The Prison State

🎙️ THE PRISON STATE

Have you ever noticed that when you're tired, stressed, or overwhelmed, your mind tries to pull you back into old patterns?

Worry.
Anxiety.
Doubt.
Worst-case scenarios.

In this episode, Tombo shares a personal experience of feeling drawn back into what he calls the "prison state"—that familiar place of fear, stress, and survival thinking.

But here's the lesson:

Just because something is familiar doesn't mean it's where you belong.

The best reality now isn't built through fear.
It's built through gratitude.
Through presence.
Through peace.
Through choosing what is good, right, and lovely—even when life isn't perfect.

Sometimes the greatest victory isn't changing your circumstances.

It's refusing to go back to the prison you already escaped.

🎧 As always...

I got you.

https://linktr.ee/tombobaldwin

Transcript

0:38

Hey, hey, hey, all you Yuppers, welcome to the Yup, I Got You podcast with Tom Baldwin. Oh man, there's good stuff coming, there's good stuff every podcast, and I hope you've enjoyed the last two. If you missed them, the dandelion moment and shift state, gosh, some good material out there from the kingdom of heaven realm, the quantum realm, and those of you that think those two differ, well, that's okay, we're all right with that. Hey, I asked, you guys are gonna laugh, I had an AI review my podcast, and it says, man, you take like eight to 12 minutes to get to the point with all your blah, blah, blah, so today we're gonna try to eliminate some of that blah, blah, blah, and you're like, Tom, you're already, I know, I need some of that blah, blah, blah, it's kind of like my warmup, it's kind of like in the wintertime here in Montana, you go out, you start your car, you turn the heater on high, so defrost, so you don't have to scrape the windows, it's kind of like me doing a podcast, I need a little bit of that, but I'm not gonna go into all the story about everything that's going on other than, man, I've had some great learning experiences last night and this morning, and it is part of what this podcast is gonna be about today, part and in whole probably, so get ready, here it comes, but first, a shout out to all you who listen, I so appreciate you, you're awesome, a shout out to my family, I'm always humbled that they listen, and to my friends who listen, thanks so much, I really do appreciate you guys, and those of you who I haven't met, if you're listening, I'm just gonna say a few things that you maybe haven't heard, I'm so proud of you, because listening to this podcast isn't the easiest thing, because if you're listening, you're intrigued by some of the things I'm saying, but that causes you to have to look inside and do some of the hard work, and so if somebody hasn't said it, I'm proud of you, and you're amazing, and keep up the good work, and I generally mean that, so a little back story, last night I came home, and yeah, I was tired, it had been a week, I had utilized my body to the max, and my body was needing some recuperation, and my little granddaughter was over, and so enjoyed some time watching her, and such a cutie, I love all my grandchildren so much, and last night we just had a special privilege of having one of them over to babysit for a few hours, and really, when I say babysit, that's my wife and my daughter, and I just kind of look, and ooh, and ah, and be like, what an amazing life I'm living, and look at that little next generation, and thinking, gosh, this is a great thing Adrian and I started, this is amazing, and if you are someone who has a family, you're doing an amazing thing, and thanks for contributing to the good of society, anyway, after ooh, and ah, and over my granddaughter for a while, I went upstairs into my bedroom, and sat in my chair, my wife, who has made a nice space for us to sit and relax, two chairs, a little end table with a lamp, where you can put a beverage, and sip on it, and relax, and I sat there, and I whipped out my phone, and I did what so many of us do, started doom scrolling, and doom within minutes is what I felt, and I don't know why, and like the rest of you, that is a struggle for me, I am a TikTok user, I love TikTok, and Instagram somewhat, but I love TikTok, because I feel like the algorithm really dials into what I'm interested in, stuff like the quantum realm, listening to other people talking about it, and I like humor, so there's a lot of humor in there, and you know, like TikTok does, they throw in these random things to see if you're interested, or to prep you for buying something, you know, something really sweet, something really shocking, and they kind of get your emotions up and down to get you into that pre-programmed purchasing thing, and so you go to TikTok shop, and you buy things, which I have bought things on TikTok, and whether or not, I'm sure it's true that the programming worked on me, but I try really hard to only buy things that are interest to me, and profitable, but TikTok and the marketing things have a way of doing that, but after doom scrolling for a short period, I just felt doom, and I was like, all of a sudden, I had this immense attraction to, I don't know what to describe it in any better way than my prior prison state, and you're like, prison state, Tom? Some interesting wording there about prison state. Yeah, let me explain. All of a sudden, I felt like worry creep in, and it's like, think about these things. Be anxious about these things. Have your mind dwell on these things, and think about negative outcomes, and think about all the bad things that could happen, and think about the world, and how awful it is, and my soul was just like, ah, it was like quicksand. I felt like I was going in the quicksand, and let me just go back and pull this in to the prison state