Stop Waiting for Your Life to Change: Start Taking Action

There is something I’ve learned about changing your life that took me a long time to understand: sometimes the thing standing between you and the life you want isn’t a lack of opportunity. Sometimes it’s simply that you keep waiting to take the first step.I’m not saying that because I’ve always been good at taking action. Quite the opposite. A lot of my life was spent making decisions that moved me in the wrong direction. I made poor choices when I was young, and those choices eventually led me into a situation where I lost 24 years of my life to prison.When you spend that much time looking back at your life, you learn some things about time that you can’t easily explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You realize that days turn into months, months turn into years, and before you know it, an enormous portion of your life has passed.That’s one reason I look at procrastination differently today.I don’t see it as something small anymore.When you continually put off the things you know you need to do, you’re not just postponing a task. You’re postponing the person you’re capable of becoming.And I’ve already given enough days away.I don’t want to give any more away.

Stop Looking at Everyone Else’s Life

One of the things that can make procrastination even worse is an inferiority complex. When you don’t feel like you’re good enough, successful enough, educated enough, financially secure enough, or far enough along in life, it’s easy to convince yourself that there’s no point in trying.You look around and see somebody who has more than you. Maybe they have a better career, a nicer house, more money, a successful business, a better body, more followers, or opportunities that you wish you had.Then you look at yourself and start thinking, “I’m nowhere near where that person is.”I’ve had to learn not to live that way.Coming home after 24 years in prison could have given me plenty of reasons to compare myself to other people. There were people who had spent those same years building careers, buying homes, raising families, developing businesses, traveling, and creating lives while I was incarcerated.I could have come home and spent all my time thinking about everything I missed.I could have looked at somebody else’s progress and decided that I was too far behind to catch up.But what would that have accomplished?Nothing.It wouldn’t have given me those 24 years back. It wouldn’t have improved my situation. It wouldn’t have built my future. It would have simply taken more time away from me.So I had to change the question.Instead of asking, “Why am I not where they are?” I started asking myself, “What can I do with where I am?”That question gives you somewhere to go.You may not be where you want to be today, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay there.

Your Starting Point Doesn’t Determine Your Destination

When you’re rebuilding your life, you have to accept your starting point without allowing it to become an excuse.That’s something I’ve had to practice.My life today didn’t appear overnight. I’m still rebuilding. I’m still learning. I’m still developing myself. I’m still figuring things out and looking for ways to elevate my life.But that’s actually the point.I don’t need to have everything figured out before I move forward.Neither do you.A lot of people get stuck because they think they need the perfect plan before they take action. They want to research everything, understand every possibility, anticipate every problem, and know exactly how everything is going to turn out.I’ve caught myself doing that too.There is nothing wrong with research. Learning is important, and preparation can save you from making unnecessary mistakes. But research can become another form of procrastination when you keep gathering information because you’re afraid to actually begin.Eventually, you have to close the phone, close the laptop, put the book down, and do something.You have to make the phone call.You have to send the email.You have to make the appointment.You have to start the workout.You have to write the first page.You have to take whatever legitimate first step applies to the goal you’re pursuing.You can learn more as you go.That’s something I’ve come to understand about life: action teaches you things that thinking alone never will.

Give Your Goals Some Structure

Taking action doesn’t mean acting without a plan. In fact, I believe having a strategy is extremely important.That’s where SMART goals can help.A goal should be specific enough that you know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. It should be measurable so you can tell whether you’re actually making progress. It should be achievable, relevant to the life you’re trying to build, and attached to a timeframe.There’s a big difference between saying, “I want to get my life together,” and saying, “Over the next 90 days, I’m going to work on this specific area of my life, take these specific actions each week, and track my progress.”The second one gives you something to work with.I’ve learned that I need to break big goals down into smaller actions. When I look at everything I want to accomplish in my life all at once, it can become overwhelming. But when I ask myself what needs to happen today, the picture becomes much clearer.That’s where action comes in.You don’t have to build the entire future today.You just have to do today’s work.

Don’t Let Overthinking Become Your Prison

After spending so much of my life physically incarcerated, I’ve become very aware of another kind of prison: the one we can create inside our own minds.Overthinking can keep you trapped.You think about doing something, then you think about what could go wrong. You consider another option. Then another. You research somebody else’s approach. You question whether your idea is good enough. You wonder what other people are going to think.Eventually, you’re exhausted from thinking about doing something you still haven’t done.I’ve had to learn to recognize that pattern in myself.Sometimes the answer isn’t more thinking.Sometimes the answer is action.Take the information you have. Make the best decision you can. Start moving. If you discover that something needs to change, adjust your strategy.That’s not failure.That’s part of the process.When I came home, I couldn’t change the fact that 24 years had passed. I couldn’t go back and make different decisions as a young man. What I could control was what I did with the time in front of me.That’s still true today.My freedom means something to me because I understand what it feels like not to have it. I don’t want to waste that freedom sitting around waiting for the perfect circumstances.I want to use it.

