Crain Cognitive Life skills (CLS) Graduation Speech
I was honored to be asked by Ms. Brown to share this graduating speech, and it reads as follows:Cognition is defined as the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experiences, and the senses. Thoughts are the language of the mind, our inner dialogue.
My name is Linda Holland, and it is both exciting and humbling to stand before you today at this celebratory graduation of our Cognitive Life Skills Class, Sycamore Cohort 2, Class of 2026, surrounded by women I’ve grown to call friends.
Over these past weeks, we have gained tools that will help us experience life with a healthier and more positive approach through awareness of how our thought processes affect not only ourselves, but everyone around us.
It has been determined that human beings can have between fifty and eighty thousand thoughts a day. Around 80% of those thoughts can be negative, and 95% are repeated. Further research suggests that much of our mental, physical, and behavioral struggles begin in the mind. The mind truly is a battlefield.
One of my favorite scriptures says, “As a man thinketh, so he is.”
I think most people are curious about what it would be like to truly meet themselves. Who is the “me” I see? What is your idea of self? Who is the “you” you want to become? How does the world respond to you? Are the things you believe different from the things you do?
Because your life will follow your thoughts.
In this class, we learned:
– That we can take our thoughts captive.
– That we can change our thought patterns and redefine who we are.
– That boundaries matter, and “no” is a complete sentence.
– Respect, integrity, resilience, and discernment.
– That we teach others how to treat us.
– That even in the darkest choices, there is something worth redeeming.
– That a bad day does not equal a bad life.
– That self is not something we find, it is something we create.
– That growth requires change.
– That if a door is closed, we must stop pushing it.
– How to respond instead of react.
– That excuses disappear once we stop defending them.
– That being happy is a way of being wise.
– That the key to a comfort zone is knowing when to leave it.
– That we should never make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.
– That it is rarely as bad as we think it is.
– That birds never look back when they’re flying.
– That it’s easy to be a Daniel when there are no lions around.
– That failures define losers, but failures inspire winners.
– To not give up, give in, or get stuck.
– To step out of the revolving door.
– That the way we see the world becomes our world.
– That out of our thoughts, we create our lives.
– And yes, that the hokey pokey really is not what it’s all about.
No life is beyond change. If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
I believe there is a little girl inside all of us, and many strong women begin as broken girls. We all have a story. Maybe our childhood, our environment, or our trauma left us with a negative view of life. We lacked coping skills, and in our pain, we hurt others. It robbed us of our strength and kept us trapped in victimhood.
Mine did for years.
I couldn’t move past it. I didn’t like who I had become. But through cognitive thinking, I learned about thinking errors. I learned those thoughts did not have to control me. I learned I could face negativity in a healthy way and move forward.
Before I understood how to manage adversity, I ended up in the legal and prison system. My address became State School Road in Gatesville.
What was I thinking?
Those behaviors were out of character for me. They did not represent the values I believed I lived by.
I once read that this country incarcerates more people than any other nation on the planet. But someday, this will all be a long time ago. And isn’t it amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday?
Now matters more than any other moment in our lives.
This class taught us how to navigate emotions, understand the world around us, examine our thought processes, recognize our values, and break the cycles and behavior patterns we repeat.
When you think about something in a new way, you begin to understand it differently. You gain awareness of your own power and your own reality. It becomes an awakening, a shift in how you see yourself, how you carry yourself, and how you want the world to see you.
It turns mirrors into windows.
Einstein once said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
Sin will always take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay. But through pain and shame, God can still heal us. And He will.
Ladies, light does not always have to announce itself when it enters a room. Light simply walks in, and darkness rolls back like the tide. Because as we learned, darkness cannot live where light exists.
This class showed us that holding on does not always make us strong. Sometimes strength is found in letting go. Letting go of the thoughts trying to steal our hope.
The mind can bring far more pain than the body.
God has perfect knowledge of the past and perfect vision of the future. And maybe He is trying to tell us it is time to think differently, speak differently, and carry ourselves differently.
A shero is a woman who does the best she can. So let’s be sheroes.
Let’s allow our stories to come alive.
We learned to think proactively instead of reactively. To live intentionally. To challenge ourselves. To live the life God intended for us with expectation and purpose.
It is time to stop mourning the past and start fighting for what remains and what lies ahead.
This is our training ground.
This is a comma, not a period.
God is not finished with us yet.
So let us take our power back. Let us be women of action and distinction. Let us invest in one another and in our communities. Let us strive for excellence.
Life is an occasion. Let’s rise to it like the phoenix.
Let’s stop looking left and right to compare ourselves to everyone else. Let’s go from ordinary to extraordinary.
Because we, you and me, are the most important part of life’s equations. Our approach and attitude determine our outcomes.
Let’s try things again for the first time.
We are not the darkness we endured. We are the light that refuses to surrender.
We can make a difference. We can be trailblazers.
Let us think and dream with our eyes wide open to discovery.
We are not leaving here the same way we came in.
The adventure never ends because we are always becoming. So don’t tell us the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon.
We have so much to be grateful for today.
Thank you to our families, mentors, life coaches, chaplain, wardens, parole board members, and especially Constance Brown.
Thank you to everyone who believed in us when we struggled to believe in ourselves.
Thank you for recognizing the value of this curriculum and the wisdom cognitive life skills can provide as we rebuild our lives, strengthen our families, and return to our communities.
I would like to end with this:
If you want to change your life, you must first change the way you think about your life.
Thoughts are not just thoughts. They are bridges, doors, entryways, and foundations. They attract and repel. They can build a house or tear one down. They can create momentum or keep you trapped in the same small world forever.
Thoughts are investments. Thoughts are decisions.
The mind generates endless possibilities, some inspiring and others terrifying. And so you must choose.
You must choose what you return to, what you believe in, and what you place your weight in.
Because thoughts create feelings.
Feelings create desires.
Desires create actions.
Actions create rewards.
And rewards create more desire.
Before you know it, a single thought became the torch guiding the path of your life.
If you want to change your life, you must first change the way you think about your life.
There never was another way.
God bless you, and may He keep you always.
-Linda Holland, Crain CLS Graduation Speech
Celebrating one year of life coach sponsorship – January 2026
