"This book won’t change your life. You have to do that yourself. And some of you have some serious problems. Like me.” Do you want to escape prison? Because you’re in one. That you built yourself. How to Escape Prison gives you 12 simple tools that you can use right now to shatter mental mazes. It shows you how to break counter-productive patterns, self-destructive loops, and emotional chain-reactions that quietly cage you, and rebuild a strong constitution with confidence and clarity that will free fearless forces in you. Break bricks, build mental muscle, deploy counter-measures, breathe like a SEAL, and reset, focus and operate like a CIA Officer. “This is a simple book that teaches simple things.” The author has zero training in psychology or life coaching. He also put mascara on once in high school, then lied to Toby Kyte about it, which still burns. He has “ninguna idea” what he’s talking about, and just “made all this up,” but he also won “Employee of the Month, Runner Up” at Red Lobster in 1991, then won the Arizona 4A State Football Championship with Glen Mastroberte less than one year later. He’s also a former CIA Ops Officer who’s used these tools to escape some complicated situations. And to get in them. “You have to change to change, and somewhere along the way you stopped telling yourself that you’re a winner, that you’re a beautiful person in a wide open world, working hard and doing the best you can, which is enough, and that’s ok. You started criticizing yourself instead. Incessantly. Viciously. Shrinking yourself, the world, and your place in it, down and down and down into smaller and smaller cells within cells until the only place left was solitary confinement in the echoes of your own skull. Reverse that. And see what happens. Or keep doing what you’re doing. How’s that going for ya?” If you built the prison, does that mean you also have the key to it? How to Escape Prison helps you find it. About the Author Dug Popovich tackled 142 people in 1994. He is also a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Operations Officer. He retired in 2024 after numerous tours and 20 years of federal service, including a tour in Iraq and two as Chief of Station (COS) in Latin American countries. Currently, he runs his own company, Area 52 (a52.io), and lives in Virginia with "the Pretty Girl" and their four kids. He originally wrote this book as a handout for a short course he gave about building mental muscle to Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) officers.