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A Life Sentence, A Path to Redemption: The Lester Young Story · Nightmare Success In and Out

0:01
What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
0:04
Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome to the Nightmare Success In and
0:07
Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
0:11
nightmares that set yourself free.
0:13
We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
0:16
Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
0:20
These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad.
0:23
There's some humor. Hopefully you can come away with
0:26
a nugget of something that'll help you knock down some of the
0:29
prisons you built up in your own mind.
0:33
All right, Welcome back, Nightmare success in and out.
0:36
Listeners, it's the holiday season.
0:39
This is where you come from. What happens when your worst
0:41
fear becomes your reality? How do you adapt, survive,
0:43
overcome, set yourself free. OK.
0:47
I am so excited to be having the opportunity to interview my
0:53
guests here today because I, I found him through LinkedIn and
0:58
we linked up and I, I started reading about it.
1:01
I thought, man, I would, I'd love to have this guy on my
1:03
show. He's, he's got all the pieces.
1:06
He checks all the boxes for the nightmare success life that he's
1:10
lived. And his name's Lester Young at
1:17
19. How does a kid who's 19 years
1:19
old get a life sentence at 19 and serves 22 years?
1:28
And how does he become a Ted X speaker, a re entry coach, a
1:31
best selling author, a keynote speaker?
1:34
Finding an organization that's called Path to Redemption that
1:38
really began in prison and some of those programs still Live
1:41
Today. That he created the nonprofit.
1:45
It's a, it's a, it's, it's about aftercare assistance for
1:48
formerly incarcerated people transition back to society.
1:51
It's also about risk youth at risk.
1:56
And he's got a six week program that does that.
1:59
This guy does it all. He's also a champion of the band
2:02
the box campaign nationally recognized for that.
2:05
This guy, Lester Young is getting it done.
2:09
And I can't wait to talk to him about his experience, how he
2:13
made it happen, how he lived through his worst fear.
2:18
Before we go into that, though, I want to recognize our show
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Tell them, Brent, from Nightmare Success, since you all right
3:08
here we are, Lester. Welcome in, my man.
3:12
How are you inside? My camera over.
3:15
I'm great, man. How are you today?
3:18
I'm doing good. I I'm so happy that we're doing
3:22
this interview this time of the year.
3:25
This is one of those feel good stories and you know, it's, you
3:29
know, like I told you, Lester, it's one of those stories that
3:33
we go into 1100 prisons with a dovo and this, you know, this
3:41
type of story gets heard and those prisons, a story about
3:44
hope, redemption, living a life of redemption.
3:50
It's it shows that it can be done and but it also takes
3:55
action. You know, it takes belief and,
3:57
and a lot of the things that you did.
3:59
But take us back a little bit. Lester, what was life like for
4:04
you growing up as a kid? Because this thing happened for
4:07
you early on. So take us back into that world.
4:11
I would. You know, I always when I, when
4:12
I talk about our first, I was just like, say thank you Britt
4:15
for inviting me to be a guest on this podcast and thanks for your
4:19
audience for tuning in. And hopefully what I share with
4:23
you, you and your audience, it will be transformative.
4:26
I truly believe in transparency transports people.
4:29
So this is going to be an honest conversation, authentic
4:32
vulnerable conversation about my journey because I believe by me
4:35
sharing my journey, it will empower someone else, especially
4:39
those who are inside of the correctional environment hearing
4:43
this, it would show them that transformation is possible.
4:46
And for your audience who may be living in their own mental
4:49
emotional prison, it would help them be able to do a jailbreak
4:53
and and that so thank you. Love that because people as you,
4:57
as you well know, Lester, and we said we both do.
5:02
Yeah, we, we recognize people getting institutionalized in
5:05
prison, becoming, you know, that became their even as much as
5:11
they hated it. That's the routine, the ugly
5:13
routine they got used to. And then they got scared of
5:15
freedom. But then when you get out, you
5:18
start looking around you and you see that people are are have
5:21
built up prisons in their own mind.
5:22
Whether it's a bad childhood, a bad marriage, a bad job or
5:25
whatever it is, they get afraid to take the next step to
5:29
whatever it is that they want. And and how do you break free
5:33
from that? So yeah, it's such a good point.
5:35
To answer the question as well is like when I look back at my
5:38
life, when I do the self reflection and I look back at
5:42
that timeline from born in 1972 to the timeline in 1992 and what
5:50
happened at 1992 led to an incarceration of a life
5:55
sentence. But even to step back further,
5:57
what happened in 199019891988. So for me, self reflection is
6:03
being able to put my life in that timeline and be able to
6:05
identify what was the break, what was that pivot, what was
6:09
that thing that shifted. And it's when I go back to that,
6:12
I go back to 1988, right? March of 1988 March the 2nd of
6:17
19/19/88 When my mother I would say March the 1st because me, my
6:22
mother had an argument March the 1st about me washing the dishes
6:28
coming home from school refusing to wash the dishes as a 16 year
6:32
old kid wanting to go play football with my friends.
6:36
I dropped my book bag in the living room and ran out of the
6:39
house. March the 1st of 1988 March 2nd.
6:43
I mean that night March 1st me and my mom's had an argument
6:47
about me not watching the dishes my daddy did.
6:49
My dad disciplined me that night.
6:51
March 1st. March 2nd.
6:53
I woke up, went to school the next morning, didn't say
6:56
anything to my mom's expecting that when I come home we will be
7:00
able to sit down and have a talk about my behavior.
7:03
But I walked back. I walked out of the house with
7:05
my mother, my mother assuming that we going to have a sit down
7:09
that day after school. I walked back in the house maybe
7:12
3 hours later to the to the news that my mother had died.
7:18
Yeah. Yeah, so that.
7:21
How old were you there? So walking out of the house the
7:25
night before an argument, walking out of the house that
7:28
morning, assuming that you're going to come back to the house
7:31
and have a talk with your mother, but to walk back into
7:33
the front door and to receive the news that she died in her
7:37
sleep, right. So when you ask that question,
7:40
what was that time? What would happen at 16?
7:43
I I lost someone very dare to me and never really had an
7:47
opportunity to process that trauma, that grief.
7:51
Replaying that argument, we're doing a lot of self blaming.
7:55
Fast forward September the 7th. I turned in 1988.
7:59
I turned 17 about two weeks later I was arrested for
8:05
possession of crack cocaine. Four months after my mother
8:08
death. Two weeks after me turning 17
8:11
years old was facing a possibly 25 years of incarceration.
8:15
I was able to get it reduced down to a 90 day prison sentence
8:19
as a first time offender. Did the 90 day military boot
8:23
camp and again got released in 18 months later I was standing.
8:28
With what was your I'm always interested in that whole 90 day
8:31
boot camp thing because it's it's it's run differently in all
8:33
these different states. But there is a such thing.
8:37
How did you at that age, Lester, go into that boot camp?
8:41
What were you thinking? Did you think this is a hassle?
