? And man, his answer was profound. He said, you're going to find more eggs. Here's why you're about to find more eggs. He said the egg is a natural evolution of any human being and any difficult situation of life, he said. You're going into one of the most difficult situations he has on earth, he said.

00;11;34;06 - 00;11;52;05
Unknown
The truth is you'll probably become the Egg West. Muhammad was right about everything. I was, I was in the chapel in prison a couple months in, and I was struggling. And I talked to one of these volunteer chaplain ladies, a woman named miss D. Little old lady name is D, and, and I told her how much I was struggling, the thoughts of suicide.

00;11;52;05 - 00;12;09;18
Unknown
I couldn't take it anymore. And she was just real calm. Skyler. She's like, you can't kill yourself. You can't give up on God. And the minute she mentioned God, I got so angry with her, I'm like, what do you mean, God? How could God create a place so wicked and evil in this place? And she was just really calm, and she was smiling.

00;12;09;18 - 00;12;27;18
Unknown
She said, you think you're the first person to get mad at God? She said, The Bible's full of people that got mad at God, but they all come back to God because they learn what the secret to faith is. And am I, Miss Dee? What's the secret to faith? I need to know, she said. It's this if you're going to pray, don't worry.

00;12;27;20 - 00;12;48;01
Unknown
But if you're going to worry, don't pray. You can't do both jobs. You can't do his job in your job, she said. You're either going to let God drive the car or you're going to drive the car. But the last time you drove it, you parked it in her prison. So she gets the keys and choose wisely. And that's stuck with me, man, because it's like so many times in life we want to take the driver's seat.

00;12;48;01 - 00;13;10;09
Unknown
You know, I saw somebody in the road driving one day. They had a bumper sticker said, God is my copilot. I'm honking at this person. Say, Matt, you're in the wrong seat. Get over. You know? So it's like, but I mean, but once I finally let go and let Christ do what he was supposed to do in my life, that's when the the, the stuff started happening, the real stuff start happening.

00;13;10;11 - 00;13;24;02
Unknown
I got into a program, recovery in prison, 12 step program recovery aa I don't represent AA. AA I'm not a spokesman for AA, but it's just the program recovery. I started going, I believe every addict has to have a program recovery. And yeah, I don't know what the right one is for each person. That's for them to decide.

00;13;24;02 - 00;13;42;09
Unknown
There's a lot of them out there, pick one and work it. But when I got into a program recovery, I started getting a lot of the answers about addiction, the disease of addiction. And I also learned how to pray. And so when you live in your addiction, I'm an addict. I'm in recovery. A lot of people are addicts and they're addicts to different things, to not only drugs.

00;13;42;09 - 00;14;04;26
Unknown
Right. There's a lot of addictions out there. This is going to be a good conversation. There is. Yeah. So addicts, addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors. That's the definition of addiction. If you give up a goal to meet a behavior, you're an addict. It could be food, money, clothing, eating sugar. Yeah, shopping, sex, pornography, the internet, social media.

00;14;04;28 - 00;14;23;13
Unknown
Addicts give up goals to meet behaviors. It's what addiction does to you. When you give up the things that are most important in life, you have an addiction issue because driven people focus people, successful people, Christ centered people. They give up bad behaviors to meet the goal. They can do that. They can put that aside, say, hey, that's not going to that's not going to serve me well.

00;14;23;16 - 00;14;41;27
Unknown
But addicts, we don't do that. We just give it all away. In my life, I did the same thing. I gave away my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God, my freedoms. I gave all that away in addiction were very selfish because that's what addiction. It's a very selfish thing. In recovery, we become selfless.

00;14;42;00 - 00;15;02;26
Unknown
And that's when we get closer to our purpose in life, when we get outside of self. So whenever I was in prison and I started work on my program recovery, I came up with a prayer that I would say every morning. I still say the same prayer every morning. I've been doing this since 2011. I get on my knees and I say, hey, Christ, put in front of me what you need me to do today for you?

00;15;02;28 - 00;15;19;12
Unknown
And let me recognize that when I see it, because I don't want to miss whatever that is. Amen. Skyler. That's all I pray for, man. I don't have a list of things I think I might want or need. I, I trust it. My faith in Christ is that he knows what what my needs are now. My wants and needs are two different things.

00;15;19;12 - 00;15;37;23
Unknown
That's a whole different conversation, right? Yep. But as long as I'm out there doing what he needs me to do for him, my needs have been met, been exceeded. Actually, the needs I mean have exceeded and gone to the one category, but it's got it. You got to show up every day. And we have this prayer that we start out these meetings with in, in AA called the Serenity Prayer.

00;15;37;23 - 00;15;52;03
Unknown
And it's not just it's not just to AA. I mean, a lot of people have the Serenity Prayer, but that's where I first learned it from. Right. And so, it's a beautiful prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

00;15;52;06 - 00;16;08;20
Unknown
So at AA meeting in prison one Wednesday morning, we always go to the chapel. Hope there's a guy from the free world. His name is Ray. He brings a meeting in for us inmates and he said, hey Damon, today we're going to diagram the Serenity Prayer. He has a chalkboard behind him. He draws a line from one side of the chalkboard to the other.

