The Alter Ego Effect PDF by Todd Herman

 Dedication For all the people who grew up in the middle of nowhere (and Valerie, Molly, Sophie, and Charlie—go team!)  Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Preface: Before You Enter: A Note from the Author Chapter 1: What’s Your Phone Booth M...

 Dedication For all the people who grew up in the middle of nowhere (and Valerie, Molly, Sophie, and Charlie—go team!)  Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Preface: Before You Enter: A Note from the Author Chapter 1: What’s Your Phone Booth Moment? Chapter 2: The Origin of Alter Egos Chapter 3: The Power of the Alter Ego Effect Chapter 4: Your Ordinary World Chapter 5: Finding Your Moments of Impact Chapter 6: The Hidden Forces of the Enemy Chapter 7: Pulling the Enemy from the Shadows Chapter 8: The Power of Your Story Chapter 9: Choosing Your Extraordinary World Chapter 10: The Power of a Mission Chapter 11: Defining Your Superpowers and Crafting the Name Chapter 12: Breathing Life into Your Alter Ego Chapter 13: The Heroic Origin Story Chapter 14: Activating Your Alter Ego with a Totem or Artifact Chapter 15: Tests, Trials, and Delivering the Ground Punch Chapter 16: Mindsets, Missions, Quests, and Adventures Acknowledgments Notes Index About the Author Copyright About the Publisher  Preface Before You Enter A Note from the Author The Alter Ego Effect was built to support ambitious people doing hard things. It’s constructed to help you be more resilient, creative, optimistic, and courageous. I’ve had a sports science and peak performance training company for twenty-two years, and what you’re about to unwrap is based not only on the work I’ve done with thousands of amateur, pro, and Olympic athletes, but also the art and science of how we work. It’s been shaped by the data collected from the more than seventy-five thousand business owners and professionals who have implemented this strategy. Their reports back about the wins, successes, and breakthroughs along with the tweaks and changes they’ve made have all been used to refine this strategy. A final note: Since I started my practice and began working with more elite athletes, I made a commitment to privacy. I protect my clients. Some of the world’s great Olympic and pro athletes as well as entertainers work with me because I promise never to use their names for personal benefit. Why? Because trust is the most essential currency I can trade. Everyone wants something from these people, they use them as a way to grab the spotlight, and it causes them to trust no one. I recognized it, and I knew it would prevent me from being the trusted advisor and coach they needed and wanted. I’ve worked with top business professionals as well, and the promise is the same. I hold that trust and promise sacred. But I also know how valuable and important it is to share their stories to help illustrate points and to make the ideas in The Alter Ego Effect spring to life for you.  Throughout the book, I have tried to balance the need to share my clients’ stories with you, the reader, with my vow to my clients. To achieve this, I’ve sometimes changed details like names, a sport, an industry, and other identifying factors. In the end, these factors are actually irrelevant. As you’re about to find out, the Alter Ego is a tool anyone, in any situation, in any profession, in any moment can use to bring forth their Heroic Self. Todd Herman  Chapter 1 What’s Your Phone Booth Moment? Standing in the greenroom looking at my notes, I waited to be called onstage before a crowd of coaches from the world of sports. As I was reviewing my presentation, a man built like a powerful bulldog walked into the room. I’d played him on Nintendo as a kid. He strolled over to me with a big smile, reached out, and said, “Hi, I’m Bo Jackson.” I laughed and said, “Hi, I’m Todd Herman. I know who you are, Bo. I’d probably lose all credibility if I worked in sports and didn’t know the only two-sport all-star in the pros. Plus, you helped me win a lot of games on Tecmo Bowl!” He chuckled and said, “Yeah, you’re not the first to say that. And thanks. Are you speaking today, too?” “Yeah. I’m up next. But maybe I just got bumped for you.” I laughed. “No, you’re good. I just came early to see a friend,” he said. “So what are you gonna talk about?” “I’m going to talk about the mental game, but, specifically, I’m going to share with everyone how to use Alter Egos and Secret Identities to perform at your best.” Immediately, he cocked his head to the side slightly, squinted his eyes as if someone had just struck a deep chord inside him, and then smirked. He shook his head. After a few seconds, he said in a hushed, serious tone, “Bo Jackson never played a down of football in his entire life.” If you don’t know Bo Jackson, he’s the only athlete in the big four of major North American sports to be an all-star in two of them, Major League Baseball and the National Football League. He was a phenom who transcended sports in the 1980s and, for a sport-loving kid like me, a superhero. My eyes widened as I smiled and said, “Ooookaayyy... interesting. Tell me more.”  