Prisoner’s mentorship program

Founder > Levert Brookshire / Author Proposed Layout: (Mission Statement) 10/10/2018 “Prisoner’s Mentorship Program” To live honorably, to love wholeheartedly, to lead by example in order to feel better about ourselves. To make a positive impression on everyone we encounter, all throughout our lives as we interact in our everyday lives. Uplifting those we are able to meet in our day to activities. Being of help to others whenever possible, regardless of their race, age or religious background. Showing other’s how to recognize their own individual potential, self-worth, and value to society. Offering other’s constructive way’s that they can use, to empower themselves. Teaching others how they can take a direct, personal interest in their own pathway to success. Developing a personal change program they can adhere to, reflecting their unique views and personal goals. Identifying fears and obstacles holding them back from reaching their potential. Teaching the value of consideration, empathy and tolerance. Breaking down the barriers of hatred and anger through education. Being a reservoir of knowledge by sharing our life experiences to enrich others lives. Preparing other prisoners to re-enter society again as productive, contributing members’ of our society, upon release. Founder > Levert Brookshire / Author Proposed layout: Mentor Creed 10/10/2018 “A Mentor’s Creed” A mentor’s primary purpose is to provide other’s with positive encouragement and educational support. A mentor is someone who helps other’s discover what’s most important to them. Discovering what. Natural gifts, talents, skills they possess, or may need to develop more. A mentor can help another learn a new skill a new discipline, methodology, and science. A mentor is a trusted teacher that inspires action in others. A mentor shouldn’t become a mentor based upon their vast education alone. A mentor should become involved in mentoring other’s because they walk the walk, and talk the talk, demonstrating character and integrity. As a mentor “I will always attempt to make positive contributions to my mentee’s over all mental, physical, and emotional well being”. As a mentor I will be dedicated to making a difference in the lives of other’s, around me. 90% of our lives outcome is determined by our attitude. A mentor is focused on showing other’s how to give themselves an adjustment, to their attitude. Founder > Levert Brookshire / Author Proposed layout: Mentor Defined 10/10/2018 “Definition of a Mentor” A mentor is a teacher, a guide, a trusted source of advice and wisdom, an experienced life coach and counselor, someone who leads. Either ‘scholarly’ or ‘peer like’, who has also taken the same path of, ‘of life,’ one has also traveled. Now choosing to give back to share ones knowledge and education, personal experiences, from first-hand accounts, to other’s. A mentor should be someone that is living drug free, disciplinary-free, consistently. Showing a desire to exercise self-control, with a commitment to help other’s. Mentor’s accept mentees that are compatible and relatable. Mentor’s sit with their mentees regularly, collaborate together on the mentee’s future life plans. Guiding the mentee towards what benefits them. Encourage them along the way. Through attitude, words and actions. Setting the mentee up with realistic personal goals. Teaching them techniques to help them reach their goals. Keeping the mentee focused. Showing them how to imagine a tomorrow which prison-life is more closer to what they want in the free world, once they’re released. Success isn’t a ‘secret’, it’s a system. Learning the ‘system’ is the secret. “The price of success is to, acquire discipline.” Founder > Levert Brookshire / Author Proposed layout: Mentor’s Self-Assessment 10/10/2018 “Mentor’s” "Self Assessment” The decision to become a mentor to someone is a commitment. This kind of decision and commitment is in-fact a statement about the kind of person you are. This says a lot about your attitude, integrity, values and confidence, etc. Good mentors are good leaders of themselves. They stress how important it is to become self-sufficient and work on one’s own personal ability to handle life’s problems themselves, cope with life’s environmental demands and social pressures, no matter the surrounding landscape in prison cellblocks or in a civilized society. A mentor learns to adapt ways to cope responsibly and handle life’s difficulties. People that learn how to display self-leadership and are to a large degree self-motivated. These are the kind of people who are inclined to become mentors. Those who set their own goals and track their own progress towards achieving those goals. Becoming a mentor is a very rewarding, satisfying opportunity. It’s a chance to finally become an asset to one’s own community. Either their cellblock-community or neighborhood community. If you’ve made an assessment of yourself and you’ve made the decision to step up and make commitments to contribute to your own community in a much needed and helpful way. Salutes to you Founder > Levert Brookshire / Author Proposed layout: Contract 4/20/2018 “Mentor’s Commitment Contract” This mentorship program isn’t an easy one. It’s demanding and stressful. It’s honestly a lot of hard work to take on other peoples personal problems, in top of your own. Before someone’s “commitment” is made to be a mentor. They should always take a look at their personal current situation and assess where they themselves should first start to make necessary changes in their own attitudes and behavior’s. Before we can lead or teach other’s responsibly. We have to be able to make the right choices ourselves. We believe that a mentor has to always lead by their example. To be able to earn other peoples confidence and trust. We believe