Action Builds Confidence

Here’s another thing I’ve discovered: confidence often comes after action, not before it.People sometimes say, “I need to feel more confident before I do this.”But how are you going to become confident at something you’ve never attempted?You take the step.You struggle.You learn.You make adjustments.You accomplish something small.Then you realize, “I actually did that.”The next step becomes a little easier.That’s how confidence can develop naturally.You don’t have to convince yourself that you’re extraordinary. You simply have to start proving to yourself that you can keep promises you make to yourself.If you say you’re going to work out four days this week, do it.If you say you’re going to spend an hour working toward your goal, do it.If you say you’re going to stop wasting time on something that isn’t helping you, make the change.Every time you follow through, you’re building evidence that you can trust yourself.And that matters.

Focus on Elevating Your Own Life

I’ve also learned that personal growth becomes much easier when you stop worrying so much about what everyone else is doing.Someone else’s success doesn’t prevent you from succeeding.Someone else’s progress doesn’t make yours less valuable.Someone having more money doesn’t mean your financial progress doesn’t matter.Someone having a better body doesn’t mean your fitness progress doesn’t matter.Someone having a successful business doesn’t mean there’s no room for you to build something meaningful.You have to focus on your own lane.Look at your circumstances honestly. Look at what you have. Look at what you don’t have. Then ask yourself what you can do to improve your position.Maybe it’s learning a skill.Maybe it’s improving your discipline.Maybe it’s getting your finances organized.Maybe it’s taking better care of your body.Maybe it’s improving your relationships.Maybe it’s working toward a career.Maybe it’s finally pursuing something you’ve been talking about for years.Whatever it is, stop waiting for your life to become perfect before you begin improving it.Start where you are.

Freedom Means Something Different to Me Now

For me, freedom isn’t just being outside of prison.Freedom means having the opportunity to make decisions about my life and accepting responsibility for what those decisions produce.After losing 24 years, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making excuses for why I can’t move forward.I’ve already learned what happens when poor decisions accumulate.Now I want to see what happens when good decisions accumulate.That’s what I’m working on.One decision at a time.One goal at a time.One day at a time.I don’t expect perfection from myself. I’m not finished becoming the man I want to be. But I am committed to continuing the process.That’s what The Apex Journey is really about for me.It’s not about pretending I have everything figured out. It’s about acknowledging where I’ve been, accepting responsibility for where I am, and continuing to work toward where I want to go.And that’s something anybody can do.You don’t need my story to understand that.Maybe you’ve lost five years.Maybe you’ve lost ten.Maybe you’ve made mistakes that you’re ashamed of.Maybe you’re starting over financially.Maybe you’re rebuilding your relationships.Maybe you’re simply tired of knowing you’re capable of more while continuing to put off doing something about it.Whatever your situation is, don’t spend another year comparing yourself to somebody else or waiting until you feel ready.Figure out what matters to you.Create a realistic plan.Break it into manageable steps.Set some SMART goals.Stop researching when it’s time to act.And then take the first step.It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be big.It just has to move you forward.Because I’ve learned something after 24 years of having my freedom taken away: when you have the ability to choose what you do with your time, that choice is incredibly valuable.I don’t want to waste mine.And I don’t want you to waste yours either.So whatever you’ve been putting off, whatever you’ve been overthinking, whatever you’ve been telling yourself you’ll start tomorrow, take a serious look at it today.Then do something about it.Your life doesn’t have to change all at once. You just have to stop postponing the actions that can change it.

I Learned How to Choose Happiness Behind Bars

For a long time, I thought happiness was something that would happen to me when my circumstances changed. I thought I would be happy when I got out of prison, when I had money, when I had my own home, when I could go wherever I wanted, and when I finally had the things I had spent so many years dreaming about while sitting inside a prison cell.I was wrong.One of the biggest lessons I learned during my years of incarceration was that happiness isn’t something you find outside of yourself. It’s something you have a choice in creating. That doesn’t mean you can just decide to be happy and suddenly everything in your life becomes perfect. Life doesn’t work that way. There are going to be hard days, disappointments, losses, and situations that are completely outside of your control.What I learned was that even when I couldn’t control my circumstances, I could still have some control over how I looked at them.I didn’t learn that lesson sitting somewhere comfortable with everything going my way. I learned it while I was incarcerated.