like a prisoner, and maybe a better word for that is the old man, the old man. You're like, Tom, what do you mean? All of a sudden, I just felt this anxiousness, this doom, and all this come over me, but it was comfortable. It was so comfortable, and it was like, go into an old skin, and so this is, in quick summary, what I came to, and I'm using some time here to explain it, but this happened really within a minute for me. All this stuff came about in a minute, the doom, the prisoner state, the old man, and I realized I've been working so hard. I've been reprogramming my mind to open up to the quantum realm, to the kingdom of heaven realm for these wonderful possibilities, focusing my mind, retraining my mind with words and affirmations and thoughts, and doing the work that it really takes to manifest a different reality, because remember, reality is fluid, and all of a sudden, I came overwhelmed with the sensation, Tom, just relax, just give up, come back to prison, and I realized all of a sudden, and I shut my phone in shock, and I realized my old self is calling to me, and it's tired, and I was, I'm not going to say fatigued, because I don't like that. I had used my body to the max this week, and so my resources were low, and I need to replenish them, and that's part of life, and I've been gaining more and more energy all the time as I'm doing these affirmations, and my life and my reality really has been changing, but in this moment, the prisoner wanted to go back into the prison, because it was comfortable. It was a place that I was familiar with worry, stress, and anxiety, and then turning to food and alcohol for comfort. That was a place that I knew that was a place that I have lived, and I lived a lot of my life. It is a prison that has been sentenced to maybe 55 years, a life sentence or a long sentence, and I got comfortable living there, and all of a sudden, my body in the state where it had been used, and my mind also, because I was solving problems this week, wanted back to that place. It's like, this is comfortable, and sorry, podcast faux pas there, coughing into the microphone, Tom, so I can edit it out, because this is real. This is not highly polished. This is Tom. This is flow state. This is kingdom of heaven access. This is quantum realm access coming to you as I'm learning, and I'm passing along to you, because this is real. I don't make this stuff up. This is my real experience, and if I'm totally honest, my reality is changing. Am I, bam, independently wealthy now, but I'm doing better than I ever have? Is my health, bam, instantly better, but I'm doing better than I ever have? I have more energy. I can exert more. My body recovers faster, and so my reality is changing, but all of a sudden, in a state of maybe a little weakness, I think that was accurate, because I had really maximized my mind, my soul, my spirit, and my body this week, and it needed some recoup time, and I opened up my phone, and I was doom scrolling, and the doom just came in and filled me, and all of a sudden, it's like, let's just go back. It's so much easier. Doesn't this feel comfortable? This is a safe place. Now, it's not the best place, but my body knows, and my spirit and my mind know how to survive in that state. They know the things that bring in comfort, which are not necessarily good for me. I would argue that they're quite the opposite for me, but I was familiar, and years ago, when I worked in the restaurant business, the restaurant business would hire a lot of people that had got out of prison, and they were like kind of in their transition from prison to getting back to real life, so the restaurant would hire them, because the state would pay half of their wages, and so it was a good deal for the restaurant to deal with some of the things that come up, because they're transitioning back into real life, and they really haven't existed in real life, so there's some struggles, and so to compensate, they would pay half their wage, and in the restaurant business, you know, you don't have to be a rock in science to wash dishes. You rinse them. You put them through the dishwasher. If they don't come clean, you put them back through, and if they don't come clean again, you soak them, or you try to, as some of the guys did, just who gives a beep, you know, shit, and put them back, and in this place, I got to know a lot of these guys, because I love people, and I'm interested in people, and I'm a friendly guy, and so I would talk to them, and I would realize how hard for them their re-entry was into this place, and the longer they had been in prison, the harder it was to re-enter, and there were a couple guys that had went to prison. One of them had committed, like, vehicular manslaughter when he was a teenager, and then got tried as an adult, and had been in prison for 30 years, so he didn't know how to interact with women, and back in the 80s, we had VCRs. He didn't know how to run a VCR. He didn't know some of the very basic things of life, and how much stress that it causes, fella, and I realized this was a lot with a lot of these other guys. They didn't know how to deal with relationships. They had learned their relationships skills in prison. They learned how to interact with other people like they did in prison. There was a hierarchy in prison, and when they got into the real world, and especially in the restaurant business, everybody thinks they're the manager. Even the manager thinks he's the owner, and so there's just this real confusion, and these guys would just be struggling, and not know how to cope with them, and added a whole bunch of stress, and most of these guys ended back up in prison, and one of them actually said to me that he was going to go out. He was going to get drunk, and they get urine analysis