Michael Vick sat down with Essence to discuss all of the many lessons he has learned while serving his time in jail. I was looking for him to say one lesson in particular and he did. I wanted him to say that once you get to a certain point in your career or life, sometimes, you have to let go of certain old habits and people who will be hazardous to your growth. While I am no advocate of disassociating yourself with everyone you knew before your career took off, I am an advocate of alleviating anyone who you outgrow. By outgrow I mean those who may be participating in activities that might be detrimental your career and whatever progress you are trying to make in your life. Screw all that I got to keep it real crap. Some people are poison and it is only so long before their venomous behavior will prove to be counterproductive to whatever positive endeavors you embark on. You have to know when to let go. Especially is they have nothing to loose. They are not the NFL star Mike Vick. I remember Steve Harvey once making a point about this saying that of course Mike Vick’s friends or cousins had no problems engaging in these activities, they had nothing to loose. He did and for a short time he did loose some of it. Do I approve of his stupidity? Hell no. In fact, I am glad that he was caught and served some time. He and whoever else was involved in the dog torture deserved to serve time as well. I am glad that he seems to have grown from it.

ESSENCE.com: I know of your football fame and success, but after being in prison and returning to outside life–the NFL, your family–there is so much written about you, but I’d like to ask you: How are you, Michael? How is this new phase of your life going?
MICHAEL VICK: I am doing well. It’s been a tough road–18 months locked away–but I am doing better because I detached from the people and the activities that were hurting me–that risked everything I’d worked for and that was ruining all of the goals I had attained.

ESSENCE.com: You mention the “people” you had to detach from–you mean your old friends from growing up? Did you somehow feel responsible to take care of them?
VICK: I did feel I had to take care of my old friends, the people I came up with. Here I was, making all this money and I wanted them to have a shot, too. I wanted them to be in a position to have a good life, too. I felt a responsibility to keep something going for them. I grew up with them, love and respected them. At the beginning of doing this thing for them, i never thought it would end up as it did.

ESSENCE.com: And by that you mean the dog fighting, the Bad Newz Kennels?

VICK: Yes, it was something they knew, something they did, it was around a lot. I know it is so wrong now. And, I am doing a lot of work with the Humane Society to try to give back, to do something positive, to go against all the negative I did, and that went on in that business. I just felt this pressure to keep the financial end going for those guys, and I’ve learned to let that go, and let them go, and what I was doing with them. I had to detach from all of it.

ESSENCE.com: Your fiancee Kijafa Frink has stood by you 100% and so have so many of your fans. That support must mean so much to you.

VICK: Absolutely, that support means everything. It’s all you have when you are in prison. I am grateful to my fans, and most of all to Kijafa. I was sitting there incarcerated, feeling angry, disgusted… At first you just want to blame someone else, I just couldn’t believe I ended up in that cell and I would get full of rage thinking about the people who put me in that position. But Kijafa gave me support and guidance, and told me how feeling that was only going to hurt me, not anyone I may have been angry with. She helped me to focus on getting better, healthier, stronger in a spiritual way–and that gave me a positive focus instead of a negative one.

ESSENCE.com: But staying positive in prison–that’s got to be tough to keep the faith–literally and figuratively?

VICK: When you are the one in that situation, in that moment of really knowing you have no freedom, there is a period where nobody can tell you anything that gives you hope. I was in a desolate place where I’d never wanted to be, where I’d never pictured myself being, but it’s at that low point where you have to keep trying to believe–harder than you ever have about anything before–that you will get out, that this will not be the rest of your life. You have to say to yourself: “I will get out, I will get out…”

ESSENCE.com: And your faith played a big role in helping you to believe that?

VICK: Yes, and faith had a big role in every aspect of my life before. I found God a long time ago, but when times are really hard and you are faced with the type of adversity that I was, it is harder to connect, to believe that there is a plan, and it’s bigger than you are. I tried harder and harder every day to believe, to keep my faith strong. Tony Dungy helped me to do that, and as hard as it was, it is the only reason I was able to maintain my sanity.

ESSENCE.com: You were raised as a spiritual young man. You followed a path of hard work and determination, and you attained enormous success, but you had a curve in the road that had great consequences. How do you think it happened?

VICK: What happened was my whole life changed in one night. I went from being a guy with no money to a guy with two million dollars.

ESSENCE.com: So the enormous fame, wealth, success came quickly to you. Do you think that created a difficult scenario to keep yourself grounded?

VICK: I was young, I had no responsibilities and had no clue of how to deal with money. I started to feel superior, like I was of a different status than people around me, that I had more skills, more gifts. The problem with me, and the guys like me in that situation, is that we start to think the whole world revolves around us. And then we get surrounded by a bunch of people who are telling us that the whole world actually does revolve around us–you lose a sense of reality. You think you are invincible.

ESSENCE.com: Did fame make it harder to trust people?

VICK: I never knew what people’s motives were. I was in a whole new world and new people were coming to see me every day telling me how I could invest and have my money make so much more money. They seemed smart, they seemed sincere, I wanted to believe them, but there were so many of them. Are they all honest? Are they all giving me the right information? They find guys like me who come into a lot of money quickly–who grew up without any money–and we are great targets for them. I never knew who to trust.

ESSENCE.com: Did fame make it seem safer, more authentic, to remain friends with your pals from home–who knew you before you were Michael Vick?

VICK: That was a big part of the reason I stayed close to those guys, yes. And why I felt responsible to give them a way to make a living themselves. But it wasn’t the right way for them to be earning money. I just knew that I had cared about them as long as I remembered, and that meant a lot.

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