8:45
But they're, you know, I got to do it or were you thinking, no,
8:48
this is a way for me to kind of get right and get with myself or
8:51
what? What what goes on when you enter
8:53
a 90 day boot? Camp, like I said, like thinking
8:55
about it from the from the lens of a 17 year old kid who's still
8:59
processing one of the the most traumatic thing in his life and
9:02
that's the death of his mother. So being sentenced at 17 years
9:06
old, I knew the behavior that led to my incarceration was
9:10
wrong for selling drugs. But here it is.
9:12
I'm 17 years old sitting in this place still with the with grief
9:16
heavy on me and and no one never asked a question.
9:20
Even my father never really understood what how grief was
9:24
impacting leading to anger leading to.
9:27
Well, I mean, but Lester, it was more than than just someone
9:31
dying. You had had an issue a, a fight,
9:37
you know, words and, and that, that's such a weird, I, I overly
9:44
identify with what you're talking about because I went
9:47
through a whole thing with my dad.
9:49
He was my best friend. We were in business together and
9:52
then we went through this trauma together and he went to prison
9:55
for 10 years. I went to prison for five.
9:57
When he got out, we were not necessarily seeing eye to eye.
10:03
And I thought, you know, it was, I just got enough probation and
10:09
I had, I had thought, you know what, I'm going to go down.
10:13
Dad and I are just going to talk it out.
10:16
And I called him and the, and the words that we had had at the
10:21
time, we were, we weren't, I didn't know if we could ever
10:25
repair ourselves, but I wanted to try to see if we could
10:28
understand each other. And I called and he didn't
10:31
answer. And I thought, well, he might be
10:34
busy, whatever it is. And, and I got a call the next
10:37
day that from the the halfway house who did a Wellness check
10:42
on his apartment that he was dead.
10:45
And it was like one of those things, Lester.
10:48
And I know that feeling because I thought that I was going to go
10:53
down the next day and we were going to have this.
10:56
And I don't know if it would have solved anything, but I knew
10:59
that that's what was on my mind that I wanted to do.
11:02
And and I know for you that that had to have been such an
11:08
unfinished piece of your life at that age.
11:11
See, I was older. I was, you know, 50, some odd
11:14
years old. You were a 16 year old kid.
11:18
It was it was the hardest thing to process and it took like
11:20
what? I'm going back again to that
11:22
military boot camp. I went in there with no
11:24
expectation. I was still still processing
11:28
this and replaying what could have done differently.
11:32
So here it is. I'm dealing with grief.
11:34
And then the fact that now I've been sentenced to 90 day
11:37
military boot camp. And this is another reason why I
11:40
do the work that I do around empowering young people because
11:44
I realized in my timeline of life, there was a traumatic
11:47
thing that happened and I did not get over the trauma.
11:50
The trauma bled. Right, it was a pivot point.
11:53
So sat in there for 90 days, you did the boot camp stuff, push
11:57
ups, jumping jacks, shining your boots, learning all of the ways
12:00
of make your bed, etcetera. It implemented some discipline.
12:03
But no one in that 90 days, never even during the court
12:06
process, never looked at that March 1st to September, four
12:13
months. There's something that happened
12:15
in four months. What?
12:16
You know that piece and I sat there, that question that was
12:19
asked, no, no, no, no one even cared about that is that you
12:23
violated the law. And this is what it is.
12:25
And I get that part of it, but everyone that is incarcerated,
12:28
they sometime they're poor choices comes from a place of
12:31
trauma and hurt, right? And and and this is again why I
12:35
do the work that I do, because I always said.
12:38
Wouldn't you say most of it, Lester, comes that way through
12:41
trauma? And hurt.
12:42
Yeah, it's so many stories working with young people in the
12:44
juvenile facilities. You hearing the same thing?
12:47
Like young men are losing. Like one young man I was working
12:50
with a couple days ago, he's a 14 year old kid dealing with
12:54
real adult decision making. He lost his father, lost his
12:59
uncle, lost his brother in less than 2 1/2 years and he's 14
13:02
now. Wow.
13:03
Can you imagine that? Like, you know what I'm saying?
13:05
So yeah, that's an eighth grade who lost his father, which was
13:09
his best friend. And when he lost his father, he
13:12
he took on his uncle, went to his uncle and embraced him as
13:15
the father. And later his father, his uncle
13:18
died, then his brother died. So three men that he looked up
13:22
that that he loved died. So now he's in school with all
13:27
of the pain releasing, releasing it through anger and destructive
13:30
behavior. And so they said, well, we'll
13:32
send you to the juvenile environment, which that only
13:35
makes him harder and criminalize him even more instead of saying,
13:39
Hey, we need to put you in intensive therapy, grief
13:42
counseling so that you don't become that this doesn't become
13:46
your lifestyle. So that's the reason what led me
13:48
to starting path to redemption because I was like, if there was
13:51
someone inside of that military boot camp would have taken some
13:55
time to break through that wall of making me stead of making me
13:58
do all of these push ups. But it took time to like, try to
14:01
crack that. God only knows.
14:04
Really try to understand. God only wouldn't know what
14:06
would have possibly happened. But unfortunately when I was
14:09
released 18 months later, I found myself again sitting
14:12
standing before a judge for for murder.
14:15
And now here it is. Now how do I process?
14:18
I'm being sentenced to life. I got sentenced to life.
14:20
I'm processing, still processing the loss of my mother.
14:25
Now I'm processing the loss that someone else has, you know, and
14:28
the pain that I've caused this individual's family, as well as
14:32
now processing the shame that I brought upon my family.
14:35
And now I got to sit in this prison environment for 19 years,
14:38
for the next 20 years of my life and try to figure out how to
14:41
navigate all of these different things that that is troublesome,
14:45
right? So it's just been a process,
14:47
man. Well, I don't want to the pain
14:52
over what you just said because it's so everything you just said
14:55
was so powerful that the the standing in front of a judge
15:00
being sentenced to life for murder.
15:06
How what else was going on in your world around that?
15:08
Your family and everything, Were they there for you in this
15:15
unbelievable situation? I've.
15:17
Been always fortunate to have my family, you know, and it was it
15:20
was hard for my family to process one that I I killed
15:24
someone. I killed someone over some
15:26
drugs. I'm selling drugs.
15:28
A bad a drug deal went bad and someone died.
15:31
That's like the, you know, it's my family having my family there
15:35
to processes. But as you go, as you do in
15:37
time, now you have to deal with the the reality that someone
15:42
died and they're not waking up ever again.
15:45
What does it feel like, Lester? Because I very rarely had the
15:48
opportunity. I've had Jason Holland and a
15:51
couple other people. But I, you know, what does that
15:54
feel like? That moment that, you know,
15:56
things have gotten out of hand? Usually when that kind of stuff
15:59
happens and we're talking about drug deals going bad or
16:01
whatever, there's a lot of intensity in the situation.
16:03
It happens quickly, man. I'm going.