for alcohol just randomly, and scheduled, and he knew he was going to have a urine analysis the next day, and so he purposely got drunk, so he would break his parole, and end up back in prison, because it was easier. He knew what to expect in prison. He got fed. He knew what the schedule was. Isn't that crazy? That is exactly how I felt in the moment, and this podcast is all about encouraging you as you're in this process of manifesting, creating, living the best reality now, living the best reality now, and that pull that comes from your old self. If you're like me, you've lived in that old self, in that dysfunction, in that assuming the worst, and something comes up, and you're just like, oh, this is how this is going to come about, even though it has not come about. The words and the thoughts are there that say, this is how it's going to come about, and we're shocked when it comes about like that, until we realize that reality is fluid, and chances are we brought about that reality, and just a caveat, I'm always looking for the best outcome, with a caveat that I have the bandwidth to deal with things that may come up, because there are things that come up that are designed in our best reality now to help us grow, and if we don't have that perspective, and if we're going back to our prisoner state, not the free men we are to create the best reality now, to live that best reality now, by using those tools like gratitude, that we can take a crappy situation, which I'm going to relate to you today, and it's not crappy, because I've got gratitude around it, and I've got growth around it, if we use those tools, we leverage it, and we grow, but those circumstances can come up, and especially if we're in a state where we've utilized our resources to the max, come back to me, come back to me, it's comfortable here, you know how to exist here, this is how we do it, this is how we've always done it, I have lived in that state of anxiousness, stress, worry, strife, manipulation, control, all the dysfunctions that I learned, and they helped me survive, I'm not going to neglect them, and I've been expressed a bunch of gratitude to them, but I have retired them, well they want to come out of retirement, and they built this place for me, that they're like, hey, we can, we'll just welcome you back, come on, come back in, clink, turn the key, there you go, you know how to exist here, I certainly do, I have the skill set, I know how to exist in that place, am I happy in that place, not necessarily, am I content in that place, hmm, that could be argued, right, it really could be argued, and so today, as you're on this journey, you're probably like me, last night, you maybe have had moments like this, where all of a sudden, you're just like, oh my gosh, it's so much work, and you're giving yourself input that you know isn't the greatest, and hindsight being, and the lesson that I learned last night, when I'm in that state, I just need to sit in my chair, put my phone aside, unless I'm playing my affirmations that I made for myself back to me, but sometimes, I just need to sit in that chair, close my eyes, give my body, mind, spirit, and soul what it needs, peace, and I think about the things that are good, and right, and lovely, my granddaughter is downstairs, I can hear her cooing, and so what did I do, I shut my phone, and I did exactly that, I closed my eyes, and I listened to her playing down there, and you guys know, and maybe you don't, I have this old chihuahua, Japanese chin mix birdie, I love that little dog, that little bug-eyed, big ear dog, she is my sweetheart, 17, when we argue in the family, how actually old she is, she's old, but she's doing so good, she's amazing, and I hear her clitter clatter coming up, because she always, when I'm home, she looks for me, and she doesn't necessarily have to be in my lap, or anything, and she's getting older, that's something that doesn't happen as much, but she wants to be in the room I'm in, so she'll come, and settle down by me, and I just look at her, and I'm like, last night, that happened, and my heart started to well up with gratitude, I'm looking at her, and I'm just like enjoying this time with her, I'm listening to my granddaughter, and my wife, and my daughter Elizabeth, downstairs, playing with her, and my heart just fills with joy, and peace, and I can feel my insides recharging, I can feel the call of the prisoner back to prison, this lessening, it's like, it isn't as strong, it's like, no, we don't want to go there, we want to stay here, this is a beautiful place, and so in this process, I just want to encourage you, it is a beautiful place, this best reality now is a beautiful place, and even though that place where you've been is comfortable, and familiar, because when we're in a new place, sometimes it gets awkward, and it just doesn't feel, it's like your skin is like, this is new, and it's just not comfortable, and there's something very appealing to comfort, and a different way, and when you're used to filling yourself with social media, or even music, music can be that, when there's never a quiet place, and you can't focus in your thoughts on the good, the right, the pure, the lovely, that is sapped from you, the best reality now, there is a reality now, and it's calling you away from it, back to the familiar, because it's like, see, you know this place, you don't know this place, and in thinking about this podcast, and preparing about this podcast, I also, instead of prisoner, I was going to use old man, but I like prisoner, because in a sense, we were a prisoner, we learned the way of surviving, but as we've learned in this best reality now, and existing in this fluid reality state, where we're bringing about the best outcomes in our lives, and we're leveraging the