Finding the Fundamentals
The market for self-improvement books cleared $11.3 billion in 2021, and is forecast to grow at an average of 6% a year to reach $14 billion by 2025. There were 85,253 new titles published in 2019 alone. Why? People are miserable, and they can’t figure out how to fix it. Are the answers really that complicated?
Contributed by our founder in December 2021, Finding the Fundamentals explains the principles that have freed men throughout time from the bondage of failure and discontent. These core principles have a Power within their application that can move mountains and open prison doors, as they did for Garry Johnson.
Johnson takes you through many of his own experiences with these foundational precepts and how they changed him from a two-bit criminal serving a 48-year prison sentence, into a free, successful businessman 18 years after his arrest.
These basic keys to freedom not only produce success, but they alter your entire way of life – if you can fully apply them each to your own set of circumstances. In this book, you will discover step-by-step guidelines to unshackle yourself from whatever holds you down.
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Finding the Fundamentals, Page 8
Maximum Exposure
I spent four years and seven months in a 23-and-1, maximum security cell (“max,” in prison terminology). In essence, a 6′ x 9′ solitary cell – just me and the few books they would let me have. I spent my time reading those books, thinking about the life I had led, and studying the psychological attributes of the men who would pass through the unit (many, again and again).
Each cell had a little window in the door and a small opening to insert a food tray. The locks had been disabled on this “pie hole” (also prison slang) and the men could converse and exchange trinkets during their one hour “out.” The shower was an open box on the bottom floor of the two-tiered security area, and the bottom level had a single phone that placed collect-only calls. The calls were limited to 30 minutes and a prisoner’s time out limited to one hour per day.
Under these conditions, you are continuously aware of what each of the other 14 men in your unit are subjected to, because you can see most of it and hear the rest. I observed what the experience did to each of them and contemplated the results. My conclusions were not typical of the commonly held beliefs.
I’ve heard it said that max brings out the worst in people, but it does not. I’ve also heard it said that tragedies and emergencies bring out the best in people, but they don’t. Extreme situations reveal what people already are – they strip away the façade and reveal what has been underneath all along. And many people cannot handle what they find there. That’s why suicide rates are so high in max.
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are. – Arthur Golden, American novelist
The lesson to learn here is that no one can hide his or her character forever. It is who you are, and people will always, eventually, reveal to you exactly who they are. Usually all you have to do is listen to them long enough. We can’t help it – it always comes out. Out of the abundance of your heart your mouth will eventually speak. … Believe it.
So if anything you read tells you to put on a fake front for any reason, and you follow that advice, your success – if you achieve any at all – will be miserable and short lived. And you’ll find yourself one day sitting in a prison cell, or bankruptcy court, or in divorce proceedings, wondering how someone out there saw through your façade.
Finding the Fundamentals, Page 10
BECOMING REAL
After my stint in max and a classification period at Brushy Mountain, my first goal when I arrived at MCCX was to associate with people that demonstrated good character. You see, one of those books I read in max convinced me that if I associated with decent people, it would help me become a decent person.
He that walks with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.
Granted, it was a simple goal. But when I first arrived, it was about the only thing I had control over. And it was a start.
My second goal was to try and get back into shape. It was an admirable goal and one we are going to come back to in a later chapter, but it was one I was never able to accomplish on the inside. The First Fundamental did not make me a success in this area, because I did not continue to apply it.
The Fundamentals are not magic (nothing is), but if you implement them all consistently, you are guaranteed to be a success. The combination of these first two minor goals had a profound effect on my time at Morgan County. I sought out the only group I was aware of that went to the weight pile and the chapel – men who had respectable jobs, who had proven themselves trustworthy to other prisoners and the staff. And that is how I met Roy Ridley.
Roy was an editor for the prison newspaper in 2005, and had recently been re-classed to the annex. (Not long after that, a policy change on housing “lifers” brought Roy back to the compound, but at this time he was headed for a new taste of “freedom”). I had been working in my housing unit as a laundry man for almost six months (the minimum time required in Tennessee that new prisoners must maintain an “unskilled” position).
Because my first goal was to associate myself with men of high standing, all of my workout partners had good jobs. As they accepted me into their company, they assumed I was capable of working on their level. So when it came time to fill Mr. Ridley’s vacant position at the paper, my name was proffered by the group.
With no college training, no literary skills, and a learning disability (I am dyslexic … yeah, a dyslexic writer and editor), I walked directly into one of the most sought-after jobs at the prison – the result of a very simple, very specific, short-term goal and the byproduct of several Fundamentals at play.
So as improbable as it was for me to become a publications writer and editor, you really need to consider the likelihood of achievability before setting goals. Remember, my goal wasn’t to become an editor; it was to become a better person. As you implement these Fundamentals in your life, you will often find the result is more than you anticipate. After I became an editor, I had to set new goals to be the best editor I was capable of being. Those new goals paved the way for the book you are reading now.
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