In October 2012, Dr. Paul Wood presented the Five Steps to Freedom to an audience of more than 2,000 people at TEDxAuckland. Watch the video

Life is so short. My imprisonment as a teenager made me aware of this earlier than most. Learning about people’s most common deathbed regrets is more recent, but both experiences have directly influenced the way I live my life now and the conscious effort I make to invest my time and energy in what really […]

I grew up as a younger brother among four boys who liked to fight. Like many before me, I received clear messages from society about what emotions a man should and shouldn’t feel. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, it was common for boys to be punished and called names for displays of emotional “weakness” such […]

I recently received a message from a psychologist in a large Australian prison. She has been printing my blogs and handing them out to prisoners as “a beacon of hope for change”. This got me thinking about the role of hope and optimism in my own life and personal transformation. Read the full post

Showing up as a better version of yourself is a journey of progress not perfection. There will be times when your default appears despite your best intentions, but over time you can more effectively rewrite the script and show up as a better version of yourself. I choose to be Unfazed Paul, who is it […]

I spend a lot of time at conferences talking about my transition from delinquent to doctor. More specifically, the steps involved in moving from a background of criminal offending, homicide, and prison, to a successful life of contribution and purpose. Yet I don’t look forward to telling this story, in fact the opposite is true. […]

Studies show that the words we use to describe what we see, determines what we see. I encourage you to be mindful about the labels you give yourself and the labels you give others. They may be words, but these words transform into images in the mind, which can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Read the full […]

I recently started training in Brazilian Jiu jitsu (BJJ) with Professor Vanderson Pires at the Combat Room. I am a reasonably athletic and super enthusiastic guy. For these reasons I’m used to being relatively good at martial arts and sports in general. Yet BJJ is the most humbling and technically demanding physical activity I have […]

Short-term distractions such as alcohol, drugs, pornography, sex, and over-eating are often used to tune-out from the pain of emotional fatigue. However, these distractions only temporarily mask the symptoms of fatigue and stop us from more effectively monitoring and managing the cause of our distress. Read the full post

When confronted with forks in the road, with choices that could provide temporary respite, ease and gratification, or lead to the tough work my goals required…I could ask myself the crucial guiding question…what would someone like me, someone with these values, do in this situation? Read the full post

One of the most useful skills I learnt during over a decade in prison was to be thankful that things weren’t even worse. In psychology this is known as comparing down and helps make you grateful for what you have. Comparing down was a skill that I learnt in New Zealand’s toughest maximum-security prison, Paremero. […]

As part of my commitment to giving back to society and acknowledging all the help I received from people over the years, I try to make the time to speak to inmates about what made a difference for me when it comes to changing my life and integrating back into society. Read the full post