Bo went on to explain how as a youngster he had challenges containing his emotions and would get into a lot of trouble because of his anger. Often, he’d get caught up in the competition, and he’d retaliate against even the smallest perceived slights, causing him to get hit with unnecessary penalties. One day, though, as he was watching a movie, he became fascinated by the unemotional, cold, and relentless nature of Jason. Does the name ring a bell? Jason was the hockey mask–wearing killer in the Friday the 13th movies. At that moment—during the movie—he resolved to stop being Bo Jackson and start being Jason on the football field, leaving the uncontrollable rage on the sidelines. Bo went on to explain how Jason only lived on the field. And when he walked out of the locker room and reached the football field, Jason would enter his body and take over. Suddenly the hotheaded, penalty-prone, easy- to-provoke Bo Jackson transformed into a relentless, cold, and disciplined destroyer on the football field. Channeling a “different” identity helped him focus every ounce of his talent and skill, and enabled him to show up on the field, without any emotional issues interfering with his performance. It was his “phone booth moment.” Just like Clark Kent would sometimes go into a phone booth to transform into Superman, Bo Jackson did the same thing when he transformed into his Alter Ego, Jason. Except he didn’t have to deal with annoying space issues like Superman explained in a 1942 comic: “This definitely isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to switch garments, but I’ve got to change identities—and in a hurry!” While it’s a funny quote, there’s something embedded in his statement that reveals the transformational nature of the Alter Ego Effect. WHO’S THE ALTER EGO? I’ve always been fascinated by comics, comic book heroes, and the worlds they live in. The origin stories, the villains, and the epic battles always found a way to draw me into their worlds. As a kid, I loved the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Today people might laugh at those 1980s productions compared to the epic rebirth of superhero movies happening now, but back in the day, they were awesome. Now, here’s a riddle for you: Everyone knows that Superman and Clark Kent are the same. But which one is the alter ego? I’ve asked this question for the past fifteen years, countless times in front of audiences around the world, and 90 percent of the audience immediately yell out, “SUPERMAN!” It sounds right. Because when you think of “alter egos,” you think of superpowers, heroism, and epic battles. All the qualities of a superhero like Superman. Except—it’s wrong. The alter ego isn’t Superman; it’s Clark Kent. Superman is the real person. He created the alter ego, mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, as a useful persona to go unnoticed day-to-day on earth and blend in to help him achieve a crucial goal: understanding humans. Superman would flip between his alter ego and the S on his chest at precisely the moments when he needed each persona the most. Why does this matter? Because, frankly, life is hard. There are a lot of different responsibilities we all carry on our shoulders. There are a lot of different roles we play in life. And there are the constant forces of society—religion, families, teammates, coworkers, friends, and others—that lead us to act a certain way. These come in the form of expectations, rules, and judgments about how we’re supposed to act. What we’re allowed to pursue. What we should have. What we should believe. All of this and more creates what I call the Trapped Self, which we’ll reveal more of in chapter 3. This Trapped Self is the part of you that doesn’t feel like it’s showing up in life like you want, avoiding certain things or feeling pressured to act in a certain way. Conversely, there’s another experience we have in life, where we feel like our Heroic Self. It’s that part of you that feels like you’re doing what you want, doing it for your own reasons, and you get caught up in the flow of the activity. And it turns out there’s fascinating research on the subject that explains the benefits of Alter Egos. When you find yourself bored, anxious, angry, jealous, resistant, overwhelmed, or fearful, you can’t reason yourself out of it. It’s like a mouse trying to direct a herd of rampaging elephants. You can’t logic your way out of an unconscious problem. If your gut is telling you to avoid it, you’ll avoid it. But you can use that same unconscious power, tap into the mysteries of your imagination, and, with a little practice, change whose gut you’re checking. And, lucky for us, research and science show us it’s a better approach. THE FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD AND THE 4:35 A.M. TRAIN TO NEW YORK Anthony was a basketball player at one of the best prep schools in the United States, with off-the-chart skills. During practice, he’d school his teammates one-on-one. Scouts