NOTHING AS POWERFUL AS A CHANGED MIND, Whatever the circumstances: 1

By Rodney Hypolite

Rodney Hypolite sentence started the day he arrived in the UK. '

He was born in London and raised in the Commonwealth of Dominica. From the tender age of 8 he had dreams and goals  to be successful, yet all around him the world was drinking, fighting and wheeling and dealing. To survive, he too had to fight and join gangs which led to trouble with individuals and  the police. physically abused by his mother, suspended from schools, placed into local authority care homes, fostered and raised by a white family but Rodney was still heading into a career of violence.

 

By the age of 13 -14 years old  he was a hardened villain, , running errands for the adult drug dealers in his neighborhood and. fighting on a regular basis, if it was not with different gangs it was football hooliganism. Eventually been arrested for attempted-murder, his sentence was 12 years and he had just turned 16 years old.

 

The brutal, degrading eternity of an amputated spirit..... Rodney realized There is no prognostics for this as he spent time

in the prisons of Brixton,  Aylesbury, Winston Green, and Wandsworth.

Thankfully Rodney was able to turn his life around inside the prison walls by becoming the "FIRST prisoner to represent Great Britain while serving a sentence...

 

..

"NOTHING AS POWERFUL AS A CHANGED MIND" is a searing indictment of a society that uses prison bars and brutality to destroy a man's humanity and at the same time an outstanding testament to one man's ability to survive, and to find a new 

life, a new creativity, and a new alternative.

 

Today Rodney is a successful social entrepreneur who now focuses on his one passion "Trading for a living,"  He spends 6 to 12 months in various countries, and is a mentor to several individuals around the world talking to them and coaching them in his chosen field. 

 

He is a strong believer based on his own experience that -

 "NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE".

 

And  

 

"THE INDIVIDUALS WHO SAY THEY CAN, AND THE INDIVIDUALS WHO SAY THEY CANT ARE BOTH USUALLY RIGHT." 

 

He is the embodiment of second chances, and this is his story.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rodney Hypolite
• Release date: Aug 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393270447

Book preview

Nothing as Powerful as a Changed Mind

Whatever the circumstances

Rodney Hypolite

Copyright © 2020 Rodney Hypolite

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Contents

Chapter 1: A Dreamer is Born

Chapter 2: Humble Beginnings

Chapter 3: Adjusting to Life in Britain

Chapter 4: The Gangs

Chapter 5: A New Home

Chapter 6: I Learn About Justice

Chapter 7: Broken Dreams

Chapter 8: No Man or Woman is Free Who is Not Master of His or Herself

Chapter 9: Consciousness is the Only Thing that Actually Exist and Everything Else May Just be an Illusion

Chapter 10 He Who Says He Can and He Who Says He Cant are both Usually Right

Chapter 11: Adversity Introduces an Individual to Themselves

Chapter 12: The Most Intense Fight a Human Will Ever Have is Between the Person they are and the Person they are Capable of Becoming

Chapter 13: Slowly Giving Up

Chapter 14: There is Nothing as Powerful as a Changed Mind

Chapter 15: No Excuses - Aut Viam Inveniam Aut Faciam

Chapter 16: A Man or Woman Who Fears Suffering Already Suffers from What He or She Fears

Chapter 17: Noli Timere

Chapter 18: I Dont Believe it

Declaration

Chapter 1

A Dreamer is Born

I have seen it all. I’ve been there and done the things that others only dream of doing. The journey of my life has taken me from the shores of the Caribbean Islands, where I was raised as a child, to the fields of dreams in England, where I fought my way up from poverty and adversity to the highest echelons of society.

To say that I have experienced the best and the worst that life has to offer would be to put it mildly. After I landed in England I was placed in foster care with a white family and I got my first glimpses of the possibilities which life in a Western civilization has to offer. Sadly, I was also introduced to the seductions and temptations which form part of any modern society in a first world country. I fell prey to some of these temptations and became a member of a gang; eventually landing up in prison. When I found myself locked up behind bars it seemed that all of my dreams had died a premature death. But I wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

I decided to fight back; to change my thoughts, my ways and my habits. Through a combination of hard work and dogged determination I became the first person ever to represent Great Britain while serving a prison sentence! After my release from prison I became a successful entrepreneur and was worth more than One Million Pounds at the age of twenty-three. My journey, however, did not end there. After my meteoric rise to financial success and freedom I experienced many ups and downs. When I look back now I realize that my life has been a prolonged battle. I fought my way back to the front line after I was struck down by the enemy’s arrows and left for dead, only to rejoin the fight!