A View I Never Expected to See From a Prison Cell

One of the moments that really drove this lesson home for me happened after I was transferred to Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.Before Donovan, I had spent nearly 20 years in prisons in California’s Central Valley. The environment was completely different. The summers could be brutally hot, sometimes over 105 degrees, and when you looked outside the prison fences, you were surrounded by dirt and farmland. That was the world I had become accustomed to.Then I got transferred to Donovan.Donovan is down near the Mexico border and close to the coast. I remember looking outside and seeing palm trees. I could smell the salt water in the air. From my prison cell, I could look out the window and see the ocean. Every now and then I could even see cruise ships passing by.Think about that for a second.I’m sitting in a prison cell, and I can see the ocean.I had spent years surrounded by concrete, fences, razor wire, dirt, and the heat of the Central Valley. Now I could sit at my desk, study for my college exams, look out the window, and see the ocean and cruise ships going by.And it made me so happy.What made it even more powerful was that I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was still incarcerated. I still didn’t have my freedom. I couldn’t just walk outside and go down to the beach. I couldn’t get in a car and drive along the coast. I couldn’t get on one of those cruise ships.But I could see them.I could smell the ocean.I could see the palm trees.And I remember feeling incredibly grateful that I was able to experience something so beautiful while living in some of the harshest circumstances I had ever known.That experience taught me something that I didn’t fully understand before. Happiness doesn’t always require you to have everything you want. Sometimes it comes from recognizing what you already have.

Gratitude Changed the Way I Looked at My Life

That was when the attitude of gratitude started becoming much more meaningful to me.It’s easy to look at your life and focus on what’s missing. I could have sat in that cell thinking about everything I didn’t have. I could have focused on my freedom, my family, money, relationships, opportunities, and all the things I couldn’t do.And believe me, there were plenty of things I missed.But when I looked out that window, I started thinking about what I did have.I had my eyesight. I could see the ocean.I had my sense of smell. I could smell the salt air.I had my mind. I was able to study for college exams.I had another day of life.I had an opportunity to learn and grow even though I was incarcerated.Those things might sound small to somebody who has them every day. But when you have lived for years in an environment where so much has been taken away from you, you start to see ordinary things differently.That is what gratitude did for me. It changed what I was looking at.

Viktor Frankl Helped Me Put My Circumstances Into Perspective

Another major influence on the way I began looking at my circumstances was Viktor Frankl and his book Man’s Search for Meaning.Frankl’s work centered heavily around meaning, responsibility, and the ability to choose your attitude even when you don’t have control over the circumstances you’re facing. The Viktor Frankl Institute describes this as one of the central ideas of his work: people don’t always control the conditions they face, but they retain the ability to choose their attitude and response. That idea really hit me.I started thinking about my own circumstances differently. If I couldn’t change where I was, did that mean I had to spend every day being miserable? If I couldn’t walk out of the prison, did that mean I couldn’t experience happiness while I was inside?The answer I eventually came to was no.I couldn’t control being incarcerated, but I could control what I did with my time.I could read.I could study.I could exercise.I could meditate.I could work on myself.I could help other people.I could appreciate the little things.And I could choose not to allow my circumstances to completely control my emotional state.My own experiences eventually showed me just how true that could be. There were times after I was released from prison when I had the things I had dreamed about while incarcerated—children, a home, freedom, and the ability to live my life—and yet I was unhappy. At the same time, I can remember being genuinely happy on some of the most difficult prison yards I had ever lived on. My manuscript describes that contrast as one of the moments when I realized happiness was a choice. That realization changed me.

Happiness Doesn’t Mean Pretending Everything Is Good

I want to make something clear because I don’t want somebody reading this to think I’m saying that you should ignore the difficult things in your life.That’s not what I’m saying.There were plenty of terrible days in prison. There were days when I was angry, frustrated, afraid, disappointed, and tired of my circumstances. Choosing happiness doesn’t mean pretending those emotions don’t exist.It means not allowing those emotions to become your permanent address.You can be angry and still decide what you’re going to do next.You can be disappointed and still find something to be grateful for.You can be going through a difficult period and still take care of yourself.You can acknowledge that something in your life isn’t right without allowing it to convince you that your entire life is hopeless.That distinction became very important to me.

This Isn’t Just About Prison

You might be reading this and thinking, That’s great, Robert, but I’m not in prison.

Neither am I anymore, and that’s exactly why I still use these principles.

