I escaped from prison last week. A prison more powerful than concrete and steel. The prison of my mind that tells me I am inept at anything that says “Some assembly required.” I share this story with you because it is not just about overcoming a personal barrier, but it is a lesson we can all learn about the power of mindfulness and self-belief.

My grandson Roman’s ninth birthday presented the challenge: a “Hydraulic Cyborg Hand” toy requiring assembly. I opened the box to find a 26-page instruction manual. That’s 26. As in twice as many as 13. I looked at the parts. There were six 8-inch-by-11-inch molded plastic squares that each contained about 25 to 30 pieces.

My pulse quickened. My mind raced back to my many failures. My many cursing fits. My anger. There were basketball backboards that tilted. Rolling toys that always veered left and would not say centered. When my wife told our kids that I was putting together the Cyborg Hand, each of them asked: “How many times has dad lost his shit?”

And the answer is none.

I threw off the shackles this past weekend. This time the narrative changed.

Inspired by mindfulness practices and guided by Sam Harris’s meditation app “Waking Up,” I approached the task with a newfound perspective. Harris talks about the imaginary bars of our mental prisons and proposes a radical idea: what if we realized that these bars don’t exist? That our limitations are often self-imposed?

Embracing this mindset, I tackled the assembly with patience and calm, a stark contrast to my previous experiences. Each step was met not with impatience but with deliberate focus. When frustration threatened to surface, I stepped back, walked away, prayed and practiced mindfulness. These pauses weren’t delays but crucial moments of recalibration.

The process was slow, punctuated with errors and growing pains. But it was different. I wasn’t just building a toy; I was reconstructing my self-perception. The narrative of my mechanical incompetence, deeply etched into my identity, was being rewritten with each correctly assembled part.

Finally, after nine hours, the Cyborg Hand was complete. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Handing it over to Roman, I felt an unfamiliar sense of accomplishment. Like Andy Dufresne in “The Shawshank Redemption,” I had crawled through a river of self-doubt and emerged cleansed on the other side.

This experience transcends a simple toy assembly. It’s a metaphor for life’s challenges. Often, our biggest obstacles are the stories we tell ourselves. By changing the narrative, embracing mindfulness, and accepting our flaws, we can free ourselves from the mental prisons we construct. Like a crossword puzzle, sometimes all it takes is a pause to gain a new perspective.

In that moment, handing the Cyborg Hand to Roman, I didn’t just give him a toy. I handed him – and myself – a symbol of what can be achieved when we dare to turn around and realize the prison bars were never there.