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The Upside of Fear: How One Man Broke the Cycle of Prison, Poverty, and Addiction ReviewThe Upside of Fear: How One Man Broke the Cycle of Prison, Poverty, and Addiction by Weldon Long is one of those books that looked interesting for review purposes, but I initially said no due to my horrible backlog piles of books to be read. But after about four different emails from unrelated sources on the book, I thought that perhaps someone was trying to tell me something. I received my copy and started reading it one night as I was suffering from a bit of insomnia (nothing new there!) I quickly found that I couldn't put it down, both for Long's story, and for the lessons contained within it. The book touched me on a number of levels.
In short, Long was a life-long "loser" who drank himself into over a decade of time spent behind bars. After dropping out of school in the 9th grade, he quickly became an alcoholic who was not willing to work hard at anything in life. He was always after that next get-rich-quick scheme, while drinking away most of the money that his girlfriend/wife earned at her job. This constant need for money without effort finally led him to pick up a hitchhiker and plan an armed robbery to get a quick score. That wasn't the start of his downhill slide (he was already sinking), but it *was* the accelerator that pushed him to even lower depths.
He was quickly apprehended for that crime, and was sentenced to ten years. As with most sentences, he was able to get out early while swearing to himself he was going to change for the better, in order to be a better father to his baby boy. But the patterns were already ingrained, and he went back to robbery to get his next cash infusion. He was pulled over while planning another heist, and the police found him in possession of a firearm along with tools that could be used (and would have been) for his next crime. This parole violation sent him back into the system, but he was able to dodge any responsibility for the prior crimes as they couldn't tie him to the acts. You'd think by now he'd start thinking about how to *really* change his life, but that was not to be. With his next release, he was again back to drinking, drugs, and telemarketing fraud. All this finally caught up with him, and he ended up back in jail once again, this time facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars. It was then that a transformation started to occur...
He reached out to a Higher Power and asked for help in turning things around. It was at that point that he started to understand that *he* was responsible for what had happened to him in life, and he had the choice on how to respond to his circumstances. He started to read a number of personal improvement books, taking the lessons to heart. Most importantly, he started to own up and take responsibility for his past actions. This didn't mean that all of a sudden his life got rosy. But it did give him a purpose and guiding principles to continue his personal growth and to pursue his life goals he was now focused on.
Long story short, he's now a free man, with all his crimes paid for. He's met and surpassed his goals he set for himself in prison, such as to become a good father to his son Hunter, to learn how to have a healthy relationship with a woman, to actually purchase and own a home, and to help others learn how to they too can change. He's gone from a burden on society, a person destined to live and die behind bars, to a productive member of society who is making a valuable contribution in the lives of many others who are walking the same path he was.
As I mentioned in the opening, this was a touching story. It shows that no one is beyond help or without value, and that it's possible for anyone to turn their lives around if they start to understand some basic principles of living. I was also once again reminded of the power of written goals, both short and long term. It's far too easy to make mental promises that don't have any concrete backing behind them. This is a lesson I still struggle with myself. And finally, the epilogue actually caused me to tear up a bit. The scene between Long and Hunter, reviewing the letters he wrote to him while in prison, is so very moving...
Some will probably read this and get hung up on the philosophies from people like Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer. But the fact remains that there *is* wisdom there, and those things did transform Long's life. I would highly recommend this on both an inspirational/motivational level and on a teaching level. If you can get your young teens to read something like this, they might just hesitate a bit before making decisions that will cause them years of heartache and pain.
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