But despite all of the challenges and obstacles I’ve had to face in my time, I’m still here and I’m still fighting.

I’ve been to hell and back and I have the scars to prove it. Now allow me to take you by the hand and lead you down memory lane, as I tell you about all of the trials and tribulations I have faced in my life. I guarantee you it’s a story you will never forget!

Chapter 2

Humble Beginnings

I grew up on the island of Dominica and my earliest memories are of myself, being five or six years old at the time, walking around and discovering the world in this tropical fantasy world which is still known today as ‘The Nature Island of the Caribbean’. I remember the great weather, the lush green trees with fresh oranges and apples and mangoes. I used to stand at the foot of these trees and throw stones upwards to dislodge some of the delicious fruit; catching it when it fell down from the tree.

Dominica is an independent island nation with many natural springs and spectacular waterfalls. It is a breathtakingly beautiful place and growing up there was like being born in paradise. But Dominica, apart from being breathtakingly beautiful and exotic, also has its own dangers. The island is located in a hurricane region and is very susceptible to strong winds and dangerous storms. In 1979, for example, Hurricane David hit Dominica and caused a veritable disaster with its strong winds and torrential downpour. These storms, which were an inherent part of the place where I grew up, also seemed to become a part of my own personal makeup and I grew up with a strong undercurrent of stormy and angry behavior underneath my calm exterior.

I guess when you grow up you take certain things for granted and I don’t think I ever really understood just how privileged I was to grow up in a place like Dominica. Dominica is a very tropical place which is covered in large parts by tropical rain forests. There are lots of exotic plants and animal life which people thought had been extinct, yet these plants and animals are still found on the island of Dominica. Though large parts of the island does not have Sandy beaches and only rocky shores, there are some normal Sandy beaches to be found on the north eastern part of the island. Most of the ‘beaches’ I saw in my time on the island, however, used to be off the rocky kind. Dominica has a lot of water, as you would expect from a tropical island, and there are many rivers running across the island; somewhere in the region of three hundred and sixty-five rivers, I believe.

Dominica, has always been seen as a great prize to the Imperial powers, primarily by reason of its incredible nature and wildlife and also because of its strategic placing in the region. Despite its allure to great world powers, Dominica always had natural protection in the form of great mountains and for this reason it was originally not easily accessible to ships and boats. Of course, all of this changed with the advent of air travel and Dominica became one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. Tourism, however, left its high impact footprints on the island and nowadays people make an effort to curb the volume and the effect of tourism on the natural resources of the island.

Even though I now live in Great Britain, I will always consider Dominica my true home and I hope that it can be preserved for many generations to come as the tropical paradise I grew up in.

I still remember my childhood in Dominica very vividly. I attended a Catholic school with strict discipline.

The teachers were dressed in nuns’ out fits and if you misbehaved you got the cane on your hand; 10 lashes.

I tried to steer clear of these punishments, but from time to time I would cross the line of acceptable behaviour and then I had to take my punishment for offences such as talking in class or turning up late for lessons. I remember my time in school as a period during which I learned lots of things, not only about the subjects which formed part of my curriculum, but also about relationships with others and the world at large. I discovered that Dominica was only a small part of the world and that there was more to see than the lush vegetation and Golden beaches of the island paradise where I grew up. I formed an interest in all of the incredible things which the rest of the world seemed to offer and decided early on that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in Dominica.

Dominica is also a place which is no stranger to territorial struggles and conflicts. My home island as being engaged in a dispute with Venezuela over certain territorial waters around a place called Bird Rock, a tiny island which is situated to the west of Dominica. This tendency for conflict must also have rubbed off on me, as I grew up without a fear of confronting others whenever I needed to do so to protect my own interests. I discovered, even as a young boy, that I would have to fight to get my fair share and to protect my own. I never considered this to be strange and, to be perfectly fair, this seems to be the general way of the world regardless of where you go and where you live.

