“The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.” —Mark Caine

This quote showed up when I opened my journaling app known as Daylio (I highly recommend it!). I will be posting several quotes in this post that will have similar meanings or undertones to this leading quote but let’s begin by breaking this one down.

”The first step”. This implies that there will be multiple steps towards success but this one starts the ball rolling.

”Refuse to be captive”. The first example that entered my mind was the story of Ben Carson. His mother raised Dr Carson and his siblings in poverty which was “their environment.” But she was determined they would be educated (though she, technically, was not) so she sent them regularly to the public library to read books and check out books to read at home. These experiences were fundamental to Dr Ben Carson (world renowned neurosurgeon) being inspired to pursue education and eventually leave impoverishment for success.

Dr Carson’s mother and her family “found themselves” in a negative environment. I do not believe they did anything to place themselves there (e.g., foolish choices) but they were there nevertheless. However, from Dr Carson’s perspective as he describes in his book “Think Big”, they refused to let their environment define who they were as people. They refused to be victims and then rely upon a “victim mentality” to get their needs met. They determined they would use legitimate resources (books at the public library) to learn about the world outside of theirs and how they could move into THAT world. And they did. Here’s another that is one of my favorites as a counselor.
This is from Viktor Frankl’s famous book “Man’s Search for Meaning”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

This Frankl quote leads directly into my favorite which states,

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

This quote was printed and displayed prominently on one cinder block wall of my State Jail counseling office. Why?

Because while many of my clients in jail had made very poor choices that led to their incarceration, once imprisoned, they still were able to choose “one’s own way” inside those prison walls. But their reality was that they could not change the fact that they were the incarcerated. So I challenged them to research and address what they could change: What was taking place “inside” themselves.

At least from my perspective in that one particular institution, the number of those who “changed themselves” was very small. In fact, the number who were released and then returned for another felony crime was very high. They would show back up in my office and I would simply ask, “Why?” “Did you not learn anything while you were here before?” No. They did their time, but admitted nothing had changed in them. Sad indeed. So while Dr Carson was a figurative captive of his culture, he made choices that set him free. The “offenders” I saw in state jail were literal captives who would eventual be freed but chose to stay in their figurative prisons of their own minds.

What prison, figurative or literal, have you become “captive” of?

What are you doing to find your freedom?

Do you accept responsibility for what you can change or do you play the blame game, always pointing to others (family, the government, your schooling or lack therof, etc) for why you are “incarcerated” in some way?

Taken from the Bible, one well known quote about life choices comes from Joshua, the successor to Moses, who led the Jewish people into their “promised land”: 

“¹⁵ And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15 KJV