Convict Logic: From Leadership to a Better Life

Convict Logic

From Leadership to a Better Life

Todd L. Cook

Copyright © 2024 Todd L. Cook

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89157-050-4 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-89157-058-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Praise for Convict Logic

This book is dedicated to anyone I've hurt over the years. I'm truly sorry, and I hope that you can see the changes that I've made.

Chapter 1

Leadership

Chapter 2

Setting Goals

Chapter 3

Study Habits

Chapter 4

Making Moves

Chapter 5

Education

Chapter 6

Saving Money

Chapter 7

Keeping Your Word

Chapter 8

Convict Code

Chapter 9

Work Ethic

Chapter 10

Losing Weight

Chapter 11

Getting in Shape

Chapter 12

Faith and Family

Chapter 13

Other Lessons Learned

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Other books by this author:

Lessons Learned: From Playground to Penitentiary

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Wholesale distribution available through Page Publishing and Ingram

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Send comments or questions to

Todd L. Cook #47656

P. O. Box 22500

Lincoln, NE 68542-2500

About the Author

T. C. Productions

Praise for Convict Logic

Todd's character has been forged in a fire of adversity, and he's come out solid as steel. I've known him for several years through my work in Nebraska, and his leadership qualities are top-notch. You've got to read Convict Logic for his amazing chapter on leadership, if for no other reason.

—Catherine Hoke, founder of Hustle 2.0 and Defy Ventures

Todd's writing offers unparalleled insight into not only life inside prison but how a young person caught up in the world of crime can turn their life around to become a respected, valuable member of a society they're prevented from participating in. Todd's work with us, as well as his continued dedication to self-improvement and helping others not return to prison, is the foundation of our goal to create a fairer, safer justice system in Nebraska.

—Ashleigh Jackson, cofounder of Nebraskans for Prison Reform

Thank you, Todd. I enjoyed getting to know more about you. I took your advice on weight loss. So far I've lost 40 pounds. Eating less/exercise, not eating snacks and very few sodas, etc. I feel lots better.

—Trenton Reiner, reader

This book is dedicated to anyone I've hurt over the years. I'm truly sorry, and I hope that you can see the changes that I've made.

Chapter 1

Leadership

What is leadership? By definition, it is direction, guidance, control, management, and supervision. A person or thing that leads or is followed by others is considered a leader. In practice, these terms take on many forms, and I will attempt to shed some light on not only what it takes to be a good leader but also what you can do to develop the qualities that are necessary to make people want to follow you.

Every one of us is in a position of leadership whether we currently recognize it or not. Our daily lives of work, family, and friends offer us constant opportunities to either demonstrate our leadership qualities or to develop them. If you understand that we are all connected by our shared experiences and start to take charge of how those daily interactions affect the people around you, then it makes sense to become the best teammate you can be.

Think about what it takes to win a Super Bowl. The team shows up to practice and takes snap after snap to prepare for the game on Sunday. They go through fitness drills, hydrate, and stretch and then repeat this process over and over. Best-selling author and professor Angela Duckworth, of the University of Pennsylvania, calls this deliberate practice. In her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Professor Duckworth explains what deliberate practice is and how we can all use it to better our results, no matter what we set our minds on. This is what professional athletes do every day to achieve world-class talent, and we are going to use these techniques to improve our quality of leadership and teammate potential.

So how do we practice being a leader? Well, for starters, you have to learn how to lead yourself before you can lead others. What I mean by that is, if you don't have the tools to build a house and the know-how to get it done, then what do you expect the results will be? Homelessness comes to mind, but that may be a little dramatic. Even a person with no money and no skills to make a house from scratch can live in a cardboard box, but is that really what we're striving for as a leader? I would hope not.

Getting ourselves together may take some work, but that's essential when it comes down to setting a good example that others would want to follow. This is the number 1 investment that you must make in order to become a good leader and teammate. I gave you several tools to help you on this personal transformation in my first book, Lessons Learned: From Playground to Penitentiary. Using trigger/response reprogramming techniques, you'll be able to overcome any obstacle that stands in your way, such as drugs and alcohol, cigarettes, anger, depression, and obesity. Check that book out in combination with the lessons I will tell you about now, and you'll certainly improve the quality of life for yourself and those around you.