00;16;08;22 - 00;16;31;09
Unknown
He said that line is God's line. He's in a God's eyes, bigger than chalkboards, infinitely long, right? It's one horizon of the universe the next, he said. You can't fathom how big this line is, he said. The first part of the prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, he said. The things you can't change, Damien, are on God's line, and every time you try to touch something on God's line, you hurt yourself and you hurt other people because you're not God.

00;16;31;16 - 00;16;47;02
Unknown
And God doesn't need your help doing his job. He said, stay off of God's light because you got your own light. And he erased a little inch out of that big line, and he held his fingers up an inch apart for the entire room to see in the chapel. He said, if God's lines infinitely long, that's your line.

00;16;47;02 - 00;17;08;27
Unknown
You got one little inch. He said it on your little one inch line are the four things you get to control, he said. The second part of the prayer the courage to change the things I can, he said, the things you can change are the four things God gives you to control in your life every day what you think, what you say, what you feel and what you do.

00;17;09;00 - 00;17;31;17
Unknown
He said. That's it. What you think, what you say, what you feel and what you do, he said. If it's not one of those four things, you don't have control over it, he said. The world goes on around you, but you can't control the world around you, but you can't control the world inside you. He said the last part of the prayer was the most important part of the prayer was the wisdom to know the difference between the big line and your little line.

00;17;32;23 - 00;17;54;06
Unknown
I can't tell you how many times a day scholar in my life right now. In 2024, I'm recording this podcast and I come up to decisions every day, and I walk up to it and say, son, I'm on. And I walk off. Probably the reason why I'm still a free man. Probably the reason why the successes that I've had in life, you know, both in prison, out of prison, have happened because I try to stay on my line.

00;17;54;07 - 00;18;11;16
Unknown
Now, I'm not perfect about this. No, it's not about spiritual perfection. It's about spiritual progress every single day in our lives. What happened to me inside that prison was a spiritual awakening. No human being is capable of making. The changes that happened to me on their own just doesn't happen. There has to be a spiritual component to it.

00;18;11;22 - 00;18;30;23
Unknown
And that's what I go around telling people about. Like you. Yeah, you're not capable of doing all this on their own. Let's let's talk about, the there's a book called Loving What is by Byron Katie, a great book on really learning to accept what is so I love the conversation. And I didn't realize the Serenity Prayer included that, which is a key component of it.

00;18;30;23 - 00;18;58;29
Unknown
It's learning to embrace and accept what is exactly right, what you can't change. If you can't change it, you have a decision to make. You either can resist it and there's what you resist persists, or you can learn to embrace it and be more in flow with life. Right? So that's been a game changer for me, whether it's business issues and challenges that come my way, that I really don't have a control over, whether it's the economy shifting that I can't control or the economy I can't control other people.

00;18;59;01 - 00;19;21;11
Unknown
Now, there is, I think, a great distinction to make around power. So power is the ability to influence the people and the circumstances around us. So influence is key, right? So we can't change or control other people, but we have the ability to influence fluence, some of those things. You know what I mean. We have the ability to influence those things.

00;19;21;11 - 00;19;45;26
Unknown
And so I think I think that combination of embracing what is and then still knowing we still have agency and ability to influence and knowing and having the wisdom to know is that is that worth it? Is it worth even trying to have the influence over that, or do I even have the influence? Do I have the ability to change or control this specific thing, or do I have some influence to be able to do, to do those things?

00;19;45;26 - 00;20;05;07
Unknown
So I think I, I love that conversation because that's where people get stuck. I feel like most human beings, they get stuck wondering why is this happening versus just embracing what's happening. Absolutely. And once you know, why am I going to jail versus like, all right, I'm here. Yeah. You know, well, don't resist it anymore. You're there. Yeah.

00;20;05;08 - 00;20;23;12
Unknown
Now what? Now what now let's start living in the solution instead of living in the problem. And what happens when we focus like you're talking about embracing it? When you focus on the things that you can control. Now, you just made a commitment to invest the most precious resource you have into the situation you're in life. That's your time.

00;20;23;14 - 00;20;44;12
Unknown
Yeah, your time is the most precious resource you have. It's it's meant all the money in the world won't buy a one second of this stuff. They call time, right? And when you waste your time on things you cannot control, you've given away something you'll never get back. But what if you invested your time in the things you can't control and that's what I pose out to every audience I speak to.

00;20;44;12 - 00;21;00;28
Unknown
I have found a way inside that prison to live in that that space of my life. And when said, hey, you know what the things I can't control, I'm just not going to worry about. But the things I can control, my attitude, my thoughts, my actions. What am I to do today? Man of my life took off like a rocket ship, man.

00;21;00;29 - 00;21;20;01
Unknown
I started developing ways of being a coffee bean. Right. And what? You know, one of the rules about being a coffee bean was about having positive body language. I learned a lot about body language, man, because your body language is powerful. First thing people see changes the energy everywhere you go, Muhammad told me. You'll either infect the room when you walk in or you'll affect the room you walk in.

00;21;20;01 - 00;21;36;24
Unknown
You infect with negative energy or affect with positive energy. And that's what I was trying to do, have a positive effect. Everywhere I went, the lady from parole asked me, you know, we'll get to the parole conversation a second. But, another rule about being a coffee bean was working out every day spiritually, mentally, physically. I mean, every day, man, you got to workout.