things that help us grow, to help us grow, instead of help us manifest a negative reality, because if you're living in that old place, you're getting the, and I'm not going to say the worst reality now, but the less than best reality now, and you want the best reality now, and so even though old man, and I like that, I know there are a lot of you ladies that listen out there, and hey ladies, I so appreciate you, and I'm just going to take a quick moment, I've realized, even as I go through my social media, in this culture we live in, how you wonderful, virtuous ladies are just being warned against, and I want to say, just keep up the best reality now, you have tremendous value in who you are, you're not a symbol, and you're not something to be used, you're an incredible asset to society, and I thank you for doing what you do, and the love, and the compassion, and the giftings that you bestow on all the rest of society, that bring beauty, love, peace, worth, art, value, so much stuff, don't succumb to this cultural thing that the world wants you to become, you are amazing as you are now, and so let's continue the story, Tom's sitting in his chair, and he's getting in his place, and it's a wonderful place, I went from just this doom, and just this thinking, and this real pull back to the prison state, it's like come back, come back, and I knew there was a home for me there, and that I could go, and as I shut that phone, I realized there's a home for me here, in the best reality now, this is an amazing home, and so as I entered that place, and I did it through my thoughts, I didn't even open my mouth, and my thoughts, and I listened to the things around me, in the perspective of the best reality now, and it really did become that, and I fell asleep in my chair, and I woke up, I don't know how much later, it couldn't be too much later, and I went to lay in the bed, and I have to say probably for last week, my sleep has been, it's been okay, but it hasn't been great, and as I laid in the bed, and mind you, I'm in my work clothes, so I didn't get in the sheets, because my wife had made the bed, and it was beautiful, I just laid on top, and I zonked, I had the most amazing, peaceful, restorative sleep for about three hours, I even remember at some point, I think my wife came in to say one of my other kids had shown up, I think the parents of my granddaughter, my son, and his lovely wife had showed up, and she just wanted to let me know, and I'm assuming that's what it is, but I was so out, I don't even know that I responded to her, I think I heard her in my subconscious, and was like okay, and then I remember a time later, something I think my wife said, and you better take a shower before you get in those sheets, when she's right, because I really had no business being on that bed, honestly, and she was right, and I continued to sleep, I woke up at 10 o'clock, I think I went down like at 6 37, and I got up, well let me backtrack, well no, this is good, got up, and I took a shower, shower was great, I was still pretty sleepy, but shower cleaned up, went downstairs, got, I take a little nighttime tonic, those of you who haven't discovered kava, if you're like me, and you like drinking alcohol, because it helps relax and chill you, I'm just going to put you on the kava, and I think I'm going to put a link on my link tree, if you guys go to Instagram or TikTok, there should be a link tree, and I think I'm going to put a link to this kava, it's an amazing tonic, when you're craving alcohol and stuff, kava is a natural thing, just helps relax you, take the chill off, like alcohol does, amazing, so I went down, and I got that, and I added some electrolytes in it, which I maybe even put a link to electrolytes, although there's 10 billion electrolytes out there, and you all have your favorite, and you all have your reason why yours is the best, okay, that's great, I just, I found this brand that I happen to like, and it works really good, and if you have, just keep it, you know, we don't need to go who has the best, and I'm not going to go out there and try all the electrolytes, blah, blah, this is probably what the AI is like, blah, blah, blah, well, this is real life right here, and I got my nighttime supplements, and my wife's like, ah, hey, and I'm like, hey, and she was talking to one of my other sons, and I just headed back to the bedroom, took my nighttime supplements, and went back to bed, and as I was going to sleep, and you guys know, in this best reality now, in this kingdom of heaven journey I've been on, that there's been a lot of challenges to my faith, and the one thing that I know for sure, for sure, well, I know two things, and I'm going to give you the positive first, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, and you know him as Jesus, I know him as Yeshua HaMashiach, and one of the things I know for sure is that he was real, he lived, and he died, and the evidence around things like the shroud of Turin, and some of the other things that have been found in historical account is undeniable, and as I was going to sleep, my conversation started with him, and this is a part of my kingdom of heaven quantum realm journey, and that me and Jesus, but the second thing I know for sure is that around Christianity and religion, man has done his best to create a narrative that is different than the one Jesus set forth, and so there are a lot of things in my faith that are up for grabs. I'm not going to say up for grabs, but seeking the truth, and they're no longer solid, they're fluid, and they're fluid in the sense that if they need to be evacuated like your bladder, they will be, and if they're essential, they'll go to my body and add nutrients, and that's how I think of them. It's not that I'm abandoning something, and