from all the top colleges were recruiting him, and people had him pegged as a possible pro baller one day—IF. If he would show more poise during crunch time and believe in his abilities more. Anthony grew up in a low-income area of Washington, D.C., without a mom or dad. They both passed away in a car accident when he was eight years old. His grandma took on the responsibility of raising him and was doing a damn good job under the circumstances. As a youngster, Anthony spent every second he could find taking refuge on the basketball court, dribbling, shooting, and jumping. He continued to develop, and soon scouts from all the top colleges were recruiting him. People had him pegged as a possible pro-baller one day—IF. If he would “get his head screwed on straight.” For all of Anthony’s skills and abilities, there was just one problem. When the game was on the line, instead of driving hard to the hoop or getting the defender on his heels and then pulling up fast and firing a jump shot, he’d pass the ball. He’d let a teammate take the shot, or choke. And it was getting worse. Anthony had all the skill in the world to seize the opportunity. But he’d hide during what we call Moments of Impact, those critical moments that define a large part of our success. For Anthony, he got caught up in worrying about the criticism more than he wanted the adulation. The more the spotlight was placed on Anthony, the more he shrank from its glare. It wasn’t until his coach, in a fit of frustration, yelled at Anthony during practice one day that he saw the answer. “Dammit, Anthony, if you could only be more like James, we’d be unstoppable!” His mind fired off a memory of an email he’d read once about athletes who used Alter Egos on the court. When he got back home, he searched for the email. Then he did the thing that would terrify any parent, let alone his grandma. At the age of fifteen, he snuck out of his house, went down to Union Station in Washington, D.C., at 4 a.m., and caught the 4:35 Amtrak train to New York City. In 2011, I spent most of my mornings working from the Reebok Sports Club on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was a beautiful club with six levels and every amenity you could imagine. It’s also famous for being a celebrity haven, because they’d be left alone to work out, people like Chris Rock, Regis Philbin, Dwayne Johnson, Will Smith, Diane Sawyer, Ben Stiller, and many others. It was also where NBA teams would come and practice before games at Madison Square Garden. I had a routine of always arriving at around 8:45 and working in the private cafe for members. Then I’d get in a workout before lunch. One day, as I walked into the lobby area, the front desk staff waved me over as soon as I got out of the elevators. They told me that the young man sitting over in the waiting area had come all the way up from D.C. to see me this morning. They said, “He came up here to see you and get help with his game. This freakin’ kid is dedicated!” I walked over to Anthony and introduced myself, while he jumped out of his chair to shake my hand. “Mr. Herman, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I hope I’m not being a problem, but I need your help.” I brought him into the cafe, where we grabbed some breakfast and sat down at a table. I asked him, “First, how the heck did you know to come here? Second, do your parents know you’re here?” “You mentioned it in one of your email newsletters,” he said, “that you come here in the mornings, so I thought I’d take a shot. And, no, my grandma doesn’t know. I snuck out of the house at 4 a.m., but she wouldn’t know anyway, because I leave early in the morning for school before she’s up.” “Okay, well, first things first, you need to call your grandma and let her know where you’re at and that you’re safe.” After we got through the logistics of his escape from D.C. and I reassured his grandma I’d make sure he got home safe, we talked about his situation. He explained what was going on and that the more pressure he was feeling and the more people were watching him, the more he was overthinking things. He talked about the anxiety and how he felt, saying, “There’s a war going on in my head. “I really want this, but I’m so worried about what everyone thinks of me and making a mistake.” Now, I’m not a therapist. I don’t do therapy, and I’m terribly unqualified to do that kind of work. I work on the mental game and developing strategies for high performance. However, there’s a simple framework I always use to diagnose the root of someone’s problem, which I’ll walk you through in chapter 3. It didn’t take long to figure out Anthony’s issue. “So why did you come all the way up to New York, just to see me?” I asked. “Because Coach said something to me that made me remember one of your emails about the sidelines of life. And how many great athletes use Alter Egos to help them perform better and leave parts of themselves on the sidelines. Because sometimes parts of their personality could be hurting their performance. And when Coach told me to ‘be more