00;21;36;24 - 00;21;53;10
Unknown
Your mind, your body, your soul. I have found in my life, in prison and out of prison that in the morning is the best time for me to pray and meditate. Prayer is when I talk to Christ. Meditation is when I listen to Christ right. You've got to be still. You got to be listening. In the mornings is when I can do that.

00;21;53;10 - 00;22;09;03
Unknown
It's the most quiet my life you know. Likewise. And you know when I was in prison I didn't have a phone out here. You have this phone. Those phones suck the life out of you. And in the morning I have a rule, man. The first 30 minutes I'm up, I don't touch the thing, man. And if you think it's, you know, it's something you have to do, start breaking away from it.

00;22;09;03 - 00;22;26;04
Unknown
A little bit of time. Five minutes here. Move it. Ten minutes. Do it. And incremental changes. And there's a guy, that I just talked to. He has a I guess they have these glass jars that have a timer on them. And you can you can set a timer and you put your phone in this glass jar. And the only way you can get your phone out, you can't get it out earlier than the timer.

00;22;26;05 - 00;22;41;25
Unknown
You have to break the entire jar. Oh wow I see throw your phone in there and lock it up for when you're home with your family, whether it's three, four, or five hours. But I love that. Yeah, that's a commitment, man. That is a commitment. It's like the, I heard somebody say one time that, like the, the breakfast of ham and eggs, man.

00;22;41;28 - 00;23;01;22
Unknown
Yeah. The difference being involved in committed. Right? Because the breakfast is a ham and eggs. The chicken is involved. The pig is committed. Yeah. So, yeah. So, Yeah, man, that's a really big commitment. Put your phone in a jar. So working on, So working on phone. Working on. Yep, yep. So, yeah. Again, another rule about being a coffee bean.

00;23;01;25 - 00;23;18;19
Unknown
Understanding what the secret to life is. The secret to life is servant leadership. Yeah. So good servant leadership. And we're helping other people reach their goals in life, helping to raise other people to a different station of life. And when we help other people grow, we grow too. This is something I learned inside of a prison. And I asked myself when I was in prison, how can I serve these men around me?

00;23;18;21 - 00;23;33;02
Unknown
When it came to me? I mean, I had a college, I had a bachelor's degree when I went to prison. I mean, I was a Division one college quarterback back in the day. The university North Texas man. By the time I was 20, I was a starting quarterback. I graduated college, you know, worked it, had all these incredible jobs.

00;23;33;02 - 00;23;47;05
Unknown
No one else in prison had this background as me. I'm a work in the United States Congress. I worked for a guy running for president. I worked on Wall Street. I was a broker for UBS right down the road in Dallas. You know, in fact, it was at that job in Dallas in 2004 as a broker. When I got introduced to meth for the first time.

00;23;47;08 - 00;24;02;25
Unknown
You know, meth was the most evil, most destructive drug ever touched. But all this background I had in life was unmatched inside that prison. But I'm like, if I can transfer some of this stuff to these guys while I'm here. So open up a free tutoring group. I, you know, I taught guys how to read, how to write.

00;24;02;25 - 00;24;20;08
Unknown
I got them ready for the GD test. If they ever got out of prison, they could be a better husband, better father one day for their families. I taught guys about the stock market, man. These guys took off when they learned about the stock market. They started their own black market stock market, man. They would get the tickers from the newspapers and they'd start buying their own stocks with soups and stamps and cookies and stuff off the commissary.

00;24;20;08 - 00;24;36;22
Unknown
The warden shut it down, but these guys understood it. Man. Some of the best business minds I've ever seen are inside of a prison, man. Think about a drug dealer, man. A drug dealer looks at a quantity of a drug. Right? Say it's a a kilo of cocaine, and he can think in his head. All right, I've got to break it down this much to make profit.

00;24;36;24 - 00;24;48;27
Unknown
Then I got to break it out of this much to buy my next batch. And one that go after that is pure profit. And I can buy this many more batches. You're running a business, a bad business, but you're a business person. If you could just point you in the right way. That's what I tried to do in there.

00;24;48;27 - 00;25;04;20
Unknown
I tried to help guys see the best versions of. I would tell guys those four words that every human being needs to hear from another human being. You usually hear these four words from a coach or a teacher, maybe a parent. I tell them, I believe in you. I believe in you, man. That's powerful man. The power of belief.

00;25;04;22 - 00;25;24;07
Unknown
Once you hear somebody say those words to you, you understand that man. It's not just me that sees, it's someone else that sees it. Growth follows belief. But you have to believe in yourself before anybody is going to believe in you. And once you, once you understand that someone else believes in you, your life changes. And I talk guys about community in there.

00;25;24;09 - 00;25;47;18
Unknown
You know, a lot of these guys had never been in a healthy community. My background going into prison. Look, man, Skyler White, middle class guy, highly educated, Division one quarterback, worked the best jobs you could have in America, right? The guys I was locked up with had nothing like that. And I understood that they didn't have two parents in the home to my mom and my dad were married for 55 years.