As I have already mentioned, I formed an interest in seeing the rest of the world and had a ravenous hunger for discovery and the pursuit of absolute freedom. I wanted to see everything the world had to offer and I wanted to live out my dreams without the constraints of other people’s ideas and limitations. The eventual trip I took in pursuit of my dreams and ideals was to the shores of England. The fact that Dominica used to be a British colony is rather ironic, as I ended up deciding to relocate to Great Britain; the very country who had previously entangled the place of my birth with its imperial tentacles. I effectively went in search of my freedom in a place which had originally deprived my home country of its own freedom. This decision, so I would later discover, would have far-reaching consequences and personal ramifications for me.

We lived in the capital of Dominica, Roseau?. Even though this is probably not the biggest city in the world, to me as a kid it seemed massive. I had nothing else to compare my hometown to and as a consequence I thought I was living in a great big city. My mother knew everyone and everyone knew us. We lived in a large house, 6 to 7 bedrooms, and we had a shop attached to the house. I used to love watching people come to the shop to buy things and decided that one day I would become a rich man so that I could buy anything my heart desired. Having the opportunity to learn the basics of finances, like buying and selling, was something which made a great impression on me as I spent some time in the shop from day-to-day. I soon realized that money was a very important commodity and that it was important to have a lot of money if you wanted to get the things your heart desired, such as toys, sweets and other luxuries.

Early on in my life I was also exposed to some ideas concerning the kinds of jobs a person could do. We lived on the ground floor and we had cleaners who would arrive every day to clean our house. I never looked down on the people who did the cleaning work but I knew that I was going to do something better with my life one day. You have to understand, however, that I didn’t really have a firm idea of what I want to do with my life yet. Living on the nature island was a simple way of existence and the people who lived there seemed content with what they had. I also loved my simple existence on the island but had a strange yearning inside me for something greater, even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it or express this desire in words yet.

For the most part I had a very happy upbringing and I had all the things that a young boy could want as far as toys and pets went. I had a dog called Fidel and he was a very lively animal. I really enjoyed playing with my dog and Fidel was a source of great joy to me. Lots of kids my age had gold fish as pets at the time, but I decided to be slightly different. Even at a young age I already decided that I wanted to separate myself from the pack and I decided that I would rather fill my large fish bowl, which was at least 3 feet long, with piranhas. I had a lot of fun with the piranhas and I loved the fact that they were at the top of the feeding chain. When I looked at my friends and their goldfish I always felt like their pets were silly compared to my piranhas.

I loved animals and always looked after my pets very well. I fed my dog daily and I also made sure that my piranhas were well looked after and I made sure that their ravenous appetites were always satisfied. The thing about piranhas is that they love to eat and they love to eat a lot, so I had to find inventive ways of keeping them fed, so I used to take great big loafs of bread from the shop to feed them. I always got told of by my mother for doing this and from time to time I got a clip round the ear for taking the loafs of bread from the shop, but this was never really a serious reprimand. My mother realized that I was just doing my duty and taking care of my piranhas so she never really got angry when I fed them.

From a young age I had no trouble relating to girls. Our neighbor was a high ranking official from the army and I would go and play with his daughter from time to time. She was about my age, but slightly overweight. We became quite good friends and her family was cool and their house was just as pleasing. Some of the other boys my age were shy and they didn’t like hanging out with girls, but I never had this problem. To me a girl was just another person and I got along very well with our neighbour’s daughter. I guess you could say that my relationships with family and friends were pretty normal and in some ways even above average, as I found it easy to relate to people and to form friendly relationships with them.

I used to love going to visit my grandma and it was a real treat for me to play in her massive backyard which was at least a mile long.

Her place was situated right on the sea, although there was not a beach nearby; only rocks.

My grandma had a little chicken farm where she used to keep fifty to seventy chickens at any given time.

My grandma was really cool and she gave me a lot of responsibilities around the chicken farm. For a kid who had piranhas as pets

I was obviously not squeamish and my grandma used to entrust me with the duty of slaughtering chickens for dinner. She would say,

Rodney go get us a chicken for dinner, and I knew exactly what to do. The first thing I needed to do was to catch a chicken, which was a lot of fun as I enjoyed watching all of the chickens scatter as I tried to chase down a nice big one for dinner. The chickens used to make a lot of noise and it was quite a commotion when it came time for dinner.