16:06
To be, I'm be honest, Brett, that for the first couple years
16:10
I was numb from the whole situation.
16:12
You, you do your best to escape the pain that you just caused.
16:16
You do whatever you can. You, you create a wall or you
16:20
create this wall in your mind to block that in and you put that
16:24
over there. You departmentalize that because
16:27
you don't want to. That is too much for you to
16:30
process considering everything else you're going through.
16:33
It's, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy.
16:35
So I have to departmentalize that, put that somewhere, unplug
16:39
it as much as I could to, to, to erase it.
16:42
So what I tell people when you talk about the nightmare, right?
16:46
What happened? It was when I started
16:49
reconnecting that that wire, that thing called emotions and
16:53
feeling and empathy, right when I, when I, when I started
16:57
reconnecting that as a human I, I begin to transform.
17:02
Because my first three years of my life sentence in prison, I
17:05
detached it. I tried my best to erase it, but
17:09
what I realized is I was trying to erase it.
17:11
I was creating more harm emotionally, to myself,
17:15
mentally, psychologically. I was never at peace.
17:18
I was never happy. I was always angry.
17:21
I was struggling to do a life sentence in prison.
17:25
And then I just realized, like the only way I'm going to find a
17:28
sense of freedom inside of the walls of incarceration, I need
17:32
to reconnect to that. I needed to take ownership for
17:35
it. I needed to acknowledge it.
17:37
I knew I need to give it a name because for the first couple
17:40
years, people would say, what are you in prison for?
17:43
I would say I'm in prison for killing this guy, right?
17:46
Listen how I would by by me not dehumanizing him.
17:51
It allowed me to be able to cope.
17:53
I didn't want it to mention his name because then it symbolized
17:57
the. Personality.
17:59
Everything right? So once I started that, you
18:02
know, I started saying I need to attach the name to this person.
18:07
I didn't know this person other than drug transaction, but he's
18:11
still a human being. And when I started connecting to
18:15
that, that's when my transformation.
18:16
So going back into the nightmare to success.
18:19
I remember on a Friday night, I was in my prison at this time.
18:23
I was reconnecting these emotions and and identifying and
18:27
understanding the harm that I caused.
18:29
I was watching Dateline in prison and I heard this mother
18:33
crying because her son got murdered.
18:36
And in that, listen, watching that entire 45 minute show, I
18:42
started thinking more about the victim, right?
18:44
Started thinking more about what I did.
18:47
And I remember after the show went off, I said some prayers
18:50
and I laid in my bed in prison. And then something just woke me
18:54
up. And I'm like, man, I woke up
18:56
crying like I had a nightmare. I woke up crying.
18:59
And I remember saying, God forgive me for the wrong that
19:02
I've done. Please help me in this journey.
19:05
And I got back up out of the alpha off of the top bunk in
19:08
prison, and I went on this cold concrete floor by the door, by
19:13
the toilet, you know, those small cells.
19:16
And I went there and I just laid my head on this hard concrete
19:18
floor and apostrated in a baby fetus position.
19:21
I started crying and I just asked God constantly, God
19:24
forgive me, this is too heavy. And God, I heard this thing
19:28
saying like, I have forgiven you, but you have to see the
19:30
forgiveness of the person you harm in that moment.
19:33
In that moment. I remember raising back up and
19:36
looking and saying how like, how do I make this right?
19:41
And it's just like I got led saying, Hey, you need to own it,
19:44
you need to take ownership. You need to speak to him, which
19:48
was his name is Gary Goldinger Junior, right?
19:50
So I remember in that moment for three plus years, I never
19:55
mentioned his name until that moment on that Friday night
19:57
about one O clock ish I on on that concrete floor, I mentioned
20:01
his name for the first time and I remember saying these words.
20:04
Gary Golding, Gary Goldinger junior, I apologize.
20:08
I seek your forgiveness with the harm that I've caused you.
20:11
I promise you as long as I have life in my body, I will continue
20:15
to honor your life in the way that it needs to be honored by
20:17
doing the right thing. I would use our story to impact
20:21
the lives of other individuals so that one that another person
20:24
don't have to lose their life too, that I don't have to be
20:27
sitting in prison. And that's where the word
20:29
pathogen. The redemption came.
20:30
It came from that is that now once I did that, I started
20:35
getting revelation in a sense of direction, that now you're on
20:39
your own path to redemption. Because in prison every
20:42
individual inconsolate is seeking a path to redemption.
20:46
But inside of a prison, no one shows you how to find
20:48
redemption. My redemption came from my
20:51
nightmare of laying in that bed and being woken by God or the
20:56
spirit of this person whom I harm.
20:58
I begin that journey from there. Lester, that is powerful.
21:02
Let's take a break there because I want to, when we come back, I
21:05
want to talk about how this transformation happened in
21:08
prison and what you did and how you affected other inmates in
21:11
prison because that's such a powerful story.
21:15
And when you can actually make real change in prison and other
21:18
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I'm a member of the White Collar Support Group, and I can tell
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That's prison start over. Start here so Lester, you get
22:51
and have this, this moment and you and you feel it and you,
22:57
you, this comes out of your mouth, the words that you
23:01
haven't spoken for a long time, the name of the person that lost
23:05
his life. But it's different when you're
23:08
in prison because you have these routines and people you hang out
23:11
with and and that becomes your primitive world of how you move
23:17
in prison. But when something like this
23:19
happens, you're changing your whole routine, you're changing
23:22
your whole world. Tell us how.
23:23
How does Lester do that in prison?
23:25
That was like the hardest thing. But again, once I made that
23:29
promise that I will honor your life by doing the right thing,
23:32
that means that my entire transformation begun, meaning
23:37
that I restarted recentering myself and how who I hung out
23:40
with in prison. What did I start reading in
23:43
prison? Would I start involving myself
23:45
in in prison? So after that, a couple weeks
23:48
later, a couple months later, I went into a prison Chapel and
23:52
spoke was speaking to the prison chaplain and he asked me this
23:55
question. He said, where do you see
23:57
yourself in the next 5 years? Like man, I see myself in prison
24:01
like that. Prison.
24:03
Like I wasn't, you know? And he says like, yeah, I was
24:06
like, I see myself in prison. Like he said.
24:08
What do you see yourself doing in the next 5 years?
24:10
Do you have your education? Do you, I was like, no, I was
24:13
like, I'm not even focused on any education because I may
24:16
never get out of prison because with a life sentence, a 3%
24:19
chance of being free, why would I need a high school diploma or
24:22
GED or some type of trade or something Like I was like, I
24:25
don't have no, I have no intention of doing none of that.
24:28
And then he said, have you read? He said, what are you reading?
24:31
I said, I'm, I'm trying to like get into books again.
24:33
I'm in prison, 19, about 2023 years old.
24:36
I'm still reading at Amigo's 7th grade level of education, high
24:39
school dropout, all of that stuff.
