Wes Watson Wisdom — Life Lessons from the Penitentiary
If you enjoy getting screamed at by large, intimidating, heavily tattooed men on the internet then please let me introduce you to Wes Watson.
Wes was released from the California state prison system in 2017 where he did a 10-year bid for assault. He was selling copious amounts of weed prior to his arrest and one of his associates, apparently, got out of line. So, Wes beat the shit out of him.
Now, over a decade later, Wes has done a complete 180.
He is a motivational speaker and an online personal trainer making over 6 figures a month.
Almost makes you want to do some prison time, huh?
I discovered Wes on the YouTube channel “Fresh Out — Life After the Penitentiary” with Big Herc, another ex-convict turned entrepreneur who served a lengthy stint for robbing a bank. I was captivated by Wes’ intensity and captivating storytelling ability.
I searched for more videos of him on YouTube, but there wasn’t much content. Wes already had a substantial following on Instagram, about 60 thousand followers, but he did not yet have a YouTube channel. Eventually, he decided to start his one. He quickly gained thousands of subscribers before he even posted any videos. I was one of those followers.
He now diligently posts regularly.
About 4 years ago a bicycle accident rendered me unable to lift weights; I separated my shoulder and put in zero effort to repair it. I got sick of not being able to do push-ups, so I started physical therapy and got back in the gym.
Mr. Watson’s content enticed me, so I signed up for 1 month of his program. A month later I was the most shredded I’d ever been. And that was great. But Wes’s main focus is adherence to principles. He never speaks about the technical aspects of weightlifting.
A term Wes often uses is “conscience congruency”.
The definitions of these two words are:
Conscience (noun) — an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior
Congruency (noun) — agreement or harmony; compatibility.
Wes says that your conscience is the authentic voice of God.
Hmmm.
Life expectancy in America has declined over the past few years. Some of the top contributing factors to this change are drug overdose and suicide.
I believe the modern philosophical dilemma is perfectly and hilariously summed up by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s psychopathic character, Dennis Reynolds, in season 7, episode 4:
“But I don’t want real power, because with real power comes with real responsibility and I don’t want any of that shit. I want money and the allusion of power…and puss.
I got this giant, gaping hole inside me and I’m always trying to fill it with something. I like to call it my God Hole. I think a lot of people in this world fill it with religion, but I don’t believe in God.”
(video link here)
We’ve butchered our values with moral relativism and critical theory and replaced them with vices.
The desire for money and status without effort is a pitfall I have embarrassingly fallen into myself.
Luckily, Wes offers solutions.
In his video titled “Prison New Year”, he recommends that you do not read an excess of books, read small amounts, latch on to the few quotes which resonate with you, and then integrate them.
He mentions the fact that there is an excess of “knowledge”, motivational videos, self-help books and the like, and I agree with him. There are many gurus trying to convince you that their plan is the true path to excess.
Coincidentally, and somewhat ironically, I read the exact same message in Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death.
The preface begins with a quote by Otto Rank, a lesser-known psychoanalyst hired by Sigmund Freud. His quote is “..for the time being, I gave up writing — there is already too much truth in the world — an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed!”
In a recent interview, Wes wonderfully makes an analogy comparing wisdom to illegal drugs. Why get cut, lower grade product from a middleman when you can go straight to the source? Or, in drug slang, the plug.
I’ve never heard of God referred to as The Plug before. Amazing.
Don’t listen too much to anyone else when you have direct access to God, The Universe, The Force, Tao or however you want to refer to the energy inherent to human beings.
We’re all connected to the same thing. Take enough psychedelics and you’ll know precisely what I mean.
Another quote Wes mentions often is:
“If a man is right his world is right”
This is a continuation of conscience congruency. Watson believes that it is more important and worthwhile to seek internal validation as opposed to external validation.
Question your intentions and do not negotiate with your weaknesses.
Wes also preaches the process, or “programming” which is adherence to your routine.
Wes’s morning routine begins at the truly ungodly hour of 2:45 AM (doesn’t even matter which god you believe in here, 2:45 is un-Allahly, un-Shivaly, un-Yehsuay, etc. You get the picture.)
He gets up at 2:45 and immediately goes into his pain. He mentions listening to sad music, like Adele, because he wants to embrace his pain, his struggle, as opposed to avoiding it.
He reads his inspiring quotes, quotes he refers to as wisdom of the ages, and then he hits the gym.
He does this every single day. And he’s been doing it for years.
Wes currently lives in a beautiful apartment in San Diego with his wife and his program has not changed since he was in solitary confinement in prison years ago. Wes spent over a full year without leaving his cell and didn’t miss a single work out.
Another one of his popular quotes,
“Adversity introduces a man to himself.”
10 years in California State prison is no joke. The California State prison system is probably the most dangerous place to be imprisoned in the United States.
I listen to Wes’s story and I am reminded of other men who went through extreme hardships, Viktor Frankl, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Gyorgy Faludy.
All of these men found meaning despite being in some of the harshest conditions in human history — World War II concentration camps. And then they wrote about it.
Faludy was a Hungarian poet who would write and memorize poetry in his head and converse about history and philosophy to inspire other prisoners. The other survivors attributed these conversations as pivotal to their survival. He recounted his experience in his autobiography, “My Happy Days in Hell”.
Frankl was motivated to stay alive so he could write and publish the manuscript he was working on. He later developed logotherapy and published, “Man’s Search for Meaning”; the premise is essentially that we are sustained by meaning.
Nietzsche summed up this sentiment with his famous quote, “He who has a ‘why’ can sustain any ‘how’.”
And finally, Solzhenitsyn’s self-analysis that resulted in his scathing deconstruction of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Gulag system in his international bestseller, “The Gulag Archipelago”.
Solzhenitsyn’ realized that he was partially responsible for his horrific predicament. He had willingly participated in and perpetuated the corrupt system that led to his imprisonment, so he decided to go through his life and try to remember everything he did that disturbed his conscience.
These comparisons may seem a little drastic, but I see similarities between Wes and these men:
Strict dedication to Truth and perseverance in the face of lethal hardship.
During a recent Q and A on his Instagram story, he gave out an award for the dumbest question ever when someone asked if Wes thought it was a good idea for him to go to prison so he could become “hard”.
We do not need to go rob a bank or hijack an airplane to gain wisdom, but we must choose challenges if we want to grow and mature. Overcoming life’s difficulties, like lifting weights at 4:00 AM in the gym, will make you stronger.
Choose the right challenges.
Obey your conscience.
