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The One You Feed

The Power of Choice: How to Break Free from Shame, Anger, and Grief with Shaka Senghor

The One You Feed

Eric Zimmer, The One You Feed

Education, Self-improvement, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Buddhism, Mental Health

4.6 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Shaka Senghor discusses the power of choice, and how to break free from shame, anger, and grief, which can be the hardest prisons to escape. Shaka spent 19 years in prison and seven of those in solitary confinement. But he’ll tell you that he was imprisoned long before handcuffs, and that his freedom came long before his release. His new book, How to Be Free. A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons, is about finding the doors we often don’t notice and walking through them.

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Key Takeaways:

  • Shaka’s journey of transformation and healing after 19 years in prison.
  • The concept of “hidden prisons,” including emotional and psychological struggles like shame, grief, and anger.
  • The role of literacy and mentorship in personal growth
  • The impact of grief, including the loss of his brother and his son’s health challenges
  • The relationship between anger and unresolved emotional pain, and how it can hinder healing.
  • The significance of accountability and self-forgiveness in overcoming past mistakes.
  • The societal challenges faced by formerly incarcerated individuals and the need for systemic change.
  • The complexity of personal agency and responsibility in the context of life choices and circumstances.
  • The importance of embracing life’s messiness and the ongoing journey of healing and growth.


If you enjoyed this conversation with Shaka Senghor, check out these other episodes:

Dr. Tererai Trent on Incredible Perseverance

Improvising in Life with Stephen Nachmanovitch

Life Lessons with Dr. Edith Eger

For full show notes, click here!

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

there is the duality of holding disappointment, but also recognizing purpose.

0:05.0

And what I always come back to is like whenever there's adversity, whenever there's an obstacle,

0:10.0

there's also opportunity.

0:15.0

Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the

0:24.4

thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet,

0:31.9

for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we

0:40.9

don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

0:46.5

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and

0:51.9

creative effort to make a life worth living.

0:54.9

This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

0:59.3

how they feed their good wolf.

1:03.9

Sometimes the hardest prisons to escape are the ones that we can't see.

1:09.1

Shame, grief, anger. These can keep us more trapped than any cell.

1:14.7

Shaka Sengor knows this firsthand. He spent 19 years in prison and seven of those in solitary

1:20.7

confinement. But he'll tell you that he was imprisoned long before handcuffs and that his freedom

1:26.5

came long before his release. His new book,

1:29.7

How to Be Free, a proven guide to escaping life's hidden prisons, is about finding the doors

1:35.2

we often don't notice and walking through them. Today we talk about that journey. I'm Eric Zimmer

1:42.0

and this is the one you feed. Hi, Shaka, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me, Eric. I'm super excited to be here, and I've been looking forward to this conversation. We're going to be discussing your book, which is called How to Be Free, a proven guide to escaping life's hidden prisons. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. And in the

2:02.3

parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say in life, there are

2:06.1

two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like

2:11.6

kindness and bravery and love. And the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

...

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