like James,’ I thought of you.” “Well, that’s great, but why didn’t you email me, instead of stressing out your grandma?” “You always say, if you want something, go get it. And if you want something faster, go get it with a great mentor. I remember you talked about how you traveled all the way from Canada to North Carolina to meet a mentor once to spend weeks with him and that it was one of the pivotal moments of your life. So I thought, I should do the same. But just so you know, I don’t have any money to pay you.” I fell in love with this kid. Chris Rock even stopped to give him words of encouragement when he was waiting for me. The staff told Chris what he’d done. Over the next couple of hours, I peeled back the onion on his game, and it was apparent that the spotlight he was shunning had nothing to do with the court. It had everything to do with the pain he’d felt when his parents passed away. In the aftermath, he’d had different people showering him with attention, even fighting over who should have him and the insurance money. All he’d wanted was to be left alone. Now the spotlight was back on, and Anthony was feeling the same thing all over again.  Like I said, I don’t do therapy, and I wasn’t about to start. I suggested he talk to his school counselors or grandma about getting some help, because “a great therapist can help unravel the fried wires in your head. But for now, let’s leave Anthony on the sidelines and create an Alter Ego you can take on the court and get back to dominating.” I walked Anthony through the process of creating his Alter Ego for his Field of Play, the basketball court. And when we got to the point of unpacking the people, characters, things, or animals he’d love to embody, he said, “A black panther. They come out of nowhere, they’re quick to strike, and they’re fluid. I watched this National Geographic show on them once, and the way they moved was just so cool. Plus, they can jump twenty feet! And they have this cool name, ‘ghost of the forest.’” Watching him describe his Alter Ego—hell, I got excited. The next step was to give his Alter Ego a name. We brainstormed a bunch of different names in my notebook: The Black Panther Panther X Anthony Stealth Nothing was popping for him until I suggested a name that made him come alive, “the Black Ghost.” I’ll never forget. The kid sat back in his chair, raised his hands behind his head, looked up, and said, “I am the Black Ghost, and I’m going to bring Mom and Dad onto the court with me and haunt everyone.” What Anthony did was something profound, and what I want to help you do, too, throughout the book. I left out of Anthony’s transformation something crucial to building an Alter Ego that works for you. Now, whether you have some old trauma that’s somehow interfering with your desires, or you’ve told yourself a story about what you can or can’t do, or there’s some undefined resistance holding you back from pursuing something, I want to tell you there’s a Heroic Self waiting to get unlocked, and that an Alter Ego or Secret Identity is the key to Activating it. When you see how an Alter Ego fits into the human condition, the different roles we play in life, and the Fields of Play we stand on, it gives you the freedom to unlock a creative force. When you see how an Alter Ego helps you battle the natural challenges we all face with greater optimism, it can unlock a more playful and empowering approach to overcoming fear. And when you see it’s a natural part of being human, has been used by tens of thousands of people to achieve goals both big or small, and is the most “real you” you could be—it will unlock hidden capabilities you didn’t know were there. Before I go any further, I need to make a quick disclaimer, because I don’t want to mislead you with that last paragraph. This isn’t a motivational rah-rah book filled with cotton-candy ideas plucked from other cotton-candy self-help books that riddle the bookshelf and e-readers. This isn’t a book with an “easy button” buried inside it. There is no treasure map to a pile of gold coins. This book is for real people doing hard things. This isn’t a book to remove the challenge of life. It’s to take the part of you that shows up when you least expect it, and show you how to get it to show up when you most need it. Your imagination can build Extraordinary Worlds and Ordinary Worlds. You’ve already been doing this. And here’s a reminder that playfulness doesn’t stop at eight years of age; it’s a pathway to handling life with more grace. Bottom line one: If you’ve got ambition, welcome to the tribe. Bottom line two: If you’re someone who wants to argue for your limitations, wait until everything is “perfect,” or cowardly troll the ambitions of others, well... I’ll leave you to decide what to do. THE FINAL GOAL I’ve devoted the last two decades to answering one simple question: How can I help the ambitious people I serve take the capabilities already nested inside and use them to perform at peak levels, consistently? Having built a peak performance and sports science practice over the past two decades, and coaching some of the world’s Olympic and professional athletes, top business leaders, entrepreneurs, and entertainers, I’ve been faced with situations like: How do I help the pro tennis star win championships instead of losing matches because she lets her opponents come from behind?  