TED Talks Daily Book Club: How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons | Shaka Senghor
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What challenges did Shaka Senghor face during his childhood?
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Today, we're bringing you a new installment of our Book Club series, where we check out new books from TED speakers. Shaka Senghor is an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestselling books, Writing My Wrongs and Letters to the Sons of Society. He's also a resilience expert and recognized soul igniter in Oprah's inaugural Super Soul 100. Shaka's insight and wisdom is the result of his extraordinary journey from incarceration to transformation. Born and raised in Detroit, his life took a sharp turn at an early age due to economic hardship and abuse.
He spent 19 years in prison, including seven in solitary confinement, before finding his own path to freedom. Today, his mission is to show that everyone can achieve freedom and create a life full of possibility, purpose, and joy. Shaka and I sat down for this month's book club to talk about his new book, How to Be Free, a proven guide to escaping life's hidden prisons. Through sharing the profound lessons he learned in and out of prison, he flips the script on traditional definitions of freedom. We discussed the practices he developed to embody a mindset of joy, why he feels it's important to share his story, and why he believes that reinvention isn't just possible, but within everyone's reach.
Because for Shaka, most of our hidden prisons have doors. We just need to learn how to open them. Here's our conversation. Shaka, welcome to TED Talks Daily.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here today.
Well, you are no stranger to TED. You've given multiple TED and TEDx talks. But would you introduce yourself briefly for those who don't know your story?
Yeah, I mean, I grew up in the city of Detroit in a working class family. And, you know, on the outside looking in, it was just this incredible model for what it means to be a working class family in America. You know, I was an honor roll scholarship kid with dreams of being a doctor. And my life completely changed due to the circumstance that was happening in our household. Unfortunately, we were navigating very tough circumstances. And as a kid, I decided to run away when I was probably about 13, 14 years old. I found myself seduced into the drug trade. And within the first six months, I dealt with every horror that comes with that culture. My childhood friend was murdered. I was robbed at gunpoint.
I was beat nearly to death. And despite that, you know, as a kid, just trying to find his way and fit in, I found myself still immersed in that culture. And when I was about 17 years old, I was shot multiple times, standing on a quarter mile block. Yeah, and it's one of the things that as a kid, you're navigating this high level of trauma with no tools and no support. And so I went to the hospital. They extracted two of the bullets. They left one of the bullets in. And when I came back to my neighborhood... What I didn't realize back then, obviously I know now, is that I came back with PTSD, which is very common in the inner city where there's high levels of gun violence. And within my family alone, I mean, there's been at a minimum 10 of us who have been victims of gun violence.
So what happened was that I created a narrative that said if I found myself in conflict, I would shoot first. And tragically and unfortunately, about 14, 16 months later, I shot and caused a man's death and was sentenced to 17 to 40 years in prison, where I ended up serving a total of 19 years, with seven of those years being in solitary confinement. And it was in that dark environment that I began to really start to reimagine life.
We are here today to talk about your new book, How to Be Free, a proven guide to escaping life's hidden prisons.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What challenges did Shaka Senghor face during his childhood?
0:00–5:59
2
How did Shaka's experiences in prison shape his perspective on freedom?
5:59–9:53
3
What insights does Shaka share about the power of vulnerability?
9:53–10:05
4
How does journaling contribute to personal growth and healing?
10:05–45:32
5
How can gratitude help in overcoming grief?
45:32–45:52
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from TED Talks Daily
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