Name: What Serving 7 Years in Prison Taught Damon West About Communication
Uploaded: 2025-06-30T16:09:01.000Z
Duration: 45 min 11 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

On today's episode, I have one of the wildest comeback stories you'll probably ever hear.

And me, personally, one of the best examples of how the next conversation truly can change everything about your life.

I want you to hear this story because it's just so cool.

And he's also a Southeast Texas boy like me, is Damon West.

We were neighbors, but we never met in person, right?

So, Damon is from a town that's probably, what, 20 minutes away?

Actually, I was in your part of the world this past weekend.

My wife had me in a big lawn landscaping project in the biggest nursery in our area in the town where you are.

So, if you hear my accent come out a little bit more, that's because I'm talking to Damon.

This is going to expose both of us, right?

Everybody's going to go, that's what he really sounds like.

Damon, one of the reasons I want you all to hear from Damon, aside from him just being such a cool guy, is that he has one of the best stories I truly think you'll ever hear.

It's a path of how you communicate can truly change your life.

So, Damon, I want to start with the question right now, and then I want to talk about your story.

Because I'm curious how this has changed in your life.

Damon, as you exist right now, Damon West, how do you daily, how do you talk to yourself?

And I talk to this about people when I'm speaking.

And this is a technique I picked up when I was in prison.

Because I found out that the voice in my head sometimes was fear talking to me.

And it's very hard sometimes to distinguish what's saying.

But I know that if I talk to myself, the voice that I'm hearing on the outside is the voice I want to project out there.

And when I talk to myself, which is often, I'm telling myself things like,

One of the things I really try to do, Jefferson, when I talk to myself, is I remind myself of the times that I succeeded.

And I think this is very important in life.

We have to remind ourselves of the times when we've had success, the times that we won.

And that way we can tell ourselves, I've done hard things so I can do hard things again.

You ever seen the movie Shawshank Redemption?

I have. I have seen the movie. It's a great movie.

But the last scene of the movie is Andy Dufresne.

He's escaped prison. He's on the beach in Mexico working on his boat.

The town in Mexico that he's in is Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

And the reason why this Zihuatanejo place is important, because Andy visualized himself and he talked to himself while he was in prison about the town of Zihuatanejo. He was going to be there one day.

And so what I like to remind people is that the hardest prison to do time in is the prison of your mind.

Jefferson, I meet more people out here in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison because more people are imprisoned by their thoughts, their things, and their prejudices than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined.

So I want to make sure I tee this up the right way.

What I hear you saying is, you know what?

I don't know if I listen to myself, at least those negative thoughts.

I focus on the things where I know I've had success in the past.

So for our listeners right now, I want you in a nutshell to tell them this incredible story starting from this guy in Southeast Texas, the road that has led you here, my friend.

Yeah, I think the best place to start this story is May 18, 2009.

On May 18, 2009, Jefferson, I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas.

And the jury, these 12 men and women, this jury of my peers, they just set through a six-day criminal trial.

And I'm on trial for my life at this point.

And the crime that I'm standing trial for, Jefferson, is engaging organized criminal activity.

I was the lead person of this whole organized crime ring.

It was a bunch of other meth addicts breaking into people's homes to steal for drugs.

None of the crimes were aggravated, meaning no one was ever home, so no one got physically hurt.

But when I broke into people's homes, Jefferson, I didn't just steal their property.

And that's something I can't replace and I can't give back.

So the jury hears the story of Damon West, this guy that grew up in Southeast Texas, grew up in a little town called Port Arthur.

You know, in Texas, sports is everything.

I grew up under the Friday Night Lights, went on to be a Division I starting quarterback at the University of New York, Texas, got hurt, and then got into drugs at that point after I got hurt in college.

I worked for a guy running for president.

Then I worked on Wall Street in 2004 in Dallas.

And that was the time that I was introduced to meth for the first time in 2004.

I went from working on Wall Street to living on the streets of Dallas.

And whenever I was living on the streets, I became a drug addict.

And Dallas SWAT finally took me down in 2008.

And so the jury, after a six-day criminal trial, listening to all the evidence, and the evidence was overwhelming.

I was guilty of everything they said, Jefferson.

The jury listened, and that's one of the biggest things in communication.

And they came back after a 10-minute recess.

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What Serving 7 Years in Prison Taught Damon West About Communication

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