24:41
So he passed me my first book. One of the first books I read
24:45
was called As a Man Thinking, So is he by James Allen?
24:49
And I said, he said, I want you to read this book and then when
24:52
you get through with this book, come back and talk to me.
24:55
Mind you, I got his book. I went back to the cell.
24:58
I threw the book and then because it was intimidating to
25:00
sit down and read a book. And in that he called me to the
25:04
office the next week and he's like, hey, did you read this
25:06
book? And I was like, no, I haven't,
25:07
you know. And he's like, you'll sit here
25:09
and spend 30 minutes to an hour read this book and I.
25:14
Oh, so he really took an interest in making sure that
25:16
you're going to read this book? Did I always say that with that
25:18
night? After that night, it's like the
25:20
path to redemption. God started giving me the steps
25:23
to where I needed to be. It was out of all the almost
25:27
1000 men in prison, this particular chaplain saw
25:30
something in me that decided to take some time to give me a
25:33
book. And that one book led to him
25:35
mentoring me. And that one book led to other
25:39
books that that was related to what life looks like, right?
25:42
So everything was ordained and designed by God after, as I
25:47
said, my life begin to transform when I made that promise to my
25:51
victim. And in that, that's where
25:53
everything begun for me. And then that.
25:55
And as time went along, I started repositioning myself
25:58
with my friends. I remember instead of hanging
26:00
out, I was going to night school inside of the prison, going to
26:03
get my education. And I remember walking by about
26:05
20 of my friends, my homeboy, some of them I grew up with and
26:09
some of them, they were my protection in prison because you
26:12
know, in prison you got to be protected in different sets that
26:14
you come from. So they were all standing or
26:17
sitting on the bench inside out of the prison yard.
26:19
And I remember walking by them and it's like, where you going?
26:22
I said, I'm going to get my education, I'm going to school.
26:24
And I was like, yo, they were smoking weed and drinking.
26:26
I was like, man, I don't want nothing to do with that no more.
26:28
And it was like, listen, they said, if you walk away from us,
26:31
remember you're on your own. You're on your own meaning.
26:35
It's a lot to think about when you're in a maximum security.
26:38
Level Level 3 security, you know and you.
26:43
Protection is a good thing. And you have to be around that.
26:46
But I decided. And that moment of bravery, I
26:49
said I stepped out from it and I said, I said I'm going to do
26:52
this on my own. And they looked at me.
26:55
Takes a lot of courage, Lester, because you know, I was not in
26:59
that level, but I also know that people, you know, you hang
27:03
around in your car, you click. And when you break away from
27:07
that, you know, it's, it takes some, especially in the higher
27:11
up prisons, you know, the levels when you level up, because it
27:17
could be, you could lose your life.
27:19
You know, it's, it's, it's takes a lot of courage to step out
27:22
and, and just say, Hey, I, I am going to be what I want to be
27:25
and I step away from everything. I did, I felt like I needed to,
27:29
you know, I needed to and I was willing to deal whatever the
27:31
consequences that came with it. And not again in that nightmare
27:34
that that level of fear, as it says, your growth is on the
27:38
outside of the edge of fear or whatever your discomfort is, you
27:42
know, you have to step in. That was one of those moments
27:45
where I stepped out of a comfort into a, into a area of
27:48
discomfort and it produced a level of growth for me.
27:51
You know, yes, it was intimidating.
27:53
Yes, I was afraid going to the showers, going to the mess hall
27:58
by yourself. I was afraid.
28:00
But in that I grew. This is the version I am today
28:04
is a result of me choosing to do just that.
28:08
And over a course of time by that, maybe six or seven months,
28:11
when they saw that I was serious about it, they started falling
28:16
in line, right? And that's the thing that some
28:19
of us don't realize our leadership skill set until we
28:22
step out of the comfort into a place of discomfort to make a
28:26
difference. And I found out once I made
28:28
that, there were so many other of my friends were on their
28:31
search for their path to redemption.
28:33
They were dealing with their demons late at night that they
28:35
didn't have this courage to speak about.
28:37
But now, because I had the courage to about it and walk
28:41
away from it, they saw a different level of peace.
28:44
They didn't see me seeking comfort and getting high.
28:47
They didn't see that. They saw me sitting down,
28:49
reading books, attending religious services.
28:52
They saw that level of peace. And it was like if this man
28:54
could do it, I know him. I know this guy from the block.
28:58
I know who he is and he has a life sentence that he look like
29:01
he has more peace than any of us and we don't even have a life
29:05
sentence. I need to get on what he's on.
29:07
And over a course of time, my friends, other individuals
29:11
incarcerated with me, they started wanting to learn more
29:14
about path to Redemption. So I tell people that path to
29:17
Redemption was being taught in prison over 15.
29:20
Years it began in prison. Yeah, it's, it's so it's so
29:25
cool. And I, I think the, the thing
29:27
that you talk about, the comfort, the discomfort, you
29:31
know, a lot of times, you know, when I'm talking to people
29:35
because I get a lot of people that are getting ready to go
29:36
into prison or they're just coming out.
29:39
What it is, I think and what we're saying the same thing is,
29:42
is it's the, the known is the comfort that's your known.
29:46
And the unknown is the scary thing.
29:49
The unknown is the scary thing because you don't know.
29:51
And so you make your mind can make out things to make to be so
29:54
bad. But when you start stepping into
29:56
that unknown and, and those become knowns, you give
30:00
confidence. And I think that's that, that,
30:02
that comfort to the discomfort or the knowns into the unknowns
30:06
stepping into it, you get, you gain confidence once you, you
30:10
decide you're going to step into that because you decide that OK,
30:13
I'm OK, I'm all right, I'm OK. And then that that gains
30:17
confidence to step. More the worst thing that you
30:19
feared is you stepped into it and it wasn't as bad as you
30:22
thought it was, right? So that's why I always tell
30:25
people that if you want growth, you you cannot find growth and
30:28
comfort. If you're comfortable, you're
30:29
not growing in prison. I have to.
30:31
It's the most uncomfortable environment.
30:33
But then there's still levels to discomfort that meaning that you
30:36
no longer spend your idle time in prison.
30:40
You don't spend just your time in prison doing idle things.
30:42
That's a comfort for most people.
30:44
The discomfort is is investing in yourself while you're in
30:47
prison. Like I don't, I go in with no
30:49
education. I start utilizing my resources
30:52
to purchase books. That of this, that's a
30:54
discomfort because that means that I have to sacrifice going
30:58
to the mess hall of the cafeteria to eat the food that I
31:01
don't like. I could spend it on the canteen,
31:03
but I could also spend it on books.
31:05
So when I started thinking about transformation of my redemption,
31:08
I invested money in books, but that was discomforting because
31:12
now I have to learn how to survive with the bare minimum.
31:16
But what I was receiving from the books that I read was way
31:19
more valuable than me eating some type of prison meal that I
31:23
bought at the prison canteen or the cafeteria.