those of you that know, I would have called myself a Christian, now I call myself a follower of Yeshua HaMashiach, but it's been a long time, and same as the best reality now, it's a very familiar place, and going through and assessing things is very uncomfortable because these are things that have been very solid and stable, and our brain, and our bodies, and our mind, and the spirit like stable, but there's something in us, and maybe I won't put spirit in with all those others, but there's something in our spirit that craves the truth, and the genuine, and that's what my spirit craves. So these other things that I see, a lot of them have been added by men to make this narrative because the general culture, and maybe I'm not going to get into conspiracies, but there seems to be people in charge of the media and stuff that want a specific narrative for us to go by, and we see it in TV, and we see it in other types of media programming, social media that seem to be directing us to a very specific way, which isn't necessarily the best reality now. It's all, oh my gosh, war, oh my gosh, inflation, oh my gosh, disease, oh my gosh, pandemic, oh my gosh, how are you going to survive instead of the best reality now, lovely, good, gratitude, hope, and the best of all, peace. The best reality now is peace. So there seems to be a lot of stuff out there that are going to the negative, and so those are the two things I know, and so as I was falling asleep, my first is me and Jesus, Yeshua, were having a conversation. As I'm falling asleep, I was just showing gratitude for the rest that I had received earlier. As I'm falling asleep now, I really heard Yeshua say, I'm going to show you some great things, and it's a podcast that I'm probably going to do after this one, but went back and showed me things in my childhood about who I was. We all have this narrative of who we are, and it's usually based on a lot of negative things, and there were memories that popped up of who I was and the genuineness and the places in my childhood, the pivotal moments that shifted, and Jesus was like, this is authentic you. These things came in and, for lack of a better word, corrupted that, and this whole process as I was falling asleep, I just had this sense that restoration was happening in me. There was healing, and there was wholeness that was coming about, and my heart was just filled with gratitude, and I woke up, and I'm like, this is amazing. And so, in your journey, this is my last encouragement to you in this podcast. Keep going. Leverage the gratitude, and I guess I'll just, before I end, I'm going to show you an example, because I knew I was going to do this podcast today, and I started out the morning working on our excursion. Our excursion has, and those of you that are in technical don't care about this, but it's a six liter diesel, had a front oil crank seal, which, when it gave, spewed a bunch of oil on the belt, and the belt came loose, and my wife was going down the freeway, and very scary, because when a diesel loses power steering, it also loses power brakes in the boost, and when you're going down the interstate, like 75 miles an hour, and all of a sudden, that gives weight. This big rig can't steer, and it doesn't brake well. Very scary. So, I was working on fixing that, and I went, and I had to order the part, because I couldn't finish it before, because last time I went to do it, I didn't know something, and I messed it up, and I had a learning experience there, and I grew. Well, today, got it all back together, put it all back together, started up, and before it started up, but it leaked oil. Today, it started, idled for like a second, and then revved, and went, and then quit. I turned the key again, and it quit. Long story short, wasn't fixed. I called a friend, Nathan, who advised me that I had put a part, the low peripheral oil pump gear, probably in backwards, and him, as a Ford tech, had done that same thing, and I was like, what does that mean? He's like, well, it might have chewed things up in there, and you might have to replace more parts and stuff, and boy, for an instant, guess where I was back. Ah, just go back to the prison, Tom. Worry, cuss, say blah, blah, you, and blah, blah, this, and mother, and this, and things never work out, and quit. Stop. Stop. Stop. I am so thankful for my friend, Nathan. Gave me great advice. Helped me diagnose something that I was looking online for a few minutes while I was texting him. Couldn't find the answer to. Gave me the answer in minutes with a phone call. Talked me through it. Said, hey, if you have to replace more stuff, I'm here to help you. So generous. Who of you have friends like that? If you do, get your gratitude out right now, and start expressing it, and blessing those people, and so he gave me all the things, and I came home, because I had to take a break. I took a cool-off break, and took some cardboard to recycling, and came back, and checked something, then he did. He's like, you know, if this happened, then you're going to have scoring, you're going to have to replace, and I just did a quick thing before I came up here to the podcast, and so far, it looks really good, because on the way home, after I talked to him, guess what I did? Gratitude. Thankfulness. Thankful that I'm going to learn. Thankful that I'm going to have another opportunity to fix this. The outcome, so far, is looking really good. Yeah, you can do this. Don't go back to the comfortable. Don't go back to the way you were. Fight, and you fight, and this is the best thing ever. You fight by thinking about great and wonderful outcomes and things. Could you ask for any better way to fight? Hey, I got you. I do. I think about you every day. Say positive prayers for you, my audience. Grateful for you.