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March 22nd, 2023
Some years ago, I took a road trip to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania to meet with a very special person. I had exchanged letters with this man for over five years, and through our conversations, I learned a lot about choices. In this Pocket Sized Pep Talk you’ll hear an inspiring story about this man who not only lived his choices, he wrote a book, which later became a move about the lessons he learned from those choices
Rob Jolles (00:00):
Some years ago, I took a road trip to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania to meet with a very special person. I’ve exchanged letters with this man for over five years, and through our conversations I learned a lot about choices. Let’s have ourselves a pocket sized pep talk because the choices he made and the lessons he learned apply to all of us
Intro (00:25):
A pocket size pep talk, the podcast that can help energize your business and your life with a quick inspiring message. Now, here’s your host, Rob Jolles
Rob Jolles (00:37):
Choices. You know, comedian Buddy Hackett once said, as a child, my family’s menu consisted of two choices. Take it or leave it. Choices sound so easy, but the truth is, making the right choices is anything but easy. Ask my friend Ron James. He made the choice to write a book called Choices, which has been out and doing well. There’s an irony regarding the fact that Ron wrote a book about choices. One of the choices we can choose to make is to write a book. As a matter of fact, I’ve ventured to guess that more than a hundred people have approached me in my career telling me of their dreams to write a book and asking me for advice. The truth is writing a book is something anyone can do. Comes down to following a process and making the choice to do it. To help those I mentor, one of the first things I send them is a quote I ask to be placed on a wall where he or she can see it every day and it goes like this.
(01:46)
Planning to write is not writing. Thinking about writing is not writing. Talking about writing is not writing. Researching and outlining to write is not writing. None of this is writing. Writing is writing. Most don’t follow through, but Ron James made a different choice. He chose to put that poem up on his wall, stay tuned to his dream, tell his story, and write his book from his prison cell, didn’t have the luxury of sitting in front of a computer setting up files and manipulating the text. As he went along, Ron James was given a paper and pen and he began to write, oh, did this man write 10 pages? Grew to 2020, grew to 50, and then to 100 pages, then 200, then 300, then 500, and then a thousand pages. Finally, I received a letter from Ron telling me he’d finished the first draft of his book.
(02:56)
Apparently, he went through plenty of pens and used a whole lot of paper because his first draft was exactly 1,825 pages long. When I begrudgingly informed Ron that he’d have to shorten this a bit, he made another choice. He chose to keep working, and he edited that handwritten manuscript for most who write editing means copying and pasting and moving text around here and there on a computer screen. For Ron, it meant studying what he had written and writing it again. Then he rewrote it again, and finally he trimmed it down to a mere 538 pages. I should know he mailed it to me, and when I need to be inspired, I look at it. I don’t just think about the text in hand. I think about the over 3000 written pages of self-discovery Ron worked through to get to this point. Clearly, Ron James made a choice to grind and work and not give up because he had a story he wanted others to hear.
(04:10)
In fact, he’s created a powerful description of the decades of life choices He’s made some good, some not so good, and the consequences that came with those choices, he lived those choices and throughout his 20 years of incarceration, he had a front row seat allowing him to view the impact of these choices. Now, having served his time, his sincere passion is to help others by teaching what he has learned in searching for the meaning in the choices he’s made, he’s evolved from a man of thought to a man of action. In searching for the meaning in his life, he made a choice to become a man of faith and to work hard, to be a better man each and every day in searching for a way to help others. He made the choice to chronicle these choices. He didn’t do this because he wanted to unburden his soul. He did it because he wanted to help others learn from these choices. Poet George Herbert once wrote this, the shortest answer is doing in a prison cell with a pen of paper in hand. Ron went beyond the dream of writing a book to doing it, and to helping others to learn from the choices he’s made. He’s got a movie out on that book Choices now as well. In doing so, he reminded us all of this simple but important message. If you can dream it, you can do it. What have you been about lately?
Outro (05:51):
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy today’s show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes, outcast, wherever you get your podcast. You can also get more information on this show and rob@jolles.com.