31:26
It began to transform the way I started thinking how I started
31:30
seeing how I created a routine in prison, and that routine was
31:33
not about institutionalizing myself.
31:35
And how do you institutionalized yourself?
31:37
When you wake up, you go to the mess hall, you sit down, you
31:39
play cards, you play checkers, you listen to music and you find
31:43
some TV shows and you become you just been watch on TV all day
31:47
until the next count. That's what most people are
31:50
doing. So my routine started from
31:52
waking up praying in the morning to journaling to sitting down
31:55
and reading for an hour, finding a group of men who are walking,
31:59
young people who are walking in prison.
32:01
How do I educate you on how to do time correctly?
32:04
Because there's a thing that you time do you or you do time.
32:07
How the time do you? Is it you sit there and you just
32:09
let it. You start counting the calendar.
32:13
How I do time is I structured my day.
32:16
One of my mentors who was a business owner used to come in
32:19
and do volunteer work in prison. He gave me this, what he call it
32:23
the the game hack or just the hack of life.
32:26
He said, I want you for the next week to sit down and jot down
32:29
your entire day from the time you wake up to the time you go
32:33
to bed and fill in every minute and every second of your day.
32:37
And then that next Saturday he came.
32:38
He said, now let's show me, show you how much time you have to
32:42
maximize your life even though you're in prison.
32:45
And I had so many blocks of time wasted.
32:48
And in that he was like, you need to be doing this, reading a
32:52
book, writing a curriculum, writing out your future goals,
32:55
etcetera. And I'm still got 810 years left
32:57
on my prison before I even go for parole.
33:00
And he was giving me this particular life hack to really
33:03
prepare me and help me level up for my success after
33:06
incarceration. So Path to Redemption Again was
33:08
created to fill in those dead spots, to use my time to the
33:14
best of my event mobility to empower others.
33:17
And the power of that transformation is that when
33:20
you're empowering others, you become stronger as well because
33:23
you'll regret what you share with others.
33:25
You get stronger, you master that which you read in a book,
33:28
You master it because now you're teaching someone else.
33:31
And that's how I became a teacher in prison.
33:33
That's why I learned how to speak in prison.
33:36
Like I tell people like when they say, hey, you got a Ted
33:38
talk. I was like, man, I was doing Ted
33:40
talks in prison for almost 15 years.
33:45
And I'll tell you what those Ted talks, I, I, because I've
33:47
thought about doing that because I've done speaking, but you
33:50
know, it's, it's, it's a real, you know, in some places you
33:54
have 8 minutes, some places you have 12 minutes.
33:56
But you got to really get your message down and, and be, you
34:01
know, tight on, on what you're saying.
34:03
And I, I have so much respect for people that go through that
34:06
process and actually become a Ted speaker because it's, I
34:10
mean, it's, it's a, you know, it's a box check if you, if
34:13
you've done that Ted talk. But I got to say, you know what
34:18
you just said there, Lester is powerful on so many different
34:21
levels. And and the other thing that I
34:24
find that's so inspiring and how you did what you did, you just
34:27
said something that you just can't gloss over.
34:30
You had 8-9, ten years left of your sentence.
34:33
Not not two years, not you were getting out in six months
34:36
because a lot of guys get freaked out when they start, you
34:38
know, heading towards the door six months.
34:40
What am I going to do? You were just deciding to just
34:44
live this way. This, this wasn't that I'm going
34:46
to get out in six months, so I better get prepared.
34:48
You just decided I'm going to be Lester and I'm going to live
34:53
differently, think differently. My mindset's different and it
34:56
doesn't matter when I get out, this is just how I'm going to
34:58
live. I think that's what's incredible
35:01
on how you transform. That and that's the thing about
35:04
transformation and that nightmare when you said what
35:06
nightmare to success is that once you wake up and you want
35:09
it's about like they say how bad do you want it?
35:12
They said I had a 3% chance, 97 percent chance of me spending 40
35:18
years in prison. The rest of your life.
35:20
Could die in prison, 3%, you have a possibility.
35:25
This 3% is to be free. My thing from that is that I'm
35:29
going to create, reinvent who I am and I'm going to create
35:34
something in prison that you cannot ignore my transformation,
35:38
right? Well, I I got to say though, it
35:41
did. It had to feel really good for
35:46
you or fill you up to make this transformation, knowing that you
35:51
were living the way you were, but you had other guys that you
35:53
were helping and bringing along the way that were believing in
35:56
you, Lester. They were believing in what you
35:59
were saying, what you were doing, how you were living.
36:02
And, and you, you start putting these programs in place.
36:05
And you know, we talked about at the beginning, a lot of these
36:08
programs that you put in place lived on long after you were
36:11
gone, which I find incredible. The power of Grant Man the power
36:16
of of When a man finds his purpose in life, it transforms
36:22
his life and it empowers him. It it, it it, it fills him up
36:27
with hope, faith, determination and resilience.
36:32
Before going to prison, I didn't have a purpose.
36:35
I did not have a purpose. I was aimlessly walking through
36:38
the world with nothing to do. That's how I was able to get
36:41
into trouble, blah, blah, blah. But when I found going back
36:45
again to that night, that Friday night in that prison cell, when
36:48
I had that conversation with my victim, that nightmare, that
36:51
experience put me on my path to redemption.
36:55
But in that path to redemption, it helped to help me to self
36:58
discover myself who I was, but it also gave me a purpose,
37:03
something that I was chasing for all of my life.
37:06
Like people today who have never been to prison, they find their
37:09
lives still void, avoiding their life.
37:12
They they work hard, they get, they get all of the
37:15
materialisms. They're missing.
37:17
A purpose, man, when you don't have a purpose in your life, you
37:21
would never feel it complete. So in prison, even though I had
37:25
10 years left on my prison census, what gave me a sense of
37:29
resilience, determination, optimism is that I found a
37:34
purpose and the purpose was me and using who God allowed me to
37:40
be to be able to empower someone else.
37:44
So it was not about when am I going to get out of prison.
37:46
It was not about that. It was like I was becoming now
37:49
the servant leader, right? A servant leader, empowering
37:52
other people using my experience, saying, hey, this is
37:55
what I would do if I had five years left, even though I don't
37:59
have a parole, a Max out date, but this is what I would do.
38:03
So let me vicariously live through you by giving you some
38:06
things that can possibly transform your life.
38:09
And I go back to the story. I go back to the story in the
38:12
Bible of the story of Joseph, how Joseph was in prison, he
38:16
discovered his gift, how he had the ability to interpret dreams,
38:19
etcetera. And when the king had this
38:22
troublesome dream one day, they say, hey, who is it in our
38:26
Kingdom that can help solve this and answer this problem?
38:30
And the guy who was locked up with Joseph said, hey, I know
38:33
this guy in prison who interpret my dreams.
38:36
So I always looked at it in this.
38:39
Isn't it funny that the Bible is a book about prison?
38:41
Yeah, it. Absolutely.