I think that the chickens, deep down, might have realized that one of them was going to end up on a dinner plate! My grandma gave me a little axe and she’d taught me how to slaughter the chicken with it. The first time she showed me how to cut off the chicken’s head it seemed quite nasty and bloody to me, but I quickly got used to the idea and after a while I became very adept at using the ax to cut off the chickens’ heads. It was very strange to watch the chicken running around without a head after I slaughtered it, but I soon accepted this as part of the process and after a while I didn’t even notice it anymore.

My grandma was a very good cook and the chicken always tasted delicious the way she prepared it for dinner. I used to love sitting at the table and talking to my grandma about everything under the sun as we had dinner and I know that she really enjoyed my visits as much as I enjoyed it. The fact that my grandma had such a massive backyard makes quite an impression on me and I realized that she had a great life. My grandma seemed very wise to me and the fact that she had her own chicken farm was clearly a great idea, as she didn’t have to answer to anyone else or work for a boss. I think I put the idea in the back of my mind, even way back then, that I would also one day be my own boss and do my own thing just like my grandmother.

My grandmother had some very strange habits and I can still recall how we used to sit outside on the veranda and my grandma would request that I help her remove her gray hairs. This, in itself, was not really all that strange as lots of older people like to remove the gray hairs on their heads. The only thing is, my grandma wanted me to remove the gray hairs on her chin with a tweezers! I found this quite funny but I was always willing to do this for my grandma as I love her very much. Every time I arrived for a visit I would notice that the gray hairs on my grandma’s chin were back and I would know right away that I would soon be plucking them out with the tweezers again.

Even though my grandma was really old I never thought of her as an old person and she was one of my best friends. I kind of expected that she would live forever and death was not something which I thought a lot about at the time. To me death was just something which happened to the chickens we had for dinner, not to people.

I think that all of us have a ‘happy place’ as a kid and if that is true then my grandmother’s place was definitely my happy place. It wasn’t as if I didn’t enjoy being at my own house and hanging around the shop; I think it was just the fact that my grandma’s place was like a little escape from ordinary life.

This was where I learned to go out and do stuff like getting chickens for dinner; explore the area around the beach and just generally face the world on my own. I think it is important to have a happy place where you can just be yourself and get away from the ordinary routines in your life. People tend to get caught up in boring patterns and sometimes I feel like our lives would be a lot better if we would break away every now and then.

I also enjoyed staying with my grandma for another reason - every Sunday at 3 a.m. at my grandma’s place I used to be asleep and around that time I would be woken by the sound of a horn which woke up everyone in the village.

The sound of the horn announced that the fishermen had returned from the sea with their fishing boats.

People would open their back doors and run down to the sea to help the fishermen pull their nets ashore from the boats. I can still recall how the boats used to be filled to the brim with fish and there was always a carnival atmosphere in the air as people celebrated the catch. From this experience I was taught another important lesson, namely the fact that success always led to celebration.

On days when the fishermen did not catch any fish there was no celebration and no happiness in the air. I decided that I would do everything within my power to be successful at whatever I decided to do with my life and this is one of the things which served me very well later on in my life when I started taking part in competitive sports.

As a young boy I used to get up to mischief from time to time, but never really got into serious trouble. Dominica was, for the most part, a peaceful place and living on the island was such a simple way of life that there wasn’t really that much crime or criminal activity around us. I got a couple slaps round the head from time to time when I did something naughty, but nothing serious.

My parents loved me and cherished me and I really cannot complain and say that I didn’t get all the love I needed as a young boy. If I ever really got disciplined harshly in any way whatsoever, it was only at the Catholic school where I went as a young boy.

The nuns sometimes caned me and this used to hurt quite a lot.

Even though I never rebelled against authority at the school, I didn’t enjoy being punished that way and I think that I resented the nuns a little bit in the back of my mind. All in all I loved Dominica, and I loved my life there, despite the one or two things which I did not enjoy; such as the odd caning at the Catholic school. Looking back it seems to me that their only real corporal punishment I ever got as a young kid was at the Catholic school and I’m not entirely sure that it really benefited me in any way whatsoever.

Whenever my parents made it clear to me that there were certain things they wanted me to do and certain things they wanted me to refrain from doing, I was far more likely to listen to them than to the nuns who needed to use violent means to enforce their discipline.

I think I made up my mind way back then that I would one day try to enforce discipline over my own children without having to resort to violence and violent means such as corporal punishment.

For the most