Ep. 94: From Prison to Purpose: Beating Addiction & Limiting Beliefs | with Mark Crandall

Mark went from a lost boy with countless traumatic experiences to drug addiction, prison, and an undying self-hatred to building multiple six-figure coaching practices and leading life changing workshops where he empowers others to break free from their limiting beliefs towards creating the lives of their dreams.

Many people who go through what Mark has gone through end up with their lives totally derailed, forever – but Mark is now out there making a difference in the world, every single day, and that isn’t because he’s special or different. It’s because he was lucky and exposed to healthy ideas, and now he wants to help others do the same.

“I knew that something was wrong with me, but I didn’t understand what… and I just longed for the moment that it would all come together.”

While incarcerated, Mark was scared because he knew he didn’t have the skills to actually change the way that he thought or acted. He couldn’t even stay sober inside of prison. How could he do it out in the world?

The ah-ha moment came 22 months into his two-year sentence. He woke up, full of fear. He just got his acceptance letter saying he would be released, but his experience showed him that he didn’t do well in the real world. “My heart spoke to me, and my heart said… Go to the one place in the library that you’ve never been.”

He didn’t know what that meant, at first, but he listened – and he ended up in the spirituality and self-help section. A book by the Dalai Lama stuck out to him, and later that day, he tried his first attempt at practicing a mindfulness technique.

Mark didn’t know what he was seeking, but he found it.

He also found that, “unlike drugs and alcohol, the effects of spiritual practices, the effects of transformational work, the effects of introspective work, it doesn’t wear off – and I don’t get arrested.”

That isn’t to say that, immediately, his whole life changed and he suddenly loved himself. That would be a lie. But his life did start to change, bit by bit.

Mark made another big step forward when he found Metta meditation, a loving-kindness meditation practice that really started to shift the way he felt about himself. “Once I learned to start to love other people and forgive other people, that’s when I started to reap the benefits of learning how to love myself and forgive myself.” Self-hatred will reap hatred, and self-compassion will reap compassion.

Mark re-wrote the story of his life, and now, he dedicates his life to empowering others to accomplish the same.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“You are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are not your feelings… there is no such thing as feeling outside of attachment to thoughts. So you’re not your thoughts. You can achieve anything in this life that you put your mind to.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at  https://markcrandall.net/
• Listen: Purpose Chasers Podcast
• Read: Eulogy of Childhood Memories
• Learn more about Metta Meditation:  https://www.mettainstitute.org/mettameditation.html

The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters