I’ve been thinking about my pre-prison fears.

And I had them wrong.

Pre-prison, I had a corporate career and built what would be considered a successful life.

The cars, the clothes, the watches, the houses, the status.

The truth is, I didn’t like my career; I liked the lifestyle my career afforded me.

And I believed that’s how it was done: Work isn’t fun, so you create a lifestyle to make up for it.

I thought I was successful, minus the hole in my life, but I’d fill that hole later, when time was right.

What was the hole?

I desperately wanted to create, to write, to speak, to invent something.

And for a long time, I thought my fears were:

The fear of failing.

The fear that whatever I create will be criticized by others.

The fear of being judged for giving up everything I worked so hard to create to pursue something that I “knew” others thought was silly, and not for me.

The fear of failure and criticism was huge, but it’s not the core; it’s superficial.

If we stop at the superficial, we’ll only ever create the superficial.

That last fear, though, the fear of being judged, contains clues to what my core fear truly was, and why I was so afraid of moving toward my dreams.

I believed that if I chose myself, I’d have to give up everything I’d built.

I’d be giving up an identity.

I wasn’t building a life, I was assembling a prison made up of stuff. Each new status-seeking purchase was another bar.

The fear that holds most people back isn’t fear of failure or criticism.

It’s a two-fold fear rooted in identity.

1. It’s the fear of losing yourself, your status, your identity.

Giving up our sense of identity is an existential threat to our survival; it’s a primal fear.

2. You don’t know who you’ll be when you start creating something new.

You may currently be master of your domain, but you won’t be when you start something new.

You’ll be back to not knowing how; you’ll be a beginner all over again.

This is the crossroads where countless high achievers get stuck, staring at what they’ve built, terrified of what it might cost to become who they really are.

The idea of losing our identity and not knowing who we’ll be is a prison that will keep us stuck in the rut of the status quo and familiarity.

Desperately wanting to create something new, terrified of upsetting the apple cart.

Living one life, while the other whispers in the background.

Here’s the fear at its purest distilled essence:

If I change, I lose everything.

Here’s what I’ve learned over a decade-plus of reinvention.

The belief that you have to give everything up to change is the most dangerous lie high achievers tell themselves.

Reinvention isn’t a fantasy; this isn’t about escaping your life.

It’s about designing a structure that aligns with your vision and lets you fully live it without giving anything up.

Realistic Reinvention™ is intentionally designing a realistic structure for a visionary life.

Most people focus on only one obligation: providing for their family.

But we also have an obligation to ourselves, to become who we’re meant to be.

The two don’t have to be mutually inclusive; they can and must live side by side.

You can feed your family and your soul. And when you realize both are possible, and execute that vision, you optimize your performance in all aspects of your life.

Here’s the thing most people don’t realize:

If you don’t answer the call to become who you’re meant to be, your subconscious will send you a wake-up call.

Mine came with handcuffs.

For most, it won’t lead to fraud and prison like mine did.

But I guarantee it will create a crisis that forces a reckoning; it’s inevitable.

Divorce, burnout, illness, depression, addiction, emptiness, bitterness, regret, or whatever other toll will be paid.

Reinvention isn’t about giving up everything you’ve built.

It’s about not having to lose it all to finally become who you are. It’s about returning home to who you’ve always been.

This isn’t about abandoning your life; it’s about reclaiming it.

You can choose reinvention or wait for your wake-up call.

Take it from me, you don’t want to wait for that call.

📘 If this lands and you’re ready to go deeper…

Check out the book that started it all, “Blank Canvas: How I Reinvented My Life After Prison“.

James Altucher, best-selling author and host of The James Altucher Show, recently recognized Blank Canvas as one of the most impactful hybrid books ever written.

He placed it alongside some of the world’s most influential best-sellers and book recommendations he shares with his global audience.