What does it mean to be truly free?
And why Oprah, Joe Rogan, and Charlamagne Tha God are all talking about the same book
It's a big week here at Authors Equity. Not only are we officially back in full swing after Publishing Summer Break (though over here in startup land, we never really stopped!), but we celebrated a truly special publication day.
We're thrilled to release How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons by New York Times bestselling author and resilience expert Shaka Senghor—a remarkable book that's achieved what might be the modern media trifecta: endorsements from Joe Rogan, Oprah, and The Breakfast Club. When you can unite that particular constellation of voices, you know you've tapped into something universal.
Shaka's journey is nothing short of extraordinary. After developing his resilience methodology under the most extreme conditions imaginable—19 years in prison, including 7 in solitary confinement—he didn't just rebuild his life; he transformed it entirely, going from solitary to the C-suite. Today, he works with Fortune 500 CEOs, professional athletes, and founders who recognize that his frameworks for breaking through invisible barriers are uniquely proven under pressure. His story is living proof that if he can break free, so can anyone.
Because here's the truth: we all face what Shaka calls "Hidden Prisons"—self-doubt that keeps you from pursuing your dream job, fear of failure that paralyzes you from taking risks, cycles of grief, anger, and shame that keep you stuck. These invisible barriers affect everyone, but they don't have to define us.
In How to Be Free, Shaka shares the roadmap he developed for overcoming these barriers—one that was battle-tested in the harshest conditions imaginable. If he can do it, so can we.
Rather than tell you about this book, I want to let Shaka speak for himself. What follows is the preface to How to Be Free, a story that reveals not just how this book came to be, but why his message of transformation and freedom is one we all need to hear.
— Madeline
Excerpted from the Preface of How to Be Free
I was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1972.
By the time I was a teenager, the streets had become my classroom. Violence was normal. Fear was constant. And in 1991, at nineteen years old, I made a decision that would change my life forever.
I shot and killed a man.
For that, I was sentenced to seventeen to forty years in prison. I ended up serving nineteen—seven of them in solitary confinement.
Prison is designed to break you. The walls, the rules, the routine—it’s all meant to strip you down until you forget who you are. But what I discovered is that the most powerful prisons aren’t the ones made of concrete and steel. They’re the ones we carry with us—built from grief, anger, shame, trauma, and self-doubt. The ones that keep us stuck, even when the door is wide open.
And here’s what I’ve learned: Prisons have doors. And those doors can be opened.
I walked out of prison in 2010 into a world where people like me were expected to fail. Where 67.8 percent of men who had served time would be back behind bars within three years. But I refused to be a statistic. Instead, I became a student of freedom—not just physical freedom but mental, emotional, and spiritual freedom.
What I learned inside those walls wasn’t just how to survive— I learned how to rebuild, adapt, and overcome. And over the years, I’ve developed a deep understanding of resilience—not just as an idea but as a practice. Today, I teach that practice to others. Executives, founders, athletes, and world-class leaders come to me—not because they’ve been to prison but because they feel trapped.
Some are battling impostor syndrome, questioning whether they truly belong in the rooms in which they’ve earned a seat. Some are entrepreneurs frozen by self-doubt, afraid to take the risks that lead to success. Others are parents trapped by perfectionism, struggling under the weight of expectations.
And that’s when I remind them of the truth:
Everyone has hidden prisons. But every prison has a door.
As a resilience expert, my work is rooted in helping people break free—whether from past mistakes, limiting beliefs, or self-imposed barriers. Over the years, I’ve developed a framework that has helped leaders, creators, and innovators build lives of clarity, purpose, and impact.
This book is about that framework.
Freedom isn’t a destination I reached when I walked out of prison—it’s a path I continue to walk every day.
What I’ve learned is that freedom requires constant renewal. Just when you think you’ve found it, life can shake you to your core, and suddenly those invisible restraints tighten again. The journey I share along with the techniques for reclaiming freedom speak to a universal truth: liberation is a practice we must recommit to daily, especially in our most challenging moments.
Through raw storytelling and hard-won experience, I’ll show you how to design your own freedom ecosystem—using strategic mindfulness, emotional regulation, and purposeful boundary setting to break free from whatever is holding you back.
These aren’t abstract theories. They’re battle-tested tools, forged in the hardest conditions imaginable.
One of my core mantras is simple but powerful: “I don’t have to wait to be free. I am free right now. I am free from the weight of my past. I don’t owe my old mistakes my future.”
This is not just another personal development book. It’s a blueprint—a guide for anyone ready to step into the life they were meant to live.
Let’s get free.
— Shaka
Wow! Amazing range of endorsements! Sounds like a wonderful book - can't wait to buy it!
Congratulations on this incredible book!