My life modified endlessly on October 1st, 2013.
I had simply walked into my new job once I acquired this voicemail.
“Mr. Stanland, that is Particular Agent McTiernan with the FBI. We’re at your residence and have a warrant in your arrest. You have to to name us and are available residence instantly, or we’ll subject an APB with the federal marshals in your arrest.”
It was, for sure, one of the vital terrifying days of my life to this point.
For slightly below a 12 months, I dedicated fraud in opposition to one of many largest tech corporations on the earth.
In that one second, my life was now not my very own.
It belonged to the brokers, the faceless folks working behind the scenes, and the choose I had but to fulfill.
I pleaded responsible to 1 rely of mail fraud and was sentenced to 2 years of federal jail.
I watched helplessly because the life I knew grew smaller and fainter as I descended into the abyss of uncertainty.
I watched because the darkish cloud of disgrace enveloped my life and forged the whole lot in its shadow.
I watched the underside fall out each single time I assumed I had hit backside.
I watched as I walked down the darkest of paths, planning how I’d take my life.
And I watched what occurred once I selected to step out of the burnt ashes of what was and into a brand new life.
Stepping out of the ashes was one other terrifying second; I used to be leaving the recognized, even when it was horrible, for the unknown.
However there was one thing unimaginable ready for me once I did.
There’s a present if you hit all-time low and are available out the opposite aspect.
It’s the knowledge and perspective that may solely come from staring into the eyes of the worst model of your self and despising what you see.
And as an alternative of making an attempt to kill it, you acknowledge its existence, settle for its existence, and study to like its existence.
However you don’t enable its existence to outline you.
It’s by means of this usually painful course of that I fully reinvented my life.
I’ve spent the previous decade reworking jail into objective, and I’ve discovered my life’s mission, and now I assist others do the identical.
I don’t make as a lot as I did within the company world.
However I’ve what I used to be chasing for all these years, and I used to be too blind to see I’d by no means catch.
Goal
Which means
Success
Internal Freedom
Emotional Peace
These are the highest 5 classes I’ve realized from reinventing my life after jail.
I spent my days in jail, wishing I wasn’t in jail. I spent my days wishing I didn’t make the alternatives I made that landed me in jail.
I needed and dreamed for all times to be something apart from it was.
I used to be combating in opposition to a previous and circumstance that couldn’t be modified.
I’d by no means have the liberty to start out over and reinvent if I continued to combat for what can’t be modified.
I needed to do what I used to be so afraid to do.
I needed to settle for actuality.
I didn’t wish to.
It felt like giving up; it felt passive. Preventing equals progress. However does it? What was I combating in opposition to? As a lot as I want there have been, there is no such thing as a such factor as a time machine Delorean.
Accepting actuality isn’t giving up; it isn’t passive.
It was an act of braveness for me to say,
“I settle for that I betrayed myself and selected to commit against the law. I settle for I made the selection to proceed within the face of the universe screaming at me to cease. I settle for that I’m in jail. I settle for that I damage my household, my pals….”
A weight lifted off of me; I wasn’t trapped up to now. As a substitute, I felt one thing I assumed was not possible in jail, freedom.
It’s the liberty that comes if you’re now not locked up to now.
“New beginnings are sometimes disguised as painful endings.” – Lao Tzu
2. Self-Belief is a Should
My fraud required hundreds of decisions to maintain it going. Every a kind of decisions was made within the face of my coronary heart, saying,
“Cease, don’t do that. This isn’t the way in which.”
I ignored my coronary heart, violated my voice, and I paid the value.
My internal voice disappeared, and I didn’t belief myself to make the simplest choices.
What to eat, and what workout routines I’d do within the health club.
I used to be paralyzed by the torture of self-mistrust.
I needed to study to belief myself once more, which was one of the vital difficult duties ever.
And it began by making and protecting commitments to myself.
The extra commitments I made and saved, the extra I grew to become the one that did what they stated they might do.
I reconnected with my internal voice.
3. Execute My Fears
Worry was a major driver behind my option to commit against the law.
It was simpler to commit fraud and violate my internal voice than to be trustworthy with myself and my spouse on the time.
I understood worry landed me in jail and that I may leverage worry to reinvent my life after jail.
I made an inventory of all my fears, and inside my jail dice, I dedicated to executing them one after the other.
It took 5 years, however I landed on the TEDx stage.
This was once I executed that worry, and my world expanded.
4. Have a Mission
I assumed I had a mission earlier than jail.
Make as a lot cash as attainable and spend all of it on fancy issues.
That wasn’t a mission.
It was what I assumed I needs to be doing, not what I wished to do.
Solely once I began writing my 1st e-book and pursuing public talking did I perceive what a mission actually is.
A mission is one thing I’m prepared to sacrifice all of the short-term pictures of happiness (consuming, social media, Netflix) in pursuit of long-term objective, which means, and success – with an unknown end result.
A mission is one thing extra important than myself and serves a better good outdoors myself.
My need behind the e-book and the TEDx?
To assist one individual.
That’s my mission to at the present time.
5. Cease Chasing/Begin Creating
Pre-prison, I chased happiness, objective, which means, and success on the backside of a bottle and the swipe of my American Specific Platinum card.
I used to be on The Golden Treadmill, racing furiously to a end line I’d by no means attain.
Goal, which means, and success aren’t chased; they’re created.
And once I take the time to concentrate on what actually issues to me and align my actions with that, I create them.
And happiness naturally ensues because of this.
The humorous factor about these classes is that this:
They’re what I realized from going to jail, dropping the whole lot, and reinventing from scratch, however they’re common.
They apply to any one in all us at any time.
We don’t have to go to jail to implement these classes to create the life we wish to stay.
Nor do I recommend you await the underside to fall out earlier than implementing them in your individual lives.
Begin now to create a rare future.