00;25;47;18 - 00;26;04;17
Unknown
Man, I didn't know anything. But having mom and dad in home, you know, I had it all. We were in church every Sunday. My parents made sure that we got we got Christ introduced to us at a very young age and this was my wife. These guys didn't have that life, but I could teach these guys what I learned about community because I grew up in a healthy community.

00;26;04;17 - 00;26;22;15
Unknown
A lot of these guys didn't grow up in a healthy community. So I want to hit on that for a mom. It's quite interesting, right, that you you had a healthy community, right? You had two parents. You had a good education yet, right? You got hooked on on meth and were were dealing. And so it moved into the whole drug dealing space.

00;26;22;15 - 00;26;44;09
Unknown
So what the what what do you think if you could identify like what were the red flags. What were the root causes actually to that that led you to that path when in general you would assume somebody wouldn't fall in or something like that. So I'm curious if you were able to look back and go, what? What the heck actually happened?

00;26;44;17 - 00;27;03;08
Unknown
Was it a core belief as a kid that I got? Was this some trauma? Was it just falling into addiction randomly? Like, what was it? Yeah. So I can tell you, it goes back. Everything you just said is going to hit on that. So one word I can tell you addiction. You know what happened in my life. It did happen overnight.

00;27;03;10 - 00;27;19;08
Unknown
It happened. It was a steady drip for a long time. When I was nine, I was molested by a babysitter, female babysitter, molested by a babysitter, came out. I told my parents about it, and it wasn't one of those episodes. Scott, I try to really delineate this for people to understand. Yeah, this wasn't one of those things where I was like, oh my God, it crushed me.

00;27;19;08 - 00;27;35;13
Unknown
It just broke me because it happened. What? That what happened to me when I was nine years old was this I was introduced to a lot of adult behaviors at a very young age. Think about it like this. When you're a little kid, there's this big giant door that only adults can go through. You can't even reach the handle, the door handle.

00;27;35;13 - 00;27;51;20
Unknown
So the lock is up there. You can't get through to it. You're not supposed to be on the other side of that door. But at nine years old, I got in that door. Another adult opened the door for me. And on the other side of that door, all these are the doors are there drinking party and doing drugs, having sex, doing all these different things.

00;27;51;23 - 00;28;06;07
Unknown
But those doors are wide open to an adult. You don't even need a key for those doors and the handles right where you can grab it, you know? So when I got on the other side of that big door at nine years old, there were all these little adult behaviors. I was introduced to. So when I was ten, I get into my dad's beer for the first time.

00;28;06;10 - 00;28;26;00
Unknown
I started drinking. I like the way the chemicals feel in my body, right? I started getting addicted to the high, the feeling of the alcohol. I start smoking cigarets. When I was 12, I smoked my first joint. Now I'm into criminal addictive behavior. At 12 years old, I've got a bad belief system. My belief systems are telling me it's okay to drink a little pot.

00;28;26;00 - 00;28;43;23
Unknown
I mean, drink a little beer, smoke a little pot. You're not hurting anybody. You're not even hurting yourself. But here's what I learned about Belief System Scholar. They're hard to change the longer you hold on to a bad belief system, the harder it is to get rid of our belief systems develop around that age, and by the time we're like 16, 17 years old, you're a fully baked human being.

00;28;43;23 - 00;29;01;26
Unknown
As far as your belief systems go, here's what else I learned about belief systems. I was in a prison with 3000 men. Supermax prison in Beaumont, Texas, called the station one of the toughest prisons in Texas, one of the toughest prisons in America. And I can tell you a lot about tough prison scholar, because since I got out of prison nine years ago, I went back to school.

00;29;01;26 - 00;29;21;26
Unknown
I got a master's degree in criminal justice, and I've become a professor at the University of Houston, teaching a class called Prisons in America. I'm the only professor on the planet prison class at the university who lived in prison right. So I know about prison man styles, where I'm doing my time is a tough place. But whenever I was in prison, I was a sober observer of what's going on around me.

00;29;21;26 - 00;29;37;14
Unknown
And I'm like, I want to know. Prison was like living in a giant sociological petri dish. It was like waking up in a lab experiment. Every day you're in the lab, you're part of the lab, man. Anything can go off into a maximum security prison. I found out that all 3000 men inside that prison had bad belief systems.

00;29;37;17 - 00;29;56;26
Unknown
Now, I'm not telling your listeners that if you have a bad belief system, you're going to prison. But I will tell you that every person in prison had a bad belief system that got them there. My belief systems dogged me out my entire life because I held on to these belief systems that told me it was okay to break the rules, or I was unique and I could do these things because I'm Damon West, right.

00;29;56;28 - 00;30;14;26
Unknown
Unique. This man, it's one of the worst things that can happen to you. Ego, pride, those kind of things. My belief systems dogged me out my entire life. So whenever I tried meth for the first time in 2004, it a UBS is parking garage and ride the tollway in Dallas. I was not ready to ever step away from something like that.

00;30;14;28 - 00;30;33;00
Unknown
In my mind, I could try any drug and do any drug. I'm Damon West. Then I got Ahold of the one that wouldn't let go, and I became a slave to that drug. I gave away everything for that. Drug addiction does not discriminate. Drugs, alcohol, whatever the addiction. Addiction doesn't discriminate, doesn't care if you're white, if you're black, you're rich or poor.

