How can I reinvent myself when people still see the old version of me?

The version of you they are holding onto is a story, and stories update when the evidence does. The problem is not that people are stubborn, it is that you are expecting the update to happen before you have given them enough new data to work with.

Stop explaining the change and start demonstrating it

Telling people you have changed rarely moves them. Showing up differently, consistently, over time does. Every time you act from the new version of yourself in front of the people who remember the old one, you are depositing into a new account. The balance accumulates slowly, and then all at once.

This is uncomfortable because it requires you to hold your own new identity before anyone else confirms it. That is not arrogance, it is the only sequence that actually works. The confirmation comes after the action, not before.

Some people will not update, and that is not your problem to solve

There will be people, family, old colleagues, people who knew you at your lowest, who simply cannot see you any other way. Their model of you is load-bearing for something in their own worldview. You cannot change that by performing harder.

The useful question is not how to convince them, but whether proximity to them is making it harder to act like the person you are becoming. If it is, you may need some distance, not as punishment, but as protection for something still fragile.

The old version of you is not a liability

At 50 you have something a 25-year-old does not: you can tell which problems are worth solving. The same is true here. The old version of you is data, not a sentence. The satellite work you did because it paid, the years that felt like treading water, those become the foundation that makes everything after possible. Nothing is wasted if you carry it forward deliberately.

Start acting from who you are now, this week, with whoever is in front of you. The perception will follow. It always lags, and it always eventually catches up.