A leader doesn't have to be the CEO of a major corporation. A leader can be the neighborhood kid who picks up trash on the playground instead of littering or a parent who starts a carpooling service to save on travel expenses. Once you start to see how many options there are to set a good example, you are well on your way to becoming an effective member of your community. This gets us into a mindset of service and humility, which are elements of good leadership.

In 2017, I was fortunate to be able to attend the Global Leadership Summit hosted by the Willow Creek Association. The Prison Fellowship Academy sponsored the event and paid for the live satellite feed for a select group of prisoners to watch. It was awesome! If you ever have the opportunity to attend, please do so. It is an annual event, and the testimonials will change your life. At the very least, you will walk away with a sense of what it takes to challenge yourself to be a better person.

The summit is a two-day event and lasts about eleven hours. If you have a nice, comfortable chair, you'll seriously enjoy the experience. In prison, I wasn't so lucky. We started the first day sitting on steel bleachers because there weren't enough plastic chairs to go around. Talk about a pain in the butt! With all that to the side, though, the speakers made all the pain worth it. The founder and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, Bill Hybels, began by teaching us about humility and learning. His message included how important it is to treat people with respect and that, as leaders, we must teach those we lead to show respect to others, even if we disagree with them.

Pastor Hybels went on to say that we should all take two minutes to thank someone who has helped us and to also plant a seed of leadership in those around us. The example he gave of planting such a seed was by having a two-minute conversation with a lady in the food service industry. He let her know that she was exceptional at her job and that he really appreciated how hard she worked to provide an awesome dining experience. This two-minute conversation stuck with that young lady, and she later became a manager, but she never forgot who planted that seed of leadership.

We all have the ability to affect those around us either in a positive way or a negative one. To become a better person, we all need to focus on how we play our position on the field of life to improve our chances of success as a human race. All too often we try to blame our failures on someone or something other than ourselves. If we all take responsibility for our own actions and strive to respect everyone around us, we will then begin to develop leadership qualities in ourselves and in those we lead.

All the speakers at the summit were exceptional, but one of them wrote a book that I was studying in my law class, and I was thrilled to get to hear his message in person. Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, wrote a book called Just Mercy, which made the New York Times Bestseller's list. In it, he talked about his experiences with racial and cultural discrimination and how that affected the lives of men and women in the criminal justice system. A very powerful book that will definitely open your eyes to the corruption that's in the judicial process and the many hardships that prisoners face when trying to defend themselves. For all his hard work in this area, I want to start by saying thank you to Mr. Stevenson for defending those who would not have had a chance without his help. You are what all attorneys should strive to be.

Mr. Stevenson spoke eloquently about some of the people he had represented and also about leading through the uncomfortable. What that means is that we must be willing to do uncomfortable things and to be a witness of uncomfortable circumstances in order to help the people who are suffering. We must be willing to be close to these people and not allow ourselves to be governed by fear and anger. In trying to fix a problem, we must change the narrative of the circumstances so they no longer carry the same negative impact. We must also stay hopeful. Mr. Stevenson indicated that either you are hopeful or you are a part of the problem. It takes courage to stay hopeful in the face of adversity, and true leaders find a way, no matter what, to keep moving forward.

As you may remember from my first book, Lessons Learned, I mentioned that I was attending law classes through Nebraska Wesleyan University. It just so happens that Mr. Stevenson's book was our curriculum that semester, and he was going to speak at the college. I didn't get to attend (because I'm in prison), but I did get to send him a couple of questions for the Q and A portion of the speech. I can't wait to hear how it went and maybe get a response to my questions! He is an excellent example of what it means to have good character, which ultimately results in great leadership. We should all take his lessons learned to heart and aspire to change lives the way that he's been able to. Some of his closing thoughts at the summit stood out to me in this regard. He stated that being broken is what it takes to understand how to lead and that how you treat the poor and broken is true leadership, not how you treat the rich and powerful. I genuinely consider myself to be broken and find strength in my ability to lead others because of this fact. We just have to use the lessons we've learned in positive ways rather than letting the negative garbage that we all have weigh us down.

There were so many great speakers at the summit that I feel like I'm leaving them out, and they don't deserve that! I wish I could share every bit of it with you and speak as well as they do. As you may know from my first book, my mission in life is to do something great, to give back, and to make up for the harm that I've caused. I continue on this quest by providing the best information that I can about subjects I believe are useful to the general public (and general population if