38:43
Is I mean if you really break it down, all the leaders in the
38:47
Bible are have trans form from prison and just some way or the
38:52
other. The story of Joseph was my
38:54
blueprint. It gave me say, hey, Lester, the
38:57
world is going to face some troublesome times with young
39:00
people. Create something that one day
39:04
they're going to come searching. And you don't want to have
39:06
disciplinary problems. You don't want to have a bad
39:08
institutional record. You want to have something that
39:10
out of the thousand men in here, how many of them have created a
39:14
program is empowering people? It never came to governor, never
39:18
came to release me, but the Parole board saw it in 2014.
39:24
Well, yeah, I want to talk about that because, you know, you just
39:29
didn't do four or five years. You're in 22 years when this all
39:36
comes about that the parole board, the opportunity, what,
39:41
what's going through your mind? Are you thinking that there's a
39:44
chance that this could happen? I mean, walk us through that,
39:48
Lester, because those are things that like you, I can see build
39:51
yourself up. You know, I've had people on
39:53
that, you know, that got turned down two or three times and then
39:55
they finally did get released. But what, how do you, how do you
39:58
walk through that? You know when my first parole
40:00
hearing was 2012? You know, from just statistics,
40:04
looking at the data, most people who going up for their first
40:07
time on a 20 year life sentence don't make parole their first
40:10
time. So it was like, I just need it.
40:12
It's almost like in a boxing match you just need to get
40:14
punched first. Get somebody.
40:16
To get like hit somebody, to hit you in the stomach, you get that
40:19
feeling now? I was like, OK, we can fight.
40:21
So it was almost like that for me. 2012 was me.
40:24
I needed to get punched. I needed to see how it was set
40:26
up. I needed to know how the
40:28
questions that they asked all of that stuff.
40:30
So it gave me after I got denied in 2012.
40:34
Now I went to work in a training like training myself for 2014.
40:38
I had two years to now condition myself as a as a speak whatever
40:43
I need to do. And I remember that my my
40:45
mentor, he would always tell me as it LED up to my parole
40:49
hearing. He said practice speaking with
40:51
your eyes closed, hearing the voices of every one of the
40:55
parole board members and he would just fire shots.
40:57
Questions to me about my transformation in prison.
41:01
The day I went up for parole. This is powerful, Brent.
41:04
The day I went up for parole, that morning I went up for
41:06
parole. The parole examiner said, hey,
41:08
Lester, we having technical difficulties.
41:12
You're not able to see the parole board members, but they
41:16
can see you. Remind you that I've been
41:19
practicing with my eyes closed where I couldn't see them.
41:22
I could hear them. So, so she said, if you want, we
41:26
could maybe put you off for later in the evening or maybe
41:30
have to reschedule it. I said, I'm going in right now,
41:34
right? And, and and most people's like,
41:36
man, I can't talk with you. Practice it.
41:40
That's the power of the envision, the power of vision
41:43
and preparation. Somebody sat there and I
41:45
Remember Me going through this process, hearing them and
41:48
saying, Oh yeah, let me ask you this.
41:50
And I, I remember after I got through, I told my father who
41:54
was there with me. I said, dad.
41:55
I said it's over with. He's like, what do you mean?
41:57
I said, it's over with dad. I said, I am confident that I, I
42:01
will be walking out of prison in, in a short period.
42:05
And about maybe 2 minutes after I spoke and I shared, I walked
42:10
out and I sat down and this lady walked up to me and she said,
42:13
Lester Young, you made parole. It was like the most, it's
42:18
almost like you finally had an opportunity to excel, right?
42:22
But the just to go back to show you like the power of the
42:27
vision, you have to be able to see it.
42:30
You have to see. You have to see yourself doing
42:33
that thing that you desire to do.
42:36
No matter how dark your days are, you have to see it no
42:39
matter what. An everyday in prison, I learned
42:42
to put one foot in front of me every day.
42:44
Even though the tunnel was dark for 22 years it was dark.
42:49
I never gave up well. What was your thought, knowing
42:55
that you've been in for 22 years, that you're going to be
42:57
stepping out into the real world society?
43:01
What? What goes through a guy's mind?
43:03
After I was prepared, I prepared for that.
43:06
I prepared for 22 years of release.
43:08
The only thing I wasn't prepared for is the culture shock and
43:11
other things that came into play.
43:13
I was prepared. I walked out of prison already.
43:16
The man that I already envisioned a life that I was
43:19
going to have when I walked out of prison.
43:20
So it wasn't scary for me. What makes it scary is when
43:23
individuals have spent ten years in prison, idle time, playing
43:27
games, biessing around, and then the last six days, 60 days or
43:32
six months of release. Now they're trying to cram in
43:35
everything and you can't transform in six months, which
43:38
you have done, done to yourself in nine years.
43:41
So for me, when I walked out of prison, it was I already was
43:44
prepared. I was teaching, I was living, I
43:46
was breathing it. I walked out with the
43:48
determination. These are the things I'm going
43:50
to do. When I got out of prison, of
43:51
course, I ran across a couple roadblocks and the roadblocks
43:54
where I wasn't, I didn't factor in the, the, the, the collateral
43:59
consequence is tied to your felony conviction after you get
44:02
out. And that means like employment,
44:03
housing discrimination. I wasn't aware of those things.
44:06
I also wasn't aware of how institutionalized I was when it
44:10
came down to the way I live, The way I moved, like going into a
44:14
store was like I had a certain, I had an aggressive posture in
44:19
in prison, even though the things I did, you still had to
44:22
protect yourself. So finding that my posture was
44:25
different, I didn't smile as much, right?
44:27
I remember taking a picture, this lady who was going to hire
44:31
me to do some janitorial work, she said, hey, could you send a
44:34
picture of me, of yourself to me so that I know who you are when
44:39
you walk into our office building?
44:41
I took this picture of her. I was maybe out of prison maybe
44:43
two weeks. And I took this picture of
44:45
myself with the worst grin. I mean, I, I didn't smile.
44:48
It was just a prison mug picture.
44:50
And I just got off the phone telling this lady about I was in
44:53
prison for 22 years for murder. And I sent her a picture that
44:56
was a normal picture to me in prison, but it was a picture of
45:00
fear in an intimidation. And that's when I realized how
45:05
the culture of prison I needed to flush out.
45:09
I needed to learn how to smile again when I got out of prison,
45:11
but I needed to learn how. You smile a lot.
45:15
People, I've learned how to smile now because yeah, I, I'm,
45:19
I'm free. I am free of the incarceration,
45:22
institutionalized behavior. I'm a free man so I could smile,
45:26
but I had to learn how to smile after prison.
45:28
And many people don't understand that, but it.