Because prison isn’t the only place where people become trapped. Some people are trapped by addiction. Some are trapped by anger. Some are trapped by resentment. Some are trapped by their past. Some are trapped in unhealthy relationships. Some are trapped by fear. And some people are trapped by the belief that they’ll finally be happy when something outside of themselves changes.I know that mindset because I’ve lived it.For years, I thought happiness was waiting for me somewhere in the future. I thought it was waiting on the other side of that prison gate. I thought that once I was free, had the things I wanted, and could finally live life on my own terms, I would automatically be happy. But when I eventually got those things, I discovered that happiness doesn’t work that way. My circumstances had changed, but my mindset hadn’t changed with them. My own experience taught me that you can be physically free and still feel trapped inside your own mind.

I’ve learned that sometimes the first step toward freedom isn’t changing your circumstances. It’s changing the way you respond to them.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work to improve your circumstances. You absolutely should. If you’re struggling with addiction, work toward recovery. If you’re in a bad relationship, make changes. If you’re unhappy with your health, start taking better care of yourself. If your past is holding you back, start doing the work to heal and grow.

But while you’re working on changing your life, don’t make the mistake of believing that you have to wait until everything is fixed before you allow yourself to experience happiness.

You can start today.

You can start with your attitude. You can start with gratitude. You can start by taking responsibility for the things you can control and letting go of the things you can’t.

Three Things I Still Practice Today

The lessons I learned in prison didn’t disappear when I walked out of the gates. If anything, they became even more important once I was free.

The first thing I do is check my attitude.

I take a mental temperature of where I’m at. Am I angry? Am I frustrated? Am I allowing something that happened earlier to affect the rest of my day? Am I focusing so much on what’s wrong that I’m completely ignoring what’s right?Sometimes simply recognizing what is happening inside your own head gives you an opportunity to change direction. My goal isn’t to pretend I’m always positive. I’m not. My goal is to catch myself before a temporary emotion turns into an entire day of negativity.

The second thing I do is choose gratitude.

I intentionally look for things I can be thankful for. Sometimes it’s something major, and sometimes it’s something as simple as being able to walk outside, having a good workout, eating a good meal, talking to someone I care about, or simply having another day to work on myself.When you start counting your blessings, you begin noticing things you used to take for granted.That’s what happened to me looking out that prison window at Donovan. I could have looked at the fences and thought about everything I couldn’t do. Instead, I looked beyond the fence and appreciated what I could see.

The third thing I do is give something away.

I’m not talking about money. Give somebody your time. Give somebody encouragement. Share something you’ve learned. Help someone who is struggling. Make somebody laugh. Tell someone you appreciate them.When you’re constantly focused on yourself, your problems can become enormous. Sometimes helping another person reminds you that you have something valuable to contribute.And that can be powerful for your mental and emotional well-being. It can also encourage you to get out of your own head, move your body, connect with other people, and create a greater sense of purpose in your everyday life.

You Don’t Have to Wait for Your Life to Be Perfect

Maybe you’re reading this and you’re not in prison. Maybe you’re dealing with something completely different.Maybe you’re struggling with addiction, anger, depression, financial problems, a broken relationship, regret about your past, or simply the feeling that your life isn’t where you thought it would be.I understand that feeling.I’ve learned that sometimes we spend so much time waiting for our circumstances to change that we forget we can change ourselves while we’re waiting.That’s what I did in prison.I couldn’t walk out of the gate when I wanted to. I couldn’t change the sentence I was serving. I couldn’t control everything happening around me. But I could decide what I was going to do with the life I had that day.I could study.I could exercise.I could read.I could work on my mind.I could practice gratitude.I could look out that window and appreciate the ocean.And I could choose to be happy.That choice didn’t make prison disappear. It didn’t magically change my circumstances. What it did was give me a different way of experiencing the life I was living.And that’s something I still carry with me today.Happiness isn’t about having everything you want. I’ve learned that firsthand. Sometimes you can have almost everything you once dreamed about and still be miserable. Other times, you can have very little and find a moment of genuine happiness simply because you choose to recognize the good that’s already there.For me, that lesson started behind bars.I learned it looking through a prison window at palm trees, smelling the ocean, watching cruise ships pass by, and realizing that even though I wasn’t free yet, there were still beautiful things in my life.That was when I started understanding the power of gratitude.That was when I started understanding the power of choice.And that’s a lesson I still practice today.

APEX ACTION STEPS

1. Check your attitude.Take five minutes today and ask yourself honestly: What am I feeling, and is the way I’m looking at this situation helping me or hurting me?

2. Count your blessings.Write down five things you have today that you normally take for granted. Don’t overthink it. Start with the simple things.

3. Give something away.Give someone your time, encouragement, knowledge, kindness, or help without expecting anything in return.

You may not be able to control everything happening in your life. Neither can I.But you can decide what you’re going to do with what you have.And sometimes, that choice is where real freedom begins.**This is The Apex Journey. One choice, one day, one step at a time.**