YES Group London - "February" Meeting (£15)
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Banged Up: Universal Life Lessons from America’s Toughest Jails
Shaun Attwood
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“Shaun’s story is the Manchester rave scene meets The Wolf of Wall Street and ends in The Shawshank Redemption” – Jon Ronson author of The Psychopath Test
Shaun Attwood ran multimillion-dollar businesses in the stock market and Ecstasy dealing until a SWAT team smashed his door down. Forced to go on an inner journey in Arizona’s deadliest jails, Shaun identified what it takes to get the most out of life.
At The Yes Group, Shaun is going to share his life-enhancing strategies with you. These include:
• how to put a circuit breaker on negative thoughts
• how to increase happiness by reducing the ego and helping others
• how to appreciate the small things, as taught to Shaun by a Mafia hit man serving 141 year
• show to overcome fear and build resilience
• how to employ the wisdom of the ancient philosopher
• show to rise from rock bottom to achieve any goal
• how to use relaxation techniques to maintain performance
Having rebuilt his life from scratch, Shaun is now a bestselling author and public speaker, who does over 100 talks a year, inspiring tens of thousands of people’s. At Yes Group, Shaun will be encouraging you to conscientiously transform your life.
Shaun is a speaker, author and activist based in London, who is banned from America for life. As an inmate in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail, he used a tiny pencil sharpened on a cell door to write the first prison blog, Jon’s Jail Journal (http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/).
His writing, smuggled out of the jail with the highest rate of death in America, turned the international media spotlight on the conditions: dead rats in the food, cockroaches crawling in his ears at night, murders by guards and gang members.
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I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona a penniless business graduate from a small industrial town in England. Within a decade, I became a stock-market millionaire.
But I also led a double life. An early fan of the UK rave scene, I threw raves and distributed Ecstasy in competition with the Mafia mass murderer Sammy the Bull Gravano, who put a hit out on me. On May 16th 2002, a SWAT team knocked my door down.
Facing a 200-year sentence, I entered a lengthy legal battle. After two years of being held unsentenced, I was convicted of drug crimes. I was sentenced to 9½ years, and served almost 6.
I had only read finance books prior to my arrest. While incarcerated, I submerged myself in literature – reading over 1000 books, including many classics. By studying original texts in psychology and philosophy, I sought to better understand myself and my addictive personality. I credit books for being the lifeblood of my rehabilitation.
Released in December 2007, I continue to campaign against Sheriff Joe Arpaio – the boss of a jail where guards were murdering mentally-ill inmates. I keep Jon’s Jail Journal going by posting stories mailed to me by my prison friends.
In July 2008, I won a Koestler award for a short story, which I read to an audience at the Royal Festival Hall.
Banned from America for life, I presently live near London, and talk to student audiences across the UK and Europe about my jail experience and the consequences I faced by getting involved in drugs and crime. I have appeared on TV worldwide, speaking about issues affecting prisoners’ rights.
I am the author of my life story, The English Shaun Trilogy (http://shaunattwood.com/series/the-english-shaun-trilogy/), which consists of Party Time, (http://shaunattwood.com/book/party-time/) Hard Time (http://shaunattwood.com/book/hard-time-a-brit-americas-toughest-jail/), Prison Time (http://shaunattwood.com/book/prison-time/) and a self-help book, Life Lessons (http://shaunattwood.com/book/life-lessons/).
https://youtu.be/UmUC98BBNMs
Visit http://yesgroup.org.uk/ to book tickets.