00;30;33;07 - 00;30;52;29
Unknown
It affects everybody the same way. So you take a guy like Damon West that had all the all the all the advantages of life. Addiction can take anybody down and it affects everybody in this country. To Scott, I would say it affects everybody's country in the sense that we all know somebody who's an addict. We have a friend that's an addict or a victim.

00;30;52;29 - 00;31;10;03
Unknown
We're the victim of an addict. The the family member of a lot of family members have addicts. You know, where you're the taxpayer, you're just paying into this overburdened criminal justice system that has no idea how to how to handle the disease of addiction. Addiction touches everybody in this country one way or another. And so, in a nutshell, that's what happened to me, man.

00;31;10;10 - 00;31;28;16
Unknown
I got into addiction to a very young age. It's spun off first from the molestation thing, because now I'm on the other side of all these adult behaviors, and that's how it affected me. But I truly believe, though I know this for a fact, that everything in life has a purpose, even the bad stuff has a purpose in your life.

00;31;28;22 - 00;31;52;13
Unknown
And when you can find out what that purpose is, it's like my buddy Ed Mylett says, it says you're most qualified to help the person that you once were. You're most qualified to help the person that you once were. When you go through these difficult things in life and you come out the other side of it, you have a master's degree in helping someone else get through their problem, and you got to find that other person.

00;31;52;13 - 00;32;10;06
Unknown
We have a saying your mess becomes your message. Yeah, right. So my mess was pornography early on, right when I was 12. And a poor magazine got addicted. Struggled with that for most of my most of my life. And so I had to process through how to break free from that addiction. And so that became the message I started sharing with men.

00;32;10;08 - 00;32;29;12
Unknown
Thousands, I mean, millions of people have seen the messages that I've put out there, right? And we've had thousands of people graduate through our events, which is basically kind of what you what you do through, through your stage. Right? When you're on stage. Right. We're we're doing it through three day intensive, but we're helping to people we're helping people to release, to confess, to release the thing so that they can step into freedom.

00;32;29;12 - 00;32;44;16
Unknown
And then we help them shift their belief systems. Like we go back, we uncover a root core belief systems that have been operating them for their entire lives. Yeah, we got to get to the root. You got to get to the cause. We do trauma healing, man. Yeah, we do a lot. And we do. We do some pretty epic trauma.

00;32;44;16 - 00;33;01;26
Unknown
And a lot of people think, oh, I don't have trauma. Everybody has every right. Whether you've had the perfect life, there's been something that happened. It could have been your dad missing a game that you don't remember. But as a as a 12 year old, it negatively affected you. Sure that's trauma. And now you have a belief system that was created from that.

00;33;02;03 - 00;33;19;00
Unknown
And now you're running your entire life with that belief system, trying to prove yourself or trying to look for approval of others or whatever it may be. And resentments, man. Yeah. Oh, fears, resentments. These are the things that are the number one for us addicts. Those are the things that are the number one offender that will send us back out to our addiction faster than anything else.

00;33;19;03 - 00;33;34;16
Unknown
What you're talking about is the same thing we do in the 12 step. In the fourth step, you make a list of all the resentments you have in life, all the fears, all the things that hold you back. And in the fifth step, you tell another human being what's going on? What are these things? And the reason why we tell another human being?

00;33;34;16 - 00;33;50;27
Unknown
Because you have to get outside your own head. Because in your head, the voice in your head. Sometimes it's fear talking to you. You know, it's not even real sometimes. So you've got to get it out of your head and get it in front of someone else. And then we have to work what we call personal inventory. Personal inventories.

00;33;50;27 - 00;34;13;23
Unknown
Man, this is where the rubber meets the road. Beautiful. This is where you find out why you have this resentment and what I learned in recovery is that all of human behavior goes back to three basic core instincts that we have in life. Anything that affects you in certain ways touches 1 or 3 of these three basic instincts.

00;34;13;25 - 00;34;31;22
Unknown
Your instinct for social to be part of something bigger than you be in society. Your your instinct for security. And this is like financial security, family security, all these other things that go on in life and your instinct for sex. And I don't mean promiscuity. I'm talking about your instinct to have a partner in life. You know, get married, you have a family.

00;34;31;22 - 00;34;49;03
Unknown
All these are the things that come with having a partner, social security and sex. Everything that bothered you in life touches one or all three of these things. So when I was in prison, I got what my sponsor had to work through my personal inventory. The first person I ran through the personal inventory was the biggest person I had resentment against.

00;34;49;03 - 00;35;05;01
Unknown
Judge Snipes. Judge Mike Snipes, criminal district court seven. I used to hang out with this guy. I used to party with this guy. You know, before he was a criminal district court judge. You know, we were buddies. We're not good friends. But we used to hang out on my buddy's boat. We drink together. I mean, when his dad died in 2004, I bought him a shot.

00;35;05;01 - 00;35;22;17
Unknown
You know, I knew the guy. We weren't good friends, but I knew the guy. And when I show up in his courtroom in 2008, I think, hey, man, this is great, man. My buddy Mike Snipes is up there, man. This guy handle me tough tower, I mean, rough I, I mean, makes comments like, you know, he calls me the Hannibal Lecter of burglaries, you know, because I'm the head of a burglary crew.