45:31
No, I mean, listening to you and, and I, I, I've so enjoyed
45:35
this whole conversation because you're, you're inspiring your,
45:38
your personality is infectious. So, I mean, I can't even imagine
45:42
a Lester Young that doesn't smile because as you, as you
45:45
speak, you smile. So, you know, I, that's why I
45:48
think you're probably a great speaker and, and you're able to
45:51
converse with people and, and get them, you know, draw them
45:53
in. But so you get past that and,
45:58
and you kind of have to shake it off of you.
46:00
I mean, literally shake it off of you.
46:03
But you, you, you start doing a lot of things.
46:06
You know what? What?
46:08
When do you? When did you feel like you were
46:10
catching that momentum of being out, getting used to it,
46:15
learning how to smile, but also doing all these big things?
46:18
It took me some time, but you know, again, I came home with a
46:21
plan. My first month out of prison, I
46:23
remember knocking on the door at the juvenile facility where I
46:26
was staying. I knocked on the door, say, hey,
46:28
my name is Lester Young. I just did 22 years and five
46:31
months, and I want to save your youth from incarceration.
46:34
I remember that was myself. That's big.
46:37
That's a big statement from. Incarceration to the juvenile
46:39
facility. And she was like, you did how
46:41
many years in prison? And I said, I've been home now
46:43
one month and I want to save you.
46:45
And she was like, whoa, let me go and get someone that you
46:48
speak to. And I spoke to this guy and he
46:50
gave me an opportunity to speak. But then he was like, hey, he
46:53
said this is a very delicate situation working with young
46:56
people. He said we want to give, you
46:58
need to give yourself some more time because they said we have
47:00
seen individuals come home from prison enthusiastic to want to
47:03
do some difference in the community and they find
47:06
themselves back in prison within six months.
47:08
He said give yourself some time to create something.
47:11
I said I'm, I'm fine. I said I will go build something
47:14
and I'll be back, you know, and that's exactly what I did.
47:17
I started doing what I I'll. Show you I'm going.
47:20
To show you that I'm not going to, I'm not that average Joe guy
47:23
got out of prison. I'm the guy that has planned.
47:26
I've been preparing for this for 10 years.
47:28
You know, I mean, and eventually I was able to build path
47:30
redemption up to a point now where I'm currently running a
47:35
youth program inside of this juvenile facility in South
47:38
Dakota. Let's talk about that, Lester,
47:40
because I think what you're doing is so cool because the the
47:43
the pieces that you teach is the power of choices strengthening,
47:47
strengthening the self esteem and self respect, those three
47:50
things. And it's a six week course, you
47:54
know, like how, how many, like first of all, like how many kids
47:58
are a part of this? What's going on there?
48:01
Kids that went through our program and every day we go
48:04
inside, I have a team of people who were formerly incarcerated
48:07
go inside a juvenile facility from seven days a week from 9:00
48:11
in the morning to 7:00 at night. And we're showing them how we
48:14
use our lived experience to empower our young people.
48:17
So in that power, the power of choices, of what I tell people
48:20
is that that was that decision making for me.
48:22
The power of choices. I made a bad choice.
48:25
We all have a choice in life, you positive, negative and how
48:28
that one bad choice could affect your life.
48:30
So I call, I teach you a curriculum, call the 32nd rule.
48:33
The 32nd rule for me, I, my crime took 30 seconds, which
48:37
cost me 22 years, you know what I mean?
48:40
And most people who are in prison, they made that 32nd,
48:43
that 62nd decision that cost them a certain amount of time.
48:47
So I show them now the most precious commodity that you have
48:50
on earth is time. And how you utilize that time
48:54
determines your level of success or your level of failure.
48:57
My 32nd was a level 30 seconds would use bad, which was a, a
49:02
downfall for me 22 years of my incarceration.
49:04
So that's really what I teach now is everything I teach from
49:08
like my book the five stages of incarceration.
49:11
This is the book I taught for 15 years in prison.
49:13
I have now converted this book into a six you've.
49:17
Got a whole series? 5 stages of growth 5 keys to
49:20
success after incarceration. But like I convert these into.
49:24
By the way, while we're talking about that, Lester, you can go
49:27
to Path to Redemption and it'll lead you to all your books on
49:31
your site. And I encourage people to go to
49:33
Path to Redemption because it's got a lot of really cool things
49:36
on there. It's a non profit so you can
49:38
give on there. So check that out.
49:42
It's a great website doing great things, but I didn't.
49:45
Mean that's what I do is using these particular things to, to,
49:48
to impact our young people. Because going back again to what
49:50
I said earlier is that I wish that there was someone like me
49:54
who I am now with 52 year old man with the lived experience.
49:58
I wish I had a version of me speaking to my younger self
50:01
today that could possibly help transform my life.
50:04
So that's why I show up inside of these facilities every day
50:08
using my story and then also the people on my team, helping them
50:12
to use their story to empower our young people to transform
50:14
their lives. So again that the young person
50:17
don't have to spend 22 years in prison for a 32nd decision
50:20
making. And then tell us what I mean.
50:23
I know all that I've. I know what it is.
50:25
I'm going to ask you though, but the the aftercare for people
50:28
getting out, what all what all do they care?
50:30
Transformational for those who are returning home from prison,
50:33
I do. I'm going to put
50:35
transformational coach, re entry coach.
50:37
Why help individuals navigate that emotion, that navigate that
50:41
emotion and set realistic goals for themselves after
50:43
incarceration. That's why I wrote the book
50:45
called the Five Keys to Re Entry and it's about self-care after
50:48
incarceration. Most people when they walk out
50:51
of prison, they don't realize how prison have affected them
50:54
emotionally and mentally. And you, you ask the average
50:57
person or you OK in prison, they be like, you're fine.
51:00
And I have the analogy that you cannot walk in the rain and
51:02
don't get wet every day in prison you got.
51:05
That's a great analogy for prison.
51:08
You got wet in prison. You just don't know how wet you
51:10
have gotten yet because you have normalized your wetness in
51:13
prison. But when you get out of here and
51:15
you're walking around people who have not been walking in the
51:17
rain, that's when you realize that, man, I'm I'm emotionally
51:21
damaged. I'm emotionally wounded here.
51:23
I'm not able to connect with people emotionally.
51:26
For example, you think about if you have to do 20 years in
51:29
prison, you know that you can't love you.
51:32
You if you have a significant other, wife, children, you love
51:35
them, but you can't love them fully because you know that
51:38
eventually they may not come to see you on visit no more.
51:41
If you were in love with you, got married before prison.
51:43
I had a girlfriend, man. You know if I got 20 years, this
51:46
woman is not going to stick around, right?
51:47
I may not see my children depending upon where I'm at.
51:50
So what you learn to do in prison to survive as you start
51:53
taking, disconnecting your emotions, you have love for your
51:57
family, but you, you don't allow it to get to a point where it
52:01
causes you to be weak in prison. So you, you, you disconnect just
52:06
to survive. And then you think that it's
52:08
going to be easy, like I can just pop some batteries in.
52:10
Or just like you plug up your iPhone, I plug it up and within
52:13
20 seconds I see it says I got power.
