What facing 200 prison years taught me about happiness | Shaun Attwood | TEDxHSG

Thank you so much for being everyone, my name is Sean, I'm a public speaker, author and activist from London. I'm going to talk about the lessons I learned from my experience in

prison

. Can you imagine

what

it's like to face a 200? sentence one year after graduating from college I moved to Arizona with the goal of becoming a millionaire in the stock market. I never imagined that through my own bad decisions I would go so far beyond the laws that I would end up in the deadliest shale in America. I started getting interested in the stock market when I was 14 my economics teacher gave me lessons on my own, show me how stock markets work,

what

the numbers meant in financial times at 16 or 50 pounds from my double nan were not teachers, so the normal classmates in my small town, when I go to America, make a million, you will fly, that was my dream, so after graduating, I got a job as a stockbroker in Arizona, at At first I didn't make much money, but five

years

later I was The most important man in the office who made half a million a year, he got my own personal secretary, cold calling, but I had more money than sense, the money was lost on me. it went to the head, I started doing rave parties with it and this is where I started to go beyond the laws.

Now I had people importing ecstasy from Holland, they smuggled it for me and I distributed it, so I take full responsibility for what happened on May 16, 2002, knock on my door bang bang bang bang I jumped off the computer and looked for people. It's dark, come up to the window, marks, man, police, what vehicles, the entire apartment complex is surrounded, okay, let them in, hmmm, I get halfway to the door arm, the door just opens Fly off the hinges, hands over your heads, get on the ground, no. Move over, it wasn't my brightest idea to be breaking the law, not just where gang members murder

prison

ers, even in the garden murdering prisoners.

Let's get used to the sounds of heads banging against toilets, bodies thrown around people carried on stretchers. they looked like they were dead Phoenix is ​​the hottest of the big American cities it's almost 50 degrees hot all year round too hot in our black and white striped suits so everyone just hangs around in their underwear a lot of pink boxes that are to humiliate the prisoner even so I'm trying to stay cooling in your boxes it's like a concrete oven in there it's like they're cooking us alive and the building stays hot all night and wreaks havoc on your skin you start to having this skin infections and bed sores the itching and bleeding especially on your butt because you sat all day one of the hardest parts for me was lying in this puddle of sweat at night the itching got me Keeps you awake when you're constantly sweating the outer layers. of your skin begins to soak, so you feel itchy and when you scratch, clumps of your own skin come off under your nails.

Yes, I remember one night I fell asleep on my slide. I didn't realize it but my ear had filled with sweat I want to change position the sweat just when I love my face it was like someone was touching me it just scared me and woke me up you know so we ate twice a day breakfast came in a plastic bag moldy bread and green bologna green bologna is a raw sausage, which means it is past its sell-by date and has a green sheen. Much of the food was in boxes that companies threw away because it had expired.

The mold on the bread was blue and green. Sometimes our mold came in these fantastic ones. psychedelic colors that look like works of art and we were so hungry that we tore them all off the bread and since the bed was stale we put it in water and swallowed it to swallow it. Dinner was a mysterious piece of meat we called the Red Death. It looked like karate vomit mixed with blood from all sorts of random things eaten in its stench. Every once in a while there was a dead rat in them. We punched the guards one time, complained, and they came back later that day, so they won jail time.

I had no problem, they said it was just a potato and there wasn't much we could do, head of the jail, one of your favorite quotes we had a harder time feeding our police slugs and our prisoners and our police dogs are working for their money. life. so my parents remortgaged the house. The point was almost a hundred thousand dollars to get a lawyer who shined. Look, we can get you out of jail. Gold cut. I have a bail hearing. They will reduce your bail. I'm getting excited. Yes, I'm finally getting it. to jail excited girlfriends I'm a local family shopping court uncle 1.5 million in cash only once your bail goes over a million you are automatically reclassified from medium security to maximum security so it's around 2:00 in the morning when I walk into my cell it's dark inside but come in some light the living room the first thing you notice is two months L that's an improvement but I wonder why my Selma is asleep on the top bunk because where I come from people fight over the bottom bunk so I think something isn't quite right, so as I walk a little further I start to feel movement in the walls and ceiling.

I think my eyes are playing tricks on me, so I put my face on the wall to see what's going on. and it is covered in these types. I got used to the violence and I'm already trying to sleep with these koalas. I had a nervous breakdown let's go get some pollen medicine 8:00 at night it's closed 10:00 the lights are off you know when the lights are about to go out they start lining up in the cracks in the walls in this old building there is little movement with the antenna sticking out like an army waiting to invade as soon as the lights go out they just flood the room now you have a choice you wrap yourself in a sheet so you look like the mummy leave a breathing hole that keeps them away you but the sheet traps heat in your body and as I mentioned before you have all these skin infections that bleed and itch and sores, the heat from the trap makes you itch so unbearably that you can't sleep, so in there you just pull the sheet and letting them crawl on you, fortunately they don't bite, they start by tickling your feet, limbs, palms of your hands, so this day, if someone took my hands away, I shudder because I woke up so many nights and tickling my hands, they try to get into your. ears to eat ear wax it's like honey to them is there anyone here automatic anyone with asthma okay we'll check this story if there was a neighbor had a maximum security neighbor was asthmatic wakes up one morning breathless grabs his inhaler takes a la explosion shoots a live cockroach inside himself he starts to go crazy saying he can feel it moving inside him he vomits and the contents of his stomach come out but somehow the insect is trapped inside it doesn't come out even during the day there were so many The Prisoners were having cockroach races betting on the winner and the first week in the morning, the boys went up to their cells with plastic containers, put peanut butter on them to catch them and emptied all the dead ones into the trash can.