00;35;22;18 - 00;35;42;02
Unknown
You know, it just snipes handle me rough. And I was always upset about that. So when I get to work my personal inventory in 2011, you know, Ray asked me, he said, who's your biggest resentment? I said, Judge Snipes. He said, let's figure out why you have a bigger resentment. Just knives. So let's plug him into the inventory, he says.

00;35;42;04 - 00;36;04;05
Unknown
Does your resentment against Judge Snipes affect your social instinct? Yeah, I'm an ex-con. Ex-cons have a very tough existence in society, man. No one likes ex-cons, he said. Let's put a check by that one, he said. Does your resentment against Judge Snipes affect your security instinct? Yeah, I'm an ex-con. What kind of job am I going to get as an ex-con?

00;36;04;05 - 00;36;20;16
Unknown
Man, most jobs in life, I can't even get any more. Right? Because I got to check a little box. So, yeah. Financial security, all that out the window. I'm an ex-con. He said, well, let's check that box off. He said, does your resentment against Judge Snipes affect your sex instinct? Yeah. You bet. I live in a men's prison, man.

00;36;20;16 - 00;36;35;10
Unknown
And when I get out of this men's prison, who wants to be with an ex-con? Right? No one wants to be around this man. Who am I going to find? It's going to love me now, after all the other stuff in my life? He said, man, we got to check that box, too. He said, no wonder why your resentment is so strong.

00;36;35;12 - 00;36;53;10
Unknown
Your resentment touches all three of these basic core instincts that affect all human behavior, he said. But there's one more column I forgot to tell you about, and he wrote up on the board, what role do I play? He said, what role do you play in your resent? Beautiful? And I said, well, he said, let's talk about this.

00;36;53;10 - 00;37;10;01
Unknown
He said, were you a drug addict? Yeah. Well, you're a criminal. Yeah. Well, you're a thief. Yeah. Did you steal from people? Yeah. Did you break the social contract? You know, the social contract is important. Scholar that says if you obey the rules of society, you get to enjoy society. But when you break that contract, there's consequences to it.

00;37;10;04 - 00;37;32;23
Unknown
He said. So you did all these things. And then one day in 2008, you walk into a criminal district Court seven, and Judge Snipes is there doing his job. He's like, man, he said, you were the problem the whole time. And it was that day that I understood that I play a role in all my problems. And if I could find the role that I play, that's the one thing I can affect, the one thing I can change.

00;37;32;25 - 00;37;57;07
Unknown
That's the only thing I can control. So that's when I started working on my responsibility. We do a whole conversation around victim and responsibility. The way to break free from the victim mentality is to find out where you had some level of responsibility. You go it's the it's the key. It is the key to get out of the victim freedom because and people that most people would never think that they're a victim.

00;37;57;10 - 00;38;18;04
Unknown
However, in our events, most people. Right. Hey, are you a victim? No. But when we look back at people, they still have resentment towards or anger towards or hurt from. Those are all emotions that almost always tie to you. Choosing victim. Yeah. Something happened to you, to you as a victim. Language, right? This happened to me. That's.

00;38;18;04 - 00;38;34;17
Unknown
I'm a victim to me is victim. And so the only way out is to look and say, hey, where do I have responsibility for what just happened? Right. And so we train people to look for responsibility, right? I had I had somebody embezzle and one of my companies took that, took a lot of money and I wanted to blame them.

00;38;34;19 - 00;38;50;19
Unknown
But then when I look back, I said, do I have any responsibility for this? I'm like, yeah, why? I hired this person. I didn't properly oversee them. Right. So I looked back and I'm like, man, I have a lot of response. Maybe I'm not completely at fault. Right? There's a difference between responsibility and fault, right? A key difference, right?

00;38;50;19 - 00;39;13;12
Unknown
Where fault you can have some responsibility but still not be at fault. Right? That's complete responsibility for something. But I found for most things in life we have some level of response. Absolutely. Almost everything. Right. If we choose to drive, if we get rear ended, do we have a responsibility 100%, not 1% responsibly, but we have responsibility because we chose to drive, chose rather that you have to be on the road.

00;39;13;12 - 00;39;33;05
Unknown
Exactly. So really, we are responsible for almost every single thing that happens in our lives. And so when we realize that, we start to be more diligent with our decisions. Yeah, and more thoughtful with our decisions and more thoughtful with who we trust and who we lean into and how we do life. And so it's a it's a more effective way to be than, than living as a victim to life.

00;39;33;07 - 00;39;49;28
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely I love it. Yeah. And now that we're working through the steps, you know, steps eight and nine or where step eight is where you make a list of all the people you've harmed, you know, you become willing to make the amends. Step nine is when you make the amends, except to when do so would cause you or them harm.

00;39;50;00 - 00;40;05;19
Unknown
2015 The Parole board comes to see me. I'm up for parole. I work in the chapel, man. I have a great job at prison. At work? In the chapel. The chaplain comes in the 2015 chaplain Vaughn's. He's so excited. He's like, man, the parole board is here to see you and pay my stomach. Drop him, because I know I'm up for parole, scholar.

00;40;05;19 - 00;40;20;07
Unknown
And that's your chance to get out, right? But I don't think I'm going to make parole. In fact, just to survive this world. Man, I've told myself I'll do a dime, maybe 15, on this life sentence before I go home, because no one makes the first parole. Right. But I go to the parole officer day and the lady for parole.