52:16
That's not the case with human beings walking out of prison.
52:19
You have disconnected for 20 years and now you have you in a
52:22
relationship. You, you, you look for the man
52:25
who's in a relationship with a woman and you realize and this
52:28
woman said, man, you're not emotionally available to me.
52:31
And the reason why you're not emotionally available is because
52:34
for 20 years you have not been emotionally available.
52:36
You're not even in tune. What?
52:38
Yeah. And, and let's talk about that a
52:39
little bit, Lester, because you grew up in prison.
52:42
I mean, you know, 19 year old kid and you got out and you're
52:45
40 or 41 and what personally where, how, how does that all
52:52
fit? Like getting out and meeting a
52:56
significant other and, and being 40 years old because you're
53:01
doing all these things on a level of, of helping people.
53:05
But how is it for you personally with getting plugged back into
53:10
hey, I'm Lester Young and I want to be kind of like live to the
53:15
next, you know, my 40s and 50s in a way that I the.
53:17
Trauma shows up. The trauma shows up.
53:20
It shows up the areas where you were not aware of your blind
53:23
spots. It's hard to learn how to love
53:25
when you can't love in prison. That's something you can't
53:28
teach. You learn how to love your
53:29
partners, your friends, your, your, your friends in prison,
53:33
but you don't learn how to love a woman correctly in prison
53:35
because that's you don't. You don't have that opportunity.
53:37
You have a feeling, but you don't know how.
53:39
For me, I didn't know how to love a woman as an adult.
53:42
I only had the love of a teenager.
53:45
So for me, that was a whole if I'm still learning how to love
53:49
in the in the most authentic and most purest way with a woman as
53:53
as now a 52 year old man. So you I made mistakes
53:57
emotionally. I was emotionally disconnected
54:01
and through counseling, through mentoring ship, it allowed me to
54:04
help me to be able to say, Oh, this is the problem.
54:07
You need to put this while you're here because you're no
54:10
longer in prison no more. You can now allow that thing to
54:14
flow through you a little differently, right?
54:16
You don't realize that. So I had to learn that.
54:18
It's got to be, I mean, yeah, it's got to be a lot.
54:21
And I the, the other thing that I find encouraging, inspiring
54:26
about your story is, is that your good work didn't go
54:29
unnoticed. It was in September 2020 that
54:36
you received a full pardon from the state of South Carolina.
54:38
Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. Lesson It's been a blessing.
54:42
I mean, that's a pretty big deal, Lester, that.
54:44
Was like on a lifetime parole, meaning that, you know, once I
54:47
got out of prison, I was still on parole.
54:48
I was going to die on parole, still tied to the system.
54:51
I, I wasn't able to travel, wasn't able to do anything.
54:54
Now I was not even the vote or nothing.
54:56
So it was a blessing once I received that part in 2020,
55:00
again, that was another pivot for my life.
55:01
I was able to now visit countries that I dreamed about
55:04
visiting in prison. I'm able to vote, I'm able to
55:07
participate in the in the process of being a citizen now.
55:10
I'm able to buy a home or whatever.
55:12
Anything those collateral consequences prohibited me to
55:15
doing now I could do because I no longer have that felony
55:19
conviction on my record. It has a pardon which now give
55:22
me a lot of my civil duties back or rights back.
55:27
Big deal, big deal. I, I'm just fascinated by your
55:32
story and, and I, I, I so get why you've been able to do what
55:36
you've done. Your, your, your personality,
55:40
uh, draws people to want to hear what you're saying.
55:43
And I, I, I just hope you do more.
55:45
I wish we could clone you, Lester.
55:46
I wish we could just clone and put Lester's in every state.
55:50
What do you think? Going through everything that
55:53
you've gone through because you have gone through a journey,
55:57
man. What do you think's your biggest
56:00
take away from all of this? The the, the, the human spirit
56:04
is so powerful is that we we, we underestimate the power of our
56:11
human spirit and faith in God. We underestimate that power when
56:16
there is a when you really understand the power of faith in
56:19
the human spirit, that God is created in a way of resilience
56:22
beyond your your belief. The thing that you would assume
56:26
that will break you is the same thing that will make you right
56:29
like that. That's powerful, the.
56:32
Thing that when you went to prison, I went to prison, we was
56:35
afraid of that thing that was going to break us.
56:38
But look who you discovered in that.
56:41
So it's almost like the diamond within, right?
56:43
That a diamond is built over a period of years of pressure, and
56:48
pressure has been millions of dollars for the diamond, right?
56:52
But all of us are diamonds, and the pressure of incarceration
56:56
produce the best version of who we are as human beings.
57:00
You see your resilience, your, your, your, your, your whole
57:04
mindset, your mindset have shifted as a result of the
57:08
pressure of incarceration. So that's what I've learned,
57:11
man, is that things don't come into your life to break you.
57:15
It only comes into your life to make you better.
57:17
But to about again, how you respond to most people, they
57:20
crumble because they understand this is something that is life
57:24
changing. Yes, it is, but it's going to
57:25
make you. All you have to do is just have
57:28
faith and continue to wake up every day with a level of
57:31
gratitude and you begin to see the shift in your life and
57:34
you'll realize that that thing that was intended to break you
57:37
or kill you made you the person that you are today.
57:41
I knew you'd have a good take away Lester.
57:46
I could have bet on that one. I want to make sure everybody
57:50
can get directed to where you are.
57:52
It's it's path to it's, it's the it's the numeral to
57:56
redemption.org. You can find out everything you
58:00
want to know about Lester and what he's doing there.
58:03
You can also find his books in a series of books.
58:05
You can also go to Amazon and get that too.
58:09
And if you're looking for my book out there, go to Amazon or
58:12
Barnes and Noble. Nightmare success.
58:14
And I also Speaking of gratitude, I want to thank
58:16
Homestead financial home mortgage.
58:20
They let me use all this fancy equipment in here, which I so
58:23
appreciate. And if you've got home mortgage
58:25
needs, Greg after you have is your guy.
58:27
He knows it all. I know it's kind of a hassle,
58:30
but if you guys got time, it really helps the show if you go
58:33
leave a review on Apple. If you want to know about me,
58:37
what I've got going on is brentcassidy.com.
58:39
I spell it wrong. I spell it with ATY, not a DY.
58:43
And as I used to say to my folks when I was writing my emails
58:47
back from Leavenworth, stay strong.
58:49
I'll do the same. Lester Young man, I I got
58:52
inspired today by I know the listeners are going to be.
58:55
I wish you the best and thanks for taking the time to come on
58:58
today. I so appreciate it and.
58:59
You and your family enjoy the holidays.
59:01
Be safe man, and continue to use your gift that God has given you
59:04
to make an impact in the world by creating these podcasts and
59:07
creating this platform for other individuals to share their
59:10
nightmares to success. So thank you for this invite.
59:14
Right back at you, Lester. Thank you so much.
59:16
Nightmare success in and out.