Every Day Is An Opportunity
May 20, 2020 | General
COLLEGE STATION, Texas – Wednesday morning, the Texas A&M Athletics Department heard an inspiring message from author and public speaker Damon West as part of their monthly all department staff meeting led by Athletics Director Ross Bjork. The virtual meeting was the second since the COVID-19 pandemic rearranged daily life as we know it.
Nearly 300 employees logged in to hear an update on the status of the department and to hear West speak about the power of creating positive change and embracing opportunities even in the most trying times.
"May 18, 2009 a jury in Dallas Country had just listened to six days of overwhelming evidence of my guilt," said West in his gripping opening statement addressing Texas A&M Athletic Staff. West continued with the steps he took that led him to a life-sentence at a maximum-security prison in east Texas.
Following the guilty verdict handed down after only 10 minutes of jury deliberation, West was delivered a sobering message from his parents. His mother said "debts in life demand to be paid and you were just handed an overwhelming bill from the state of Texas. You did the things they said at the trial and you have to go and pay that debt to society, but you owe your father and me a debt too. Here is the debt you are going to pay to us, after you go to prison you will come back as the man we raised or you don't come back at all."
Citing conversations with fellow inmates within the Texas prison system, West explained the premise and purpose of the Wall Street Journal bestseller 'The Coffee Bean' he authored alongside Jon Gordon, a best-selling author and motivational speaker. The life lessons he learned behind bars, detailed in his autobiography 'The Change Agent', set his life on a better path following his release.
"What you need to understand is prison is like a pot of boiling water," West shared. "When you put a carrot, an egg and a coffee bean in a pot of water they are all changed, the carrot becomes soft while the egg becomes hard on the inside. When you put a coffee bean in the pot of boiling water we call prison the water becomes coffee. The coffee bean, the smallest of those three things, has the power to change the entire experience of prison from the inside out."
After West accepted the thought of a positive outlook, he struggled to put that into action and that's when he learned the need to embrace each opportunity. "What are you going to put into action from your thousands of thoughts each day? If I was going to take action in my life I needed to change the way I was thinking and stop thinking about prison as punishment and instead as an opportunity."
West took that opportunity to become the best version of himself and worked at it every hour that he spent inside those walls. He implored the staff to see each day as an opportunity as he explained "each day when I wake up and my feet hit the floor I speak out loud that I am thankful for the opportunity to work on myself today." He relayed that while he might not have fully accepted the power of those actions initially the repetition led to a belief that it would come true.
"Right now the world is in a giant pot of boiling water and nobody alive can tell you what is going to happen next," West stated as he encouraged staff to use this time to embrace the opportunities presented to them. "Right now the world is in warm water, but that does not mean there are not opportunities to be had. The power to change starts inside."
Nearly 300 employees logged in to hear an update on the status of the department and to hear West speak about the power of creating positive change and embracing opportunities even in the most trying times.
"May 18, 2009 a jury in Dallas Country had just listened to six days of overwhelming evidence of my guilt," said West in his gripping opening statement addressing Texas A&M Athletic Staff. West continued with the steps he took that led him to a life-sentence at a maximum-security prison in east Texas.
Following the guilty verdict handed down after only 10 minutes of jury deliberation, West was delivered a sobering message from his parents. His mother said "debts in life demand to be paid and you were just handed an overwhelming bill from the state of Texas. You did the things they said at the trial and you have to go and pay that debt to society, but you owe your father and me a debt too. Here is the debt you are going to pay to us, after you go to prison you will come back as the man we raised or you don't come back at all."
Citing conversations with fellow inmates within the Texas prison system, West explained the premise and purpose of the Wall Street Journal bestseller 'The Coffee Bean' he authored alongside Jon Gordon, a best-selling author and motivational speaker. The life lessons he learned behind bars, detailed in his autobiography 'The Change Agent', set his life on a better path following his release.
"What you need to understand is prison is like a pot of boiling water," West shared. "When you put a carrot, an egg and a coffee bean in a pot of water they are all changed, the carrot becomes soft while the egg becomes hard on the inside. When you put a coffee bean in the pot of boiling water we call prison the water becomes coffee. The coffee bean, the smallest of those three things, has the power to change the entire experience of prison from the inside out."
After West accepted the thought of a positive outlook, he struggled to put that into action and that's when he learned the need to embrace each opportunity. "What are you going to put into action from your thousands of thoughts each day? If I was going to take action in my life I needed to change the way I was thinking and stop thinking about prison as punishment and instead as an opportunity."
West took that opportunity to become the best version of himself and worked at it every hour that he spent inside those walls. He implored the staff to see each day as an opportunity as he explained "each day when I wake up and my feet hit the floor I speak out loud that I am thankful for the opportunity to work on myself today." He relayed that while he might not have fully accepted the power of those actions initially the repetition led to a belief that it would come true.
"Right now the world is in a giant pot of boiling water and nobody alive can tell you what is going to happen next," West stated as he encouraged staff to use this time to embrace the opportunities presented to them. "Right now the world is in warm water, but that does not mean there are not opportunities to be had. The power to change starts inside."
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