00;40;20;10 - 00;40;36;29
Unknown
She's got my criminal file in front of her, but she's push it away. She's not even in the file anymore. She's like, look, I really just got one question for you. And she's talking to me about my crimes, and we go over it. They want you to accept responsibility. She can see from everything I've done since I've been in prison that I didn't just change myself.

00;40;36;29 - 00;40;54;09
Unknown
I change the entire prison. Right? I I've accepted responsibility and then some. And we're talking about my victims, right? Because when she knows that I work a program recovery, we're talking about this. And she's like, listen, you know that you can't ever apologize to your victims. It's like, yeah, I'm aware of that. In Texas, you can apologize victim your crimes.

00;40;54;09 - 00;41;12;26
Unknown
It's a felony. Like what? They send you back to prison if you apologize to victims. I think the rule is there mainly because victims of violent crimes, rape, you know, family, surviving family from God, you know, assaults, stuff like that. Yeah. They don't necessarily want a lot of people just coming back, reaching out to them and say, hey, you know, hey, I reform, I'm different now.

00;41;12;29 - 00;41;28;27
Unknown
You can reopen old wounds. Interesting. So but they just blankly say, anybody that's a criminal, anybody's committed crimes. You can't apologize to your victim. So I can never apologize to my victims. I'm never going to do it because I go back to prison if I do. But she's telling me that she's like, you have to be under understanding.

00;41;29;00 - 00;41;51;18
Unknown
You can't apologize, you people, she said, how do you do that? I said, well, and in recovery, we have this thing called a living amends. Here's how a living amends works, because at Nine Steps said, you become willing to make the apology, except when to do so would cause you or them harm. When you come up to a situation where it could cause the other person or you harm a living, amends means I'll just go out and do good deeds and expect nothing in return.

00;41;51;20 - 00;42;08;23
Unknown
And so I told her. I said, I'll just go out and do good deeds the rest of my life and expect nothing in return. And that's my living amends, because I can't make amends to my victims. It's just off the books. I'm not doing it. I'm not going back to prison to make an apology to somebody. She said, look, I really just got one question for you.

00;42;08;26 - 00;42;28;25
Unknown
And is this you said, think really hard because this is determine the rest of your life. If you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said, tell me what that one thing would be, but give it to me in just one word. Go. And Scott or I knew the answer to that question. I'd been a little bit of an answer to that question the whole time I was in prison.

00;42;28;25 - 00;42;48;19
Unknown
And I told her, I said, useful. I just want to be useful and I can be useful inside this prison, as you've already seen. Or I could be useful in the free world, finding more coffee beans. And on November 16th, 2015, seven years, three months, 18 days after it all started, I walked out of a supermax prison. But I'm not a free man.

00;42;48;22 - 00;43;07;16
Unknown
You're not looking at a free man in front of you. I got I got a little more time left on parole in Texas time. I'm on parole and mascara. So I just kept saying, I'm on parole until the year 2073. Wow. Yeah. Wow. 49 more years on parole. How does that work? Every month in Beaumont, Texas, I see my parole officer.

00;43;07;16 - 00;43;25;25
Unknown
A woman name is brags about being a cop. I pay a fine. I signed a parole certificate. It's a substance abuse parole program. It's the hardest one they have in Texas. It's the only way out of prison, though. The certificate I sign says that I will never drink or do drugs again the rest of my life. I'll be tested every single month for the rest of my life for alcohol and drugs.

00;43;25;25 - 00;43;42;06
Unknown
And if I fail one test, one way I go back to prison and repeat this drug treatment program 6 to 9 months, 18 months. Aftercare on the outside. Got to repeat it. All men go back to prison for one failed drug test. You see why I need a program? That's some good accountability right there. Right, man. Right. Yes.

00;43;42;13 - 00;44;01;07
Unknown
But yeah. Yeah, well, but also like being on parole every time I travel outside the state of Texas, which I do about 20 times a month to go speak, I get permission from Texas in the form of a travel permit. Wow. I get stacks of them every single month. So. Interesting. Yeah, I don't know many, many speakers that are speaking around the country or world that, that are on parole.

00;44;01;07 - 00;44;16;15
Unknown
There's not there's none. Yeah. And that's the thing I try that's, that's that's commitment. That's you deciding and finding your calling. Yeah. Where, you know, you can be useful and effective and being willing to jump through hoops to go make that thing happen. Yeah, well, I mean, it's God, man. God's opened up a lot of doors for me, man.

00;44;16;21 - 00;44;36;04
Unknown
Yeah. So I walk out of prison. November 16th, 2015. Just like you see in the movies, man. You walk out to the front, they opened up the big gate that you've been looking at all those years, and you walk out and you're standing in the free world again. I see my parents in the parking lot, man, and, run into them and they're waiting for me.

00;44;36;06 - 00;44;53;27
Unknown
And then I stop because there's a voice in my head that says, stop! Says, turn around. It's God talking to me. I turn around, I look back to the gate. I see the barbed wire. I see the fence. See the guards that just saw me walk off. They're looking at me like, what are you doing? And God's telling me right there on the spot.