that if we can change our negative attitudes we can change our situations in life. However change demand’s commitment by the people looking to make changes. Becoming a mentor for this particular program will require one to accept many responsibilities to come with it. It will drastically increase the demands onto a mentor’s life. With this said we ask that you really evaluate the principles of this mentorship program and read the terms of this particular program, thoroughly. To understand that by signing this contract below, you acknowledge and willingly accept you will adhere to and follow the expectations of this mentorship program. Founder > Levert Brookshire / Author Proposed layout: program Guidelines, Expectations, Contract 4/20/18 Commitment Contract "Mentorship Program” (Guidelines/Expectations) Accountability: Taking full-responsibility, for ones own personal choices in life. Practice communication skills which help to open doors. Engage in activities and behaviors that are consistent with the same things that we ask others to do. Our actions should always reflect our words. Confidentiality: A mentor will always protect the privacy of their mentee at all times. The issues offered by a mentee to a mentor are between them. Not to be shared with anyone else without expressed permission from the mentee, themselves. Trust between the mentor and the mentee is crucially important. Strengthening this is key. Removal from program: preoccupation with self-importance. Expectations: _____________________ ______________ Mentor’s Name date Founder> Levert Brookshire/Author Proposed layout: “Mentee’s Assessment” Questionnaire 4/20/18 Identify the mentee’s problems?: Describe the mentee’s goals?: Explore the way’s to reach their goals?: Determine what the best way is?: List specific steps for them to take?: Founder> Levert Brookshire/Author Proposed layout: “Drug counselor’s/mentor’s-similarities” 4/20/16 “Substance Abuse Addiction Treatment Counselor” (and a mentor) A substance abuse treatment counselor and mentor both have the same purpose. A commitment to helping others cope with personal difficulties. Including helping them acquire positive life skills, needed to make constructive progress in their lives. Both are tasked with showing their client or mentee how to start setting smaller realistic, attainable goals for themselves. Then slowly steer them towards achieving those goals. Becoming a certified, licensed substance abuse addiction treatment counselor first, was a goal of mine. It offers me an opportunity to finally become a helpful asset contributing to my community and to society as well. I’m able do something fulfilling with my remaining years. It will be rewarding for me to help other’s for a change, empowering those with addiction disorders to finally achieve peace of mind and sobriety. Using everything that I’ve learned in my college courses, about substance abuse addiction treatment/counseling. Assessing people’s personal problems, identifying inner-conflicts, developing rapport, setting goals, teaching life skills and coping skills too. Counselor’s and mentor’s alike, both help other people to acquire proper life skills and they teach people the proper ways to practice the skills, they teach. Founder> Levert Brookshire/Author Proposed layout: “Motivational speech” 4/30/16 “First Motivational Message” (to all mentees) Generally speaking our future is mostly predicted and assumed to be a lot like our past. People generally like to think that peaceful people will keep on being peaceful, violent people will go on being violent, criminal’s will continue to be criminals and drug addicts will always be drug addict’s so on and so forth. This is of course if circumstances remain the same as always. The truth of the matter is that most people will in-fact go on to do exactly what they’ve always done. This isn’t an unrealistic picture, it’s not cynical or pessimistic either, it’s just a truthful part of our reality. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Because we ourselves can in-fact change. First we have to open our eyes to the fact that certain situations, circumstances are associated with self-change. By learning what those situations circumstances are. We can start to increase the likelihood that we ourselves can effectively bring about a desired change within ourselves. Because of the fact that both internal as well as external changes become involved when seriously trying to make changes to our beliefs and our behavior. Because our change process has to start with making adjustments to our belief system, values and behavior. Then change in our decisions and actions will follow. Soon we will go from an old way of thinking to a new way of thinking, from an old way of doing things to a new way of doing thing’s. In order to get there we’ve got to first be willing to take the necessary steps to learn and then practice the necessary skill’s that are associated with self-change. Turning to book’s, reading about behavior’s, responsible ‘thinking’ patterns is what helped me learn a lot about change. Recognizing the fact that I had my own choices to make. Take charge of this decision making process so that I’m more willing to accept and live with the decisions I make, their consequences. Monitoring, controlling and altering my-thoughts along the way. Tracing their effects upon myself, upon other’s as I go thru life. The very first and most important step that we must take in the process of change, improving our own thinking and behavior is our own willingness to accept that our life as it is, is over and done with. Our life as we vision it to be, starts today. Change doesn’t begin until we let go of our past way’s of thinking and doing thing’s. Visualize the kind of person that you want to be in life, keep this image of yourself