Lister. It didn't matter how many we killed, they own the building now, in my first year, it bothered me that they caught me. I was pining for my old lifestyle. I was still attached to material things in the second year, the prosecutor said every time we talked about drugs. on the phone it takes five to ten

years

, you have more than twenty charges, if you go to trial and lose, we will accumulate all those charges up to a maximum sentence of two hundred years, the prospect of having a sentence of two hundred years brought forward I am on the verge of suicidal insanity I couldn't sleep with the cockroaches crawling on me I've seen imaginary bugs and heard voices I had all these infections and bed sores in a conjunctivitis infection yellow signs going up my high ball I think I can't take this anymore.

I'm just going to cut my wrists and bleed to death, but I'll do it after a guard does a security walk. Now before doing that I wanted to say goodbye to my family and friends, what I mean by this is that they allowed me seven photos in prison, so take the photos, my mom, dad, the girlfriend. I'm looking at them and I get very, very sad. I'm thinking my mom will get a call telling her. My son committed suicide in a foreign prison. I just couldn't stand the thought that I got as sad as crying and that's what really saved my life, but when you face 200 years, I now credit it with crushing that material side of me. because being sentenced to nine and a half years with one of the happiest days of my life I could see when I was going to get my life back when you face 200 years, your million dollar house and you balance the pill on the mountain rug , it doesn't matter, sports, Kaiser, relevant plasma screen, TV, all your devices, because the other thing it

taught

me was that my second lesson was about helping others before

facing

200 years.

My behavior was selfish, narcissistic, mystical, drugging myself, drugging my friends at the party, but I was converted. a turning point in prison about a third of the prisoners could not read or write. I began reading their legal documents and explaining what was happening. Some of the Mexican prisoners didn't know how to write home in Spanish, so I started helping. They write home in Spanish to their loved ones and the other thing after that they transferred me to the state prison system and once I got out of the room and the jail and the guards they put me with this guy on the left, it's a home in series. invader torturer broke into people's houses and hit their kneecaps with hammers his welcome statement to me I have a lock in a sock I could break your brain in your sleep I can kill you another very nice guy he knew my family He was flying to visit me on Christmas, so he asked his partner, this guy on the right, a 20-person biker from California, to attack me just when my parents had flown out to visit me and then it didn't end very well for me.

Let's put it that way they broke me up they took me out of that cell and my new cellmate introduced me to a guy who thought he could protect me his name was to the townspeople he was a mafia mass murderer who was turning 141 he left the corpses of rival gangsters from Arizona to Alaska now because he only murdered rival gangsters he was at the top of respect in prison so once he took me under his wing I was never crushed again he was looking for someone to write the story of his life called me as an official biographer, so I went to sneak into his cell every day and the people who came to pay their respects, that respect, criticize me now: Tony was a great reader, he introduced me to John Updike, Norman Mailer , Tom Wolfe, is coming. in my cell one day from a book one of his favorites so Shawn, were you able to read this it was a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn so Ivan is in the Russian gulag under the Stalin era working these guys to death In the very cold, if you refuse to work, they drag you to death on horseback or throw you off a cliff, so every time the prisoners complained about anything where we were, Tony would laugh at them and say: " Hey, that's how bad Ivan had it, for example, if the prisoners complained that breakfast was called in the morning;

Tony said that where Ivan was, they were fighting over a fish eyeball in the soup, so Tony told me.

taught

me to appreciate the little things. Now I too, my guardian angel, there was a therapist named dr. o and he knew I was on this reading program when I was

facing

200 years. I committed to reading as many books as possible and I managed to read more than a thousand books in just over six years. I read a lot of the original philosophy texts in psychology and they helped me dig deeper within myself and address the root causes of why I got involved in drugs and crime, so the therapist said it's great that you're reading this, but How can you apply this to your life? quotes from these books and bring them to me and we will discuss them, so I would like to share three of them with you, the first one is Nietzsche, live your life like a work of art, see how much effort people put into a work of art.

Art, if you put so much effort into your life, how much it would improve the quality of your life. Another is Marcus Aurelius and this applies. It is useful for prisoners because they are in chaotic situations, but we all go through difficult things on the path of life. you know that the loss of a loved one ends in the breakup of a relationship you think that you will never get anyone to love you again lose your job think that you will never be able to pay your bills things like that but Marcus Aurelius the quote is that chaos you canput it in the ocean with the waves lashing the boardwalk and you are like the boardwalk staying strong when those waves crash maintaining equanimity the third is epictet we are not disturbed by things but by the views we have Take them, I will give you an example.

In this prison, people insult each other all day long and the people who are picked on are the ones who react the most, but according to Epictetus, we can choose our reaction, it doesn't matter. What people say, we can choose through our strengths, so from facing 200 years and from Tonys, I appreciate the little things now until Tony died of liver cancer taking meson drugs in 2010, but in a sense, his spirit It's still alive in me. I wake up with a smile on my face now there are no dead rats in my food there are no cockroaches in my bed I am free I am in the West they were things that I have you know so well when horrible things always happen around the world and I my greatest lesson It was learning that

happiness

is in your heart and you know what you think to achieve it, thank you, I mean smoke, okay.