00;44;53;27 - 00;45;08;26
Unknown
He said, Damon, you're going to work for me now. He said, all this happened for a reason. This is how I show that I'm real. I'm going to turn this thing and your life around it. It's going to be so incredible that people have no choice but to believe that I'm real. But here's the catch you're going to work for me.

00;45;08;26 - 00;45;25;05
Unknown
And as long as you work for me, you can have the most amazing life possible. At the minute it becomes Damon's show and not God show. This is where you're coming back to get a good look. Let's go. And man, I turn around, ran to my parents. Man, I know what's going on in my life. I know that I'm just a vessel for this thing, man.

00;45;25;05 - 00;45;46;00
Unknown
This isn't about me. This is about a bigger message of God. How God shows that he's real man. He takes people like this, breaks them down, and you have no choice but to believe that he's real. Because how else is it possible for this guy that was in a prison nine years ago, lived in a ten by 12 cell servant life that I get to have this much impact in the world that I have, the life that I have.

00;45;46;00 - 00;46;07;09
Unknown
I'm married. I got a family man. All the things I thought were not possible for me crushed man plants and God laughs. Man, it's just been an incredible life. I can't believe is my life, to be honest with you, I'm so mad, so incredible, so incredible. Yeah. I've never heard the full story. Man, that's a very powerful story and very inspiring.

00;46;07;12 - 00;46;28;18
Unknown
How often? How often are you speaking? I'm on the road 20 to 25 days a month. Man. Man. Wow. On the road a lot. And and my family's good with it. Man. We what? We decided a long time ago was to find rhythm and not balance. Balance is hard to find if you're an overachiever, if you're someone that's really driven and focused to do something, a business owner, whatever it is, you're not going be able to find balance.

00;46;28;18 - 00;46;46;27
Unknown
And if you try to find balance, you're going to find yourself frustrated. Everybody's gonna be frustrated around you. Depression, these things. And this is when you know you can be attacked in different ways because you're not happy. But rhythm is something altogether different. Rhythm says that no matter what it is I'm doing, where I'm doing it, I'm focused on that right now, and I'm not going to feel bad about the place that I'm not.

00;46;46;27 - 00;47;04;11
Unknown
I'm focused on where I am and when I'm over in that other place, like with my family and I'm not working the phones put up, I'm there, I'm present, I'm in the moment. You know, rhythm bounce back from one to the other. And that's what my family has with me. I'm on the road, you know, 280 days a month, probably, I mean, 280 days a year.

00;47;04;14 - 00;47;23;12
Unknown
But in those those days that I'm home, there's a rhythm there, and we're all there. We're all focused, we're all doing things together. We take vacations together, do stuff. That's what I have in life. I had this incredible life of rhythm. What's, what's something that you're, you're missing out on, or what's something that you wish was different?

00;47;23;15 - 00;47;42;10
Unknown
I wish I had more time to be in prisons. I yeah, I get to speak to the biggest corporations in the world, the best sports teams in the world, arenas and all these different places. But, man, the place I really love being is inside of a prison because that's where I have the most currency, right? Every man and woman inside of a prison that I go in to talk to, they're staring at me intensely.

00;47;42;10 - 00;47;56;20
Unknown
They want what I've got. And when you want what someone's got, you'll listen. You'll do something different. That's where I have this impact. And that's why I know that God wants me to be. So every month I make it a point. I volunteer in a prison somewhere in America. I was just in a prison in, Utah last week, and I was.

00;47;56;20 - 00;48;14;29
Unknown
Working in Utah. Speaking of some companies there. I asked the Utah prison system if I could come in and talk to the men and women in there. They let me in. All these prison directors want me in their prison, so I make it a point every month to go volunteer in a prison somewhere in America. But when I get to the other side of this thing, I've got a five year plan of just hit it hard for the next five years.

00;48;15;02 - 00;48;34;23
Unknown
Then I'll pull back in the time that I pull back, I get to go into prisons more and volunteer in there. My favorite passage in the Bible. Favorite scripture? Matthew 2536. When I was in prison, you visited me. So many people helped me get through my journey. My parents visited me over 150 times. They never gave up on me.

00;48;34;25 - 00;48;53;15
Unknown
And so I know what it's like to get a visit in prison. And so when I get to go and visit in prison, I get to turn around and live out that gospel. You servant leader. So beautiful. This is a very inspiring, message, brother, and I appreciate you being on this podcast. I can't wait for you to share some of these details up on stage in.

00;48;53;18 - 00;49;19;14
Unknown
I'm excited, brother powers. Yeah, it's going to be incredible. Yeah. I love a man. Well, how can people how can people reach you? Or how can they find you? Yeah. My website is Daman west.org Damo in west.org. My socials at Damien West seven. And, Man. Follow me. You'll never see anything political on my page. I don't get into my lane is about positivity.

00;49;19;14 - 00;49;34;20
Unknown
Help them become the best version of you and the hardest situation you're in. So those are the place you find me. My books are available on Amazon anywhere books are sold. My favorite book of all the five books I have is called The Change Agent. That's my autobiography. That's my life story. That's the one that'll be a movie one day.

00;49;35;16 - 00;49;39;24
Unknown
Fantastic. Yeah. Love it man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for the appreciate Skyler.