in-mind. Allowing ourselves to take this visualization with us, keeping it in mind, accepting it, absorbing it into our conscious layer by layer, making it apart of our subconscious level. There won’t be any real changes without self-discipline or sacrifice. Founder> Levert Brookshire/Author Proposed layout: Change process (three stages) Proposed layout: The program for self-change “Deprogramming, Foundation, Reprogramming” The first stage in the change process is to identify the faulty beliefs and flawed thinking habits. Deprogram ourselves from those faulty beliefs and flawed thinking. The elements of deprogramming oneself from past backwards beliefs and thinking, are as follows: (Deprogramming Stage) Stage One Personal acknowledgments, acceptance, and responsibility for our past self-destructive, self-defeating, backwards criminal behaviors, alcohol/drug abusing and gang activities. Taking complete responsibility for our past decisions. Oppose to blaming our past failures, poor decisions, and negative outcomes on other’s, even on conditions and circumstances outside of ourselves. Admitting to our own faulty thinking and behaviors problem identification and awareness, must be willing to be truthful with ourselves and with other’s when asked to list our own personal problems. This acknowledgment will help us to address all needed areas. It will give us the opportunity to work on the faults that we know need to be changed. Or what areas we need help with. Looking at our own flaws isn’t easy to do. Forcefulness, threats, or manipulation will fail to get people to change. We have to want to see change, ourselves. We have to become dissatisfied with the old ways of living. “Deprogramming, Foundation, Reprogramming” (Foundation stage) Stage Two 2) While we are starting the change process we have to think about the development of our new way of trying to do thing’s, new way’s of thinking and new ways of behaving. This is the new foundation that we will be building our new beliefs and new values onto. Developing different, more responsible ways to solve problems. Becoming more solution-oriented. Learning how to pause, when confronting a difficult situation a problem or circumstances. Look at everything, evaluate all of the options before overreacting to whatever the difficulty may be. This helps to maintain ourselves while on the pathway to achieve the change we are looking to make in out lives. Considering alternative ways to approach problems which will arise throughout our lives. Utilizing healthier proven ways to change our thinking patterns. There is no other way for us to change other than having the realization that we have to experiment with different things, alternative choices- besides the old ones. Making attempts to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing. When we are going through the change process. Learning to change our ways will come down to one thing in the end. Staying aware of the fact, “all of our actions have consequences.” Walking the straight and narrow is not easy, takes commitment and discipline. This is the foundation for self-change. Deprogramming, Foundation, Reprogramming (Reprogramming Stage) Stage three The third stage in the change process is to identify the specific areas that we need to work on. Then reprogram those specific areas of faulty thinking and negative behaviors replacing those specific areas with more healthier thoughts and productive behaviors making our day start out thinking about what ways can I make better use of my time. What ways can I improve upon my attitude. (Reprogramming stage) Stage Three A new change in how we think about ourselves. How we think about life. Takes a new way of how we look at ourselves. A change of attitude. Owning the person we want to become. Having a higher self-esteem, having more confidence in ourselves, more pride, and more choices to choose from whenever faced with difficult problems in our lives. Moving into problem-solving mode instead of over-reacting mode. Depending on my new ways of doing what is right inorder to solve my problems, instead of whats quickest or easiest. My reprogramming stage also has changed the circle of people I associate with. Those people we choose to maintain close connections with also play a big part of our reprogramming stage. Old social circles will do the same old things. Establishing new social relations will support our new reprogrammed selves, our new attitude. Instead of just reacting to whatever comes along in our lives. We must start to create the life in which we want for ourselves. A new circle of friend’s around us, who support our new reprogrammed way of thinking. Those who share the same attitude about life that we have. It has been ‘tested’ and proven that our attitudes are formed through these processes. The peer groups that we keep around us, our socialization, those role models we choose to emulate, even our cultural influences. Those who have negative mental attitude always sit around complaining about the way things are, left to only hoping somehow things will change for the better. Usually it’s those people who lack any long term goals or have no plans for the future whatsoever. Attitudes are very powerful influences in our everyday lives. Truthfully it’s been shown that our attitudes are normally responsible for holding us back from reaching our potential. In order for us to reprogram our thinking, we have to reprogram our attitudes first. An attitude can be a strong feeling we develop within ourselves over the years, it’s a strong belief we get towards people we know, ideas we have or theories we come to have toward any and everything. This includes our everyday lives, everyday personalities, attitudes that become deeply-engrained, into the way we look at the world, will be important towards self change.