How do I help the Major League Baseball pitcher stand on the mound before a crowd of forty thousand screaming fans and lead his team to a playoff victory instead of choking and letting batters knock him around? How do I get the sales executive to close more deals so his company grows and he gets promoted? How do I help the entrepreneur proudly market her services instead of letting her new venture barely scrape by? How do I help the hard-charging manager or VP become a calmer, more controlled, and better leader or coach with direct reports? How do I help the parent struggling to juggle the demands of life and work be more attentive, loving, and fun at home? How do I help the Broadway star slip into her flow state faster instead of feeling the terror and nerves of performing before live audiences? The answer to those questions was and is an Alter Ego. Back in the greenroom, Bo and I talked about the concept of Alter Egos, the other athletes using them, the process I’d use with clients, and that people in business and everyday life used them to achieve various things. For Bo, creating an Alter Ego was something he stumbled on naturally. He thought he was the only one to use it. For decades we’ve been ignoring the bread crumbs and signs from history that the Alter Ego is a natural part of the human condition, and this book is about changing that. I’ve waited fifteen years to write The Alter Ego Effect, and my goal is to teach you the same method I’ve taught my clients for almost twenty years, so you can use one or many to overcome feats both big and small. I’m going to show you how to Activate your Heroic Self—your inner Wonder Woman, Dalai Lama, Black Panther, Oprah, or Mr. Rogers—drawing forth the full range of your capabilities, skills, beliefs, and traits, so you see what you’re truly made of. I’m also going to share with you the science behind why this method is so effective and share the stories of Olympians, business professionals, moms, entertainers, authors, children, and myself, who have all used it to overcome challenges. I used it and use it still, and there’s a reason why a pair of glasses is on the cover... but whose are they?  Chapter 2 The Origin of Alter Egos Shep Gordon is known as the Supermensch. He’s a talent manager, Hollywood film agent, and producer. GQ called him the “Unfamous Man Who Made Everyone Famous.” Shep played a pivotal role in the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Raquel Welch, and Groucho Marx. Shep is what you could call “old-school.” He never has contracts with his clients. Everything is done with a handshake and everyone “in the biz” knows: if he says it will happen, it will happen. Shep is the person responsible for the celebrity chef world we live in today—he literally invented the market. Emeril Lagasse, Daniel Boulud, Wolfgang Puck, and more would be unknown to the general public if it weren’t for Shep. Actor and director Mike Myers even produced a documentary on his life, aptly titled Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. I happened to meet Shep at one of the world’s premier events for creators, entrepreneurs, and artists, Mastermind Talks, hosted by Jayson Gaignard. Shep is one of the greatest storytellers you could ever meet. His stories about Alice Cooper are both rich and hilarious, though it doesn’t hurt that he has some of the most iconic material to work with. While I was sitting in the audience of 150 people, listening to Shep recount his tales as a scrappy Hollywood superagent, someone asked him how he helped the “high performers” he worked with “find that extra gear” and continue to perform at a high level. Shep Gordon’s response was honest, poignant, and profound: I think each one is very, very different. I think there’s just one general rule that I used to try and give to every artist, whether they were chefs or they were entertainers. It’s that if you allow the public figure to actually be you, you’re never going to be happy. And you’re never going to be confident, because if you take the traits of who you are and develop that into a character that you understand, you’ll always know what that character should do, so when you’re in a press conference, you always know how to answer a question.  If it’s you personally, you never have the answers. It’s really tough, and when you take it personally, that’s when you start scarring. If a bad review is about that person, you change that person. If a bad review is about you, sometimes that wound can be very deep. So, I don’t think you can generalize, but if there’s any generality, I would say, it’s if someone who’s in the public eye can understand that people aren’t loving you, they’re loving that character that’s been put in front of them. Even from my movie, I get people come up to me, “You’re the greatest. You’re unbelievable.” They don’t know me. They know that guy. So, if you can keep that distance in your own brain, it’s much healthier. About fifteen people in the audience who knew my work looked over at me immediately. Some had dropped their jaws in amazement. Some grinned and winked. And Jayson, conducting the interview from the stage, found me in the crowd and shook his head with an “OMG, you’ve been talking about this forever!” look in his eyes. (If you’d like to watch the clip, go to AlterEgoEffect.com/shep.) Afterward, Shep and I discussed the concept more and how it was something far more universal than just a celebrity, entertainer, or athlete using it while under the spotlight of a stage or field. An Alter Ego is a useful tool to help you, me, and others handle the adversity of life with more resiliency. Explore our creative sides, while protecting a fragile self. Be far more intentional about who we’re trying to be on the Fields of Play. It’s not only backed by the thousands of people who have used Alter Egos, but, more specifically, the system I’ve created over the past two decades is also backed by research and the success stories of numerous people you’ll read about in the chapters to come. THE ROOTS The first-century BC Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero was the first documented person to talk about the Alter Ego, in his philosophical works, although the term he used was “a second self, a trusted friend.”1 Its actual Latin meaning is “the other I.” These are all important distinctions because the concept has been around for centuries. And when you look at the roots from which the idea was shared, “trusted friend” or “the other I,” they’re extremely healthy terms. And if Cicero were alive today, he’d admit he was simply giving form to a naturally occurring part of the human condition. Just as I didn’t invent Alter Egos, Cicero didn’t, either. The only thing I’ve done is create a system for building one and give you a framework to activate its tremendous benefits, the Alter Ego Effect. And you’ll see throughout the book the way people have used it for any number of purposes. I first stumbled onto the power of Alter Egos as a teenager, growing up on a six-thousand-acre ranch in a small farming community in Alberta, Canada. I was an outgoing, ultracompetitive, and sports-loving kid. I would challenge my older brothers, Ross and Ryan, to anything. I’d lose most of the time, but I knew that someday I’d be able to beat them, and that when it happened, I’d never let them hear the end of it. Sports were my refuge. Because underneath the cocky, competitive kid was a terribly insecure and worrisome kid. My mind was always rolling over whether people liked me, how to win people over, or how to impress them. When I played sports, all of that went away and my competitive spirit took over. There was just one catch: I couldn’t control my emotions. When I was fourteen, my tiny rural school of Schuler was playing in a volleyball tournament in Golden Prairie, Saskatchewan. During the tournament, a player across the net was driving me nuts. Every time he went to spike the ball or jump for a block, he purposely kicked out his foot, trying to kick me in the groin. The first time, I let it slide, because I thought it was an accident. But he kept at it. I complained to the refs, but it was obvious they weren’t going to call a foul on the home team. As the game went on he started getting more and more brash. Finally, after a solid kick to my groin, I erupted. When his feet touched the ground, I reached through the net, grabbed his shirt, pulled him in, cocked my fist like a loaded pistol, and smashed him in the face through the net. He crumpled. The place went crazy. Or about as crazy as a junior high volleyball tournament can get. Whistles started blowing, players and coaches rushed the floor, and my teammates looked at me like, What the hell just happened? Later that day—after I’d been thrown out of the tournament—my coach, Mr. Henderson, sat me down for a heart-to-heart. He reamed me out for fighting and for making the school look bad. He had wanted to talk to me for a while about my sportsmanship, but a good ol’ fight finally tipped the can. He told me I needed to drastically overhaul my attitude. Mr. Henderson knew I had aspirations to play college football one day, but he told me, “Todd, you’re hard to coach because you’re a know-it-all. Nobody likes playing with you, because you just yell at them for mistakes. And unless you turn things around, you’re going to make it a lot harder than you need to, to get to where you want to go.” Mr. Henderson was one of many mentors I’ve had in life. Some could read that and think he was being harsh. We were close and I respected him. But that didn’t mean I didn’t argue back. Because I did. Like any great coach, he didn’t leave me in a place to figure it out on my own. “If you want to achieve the goals you have, then you need to master what’s happening inside of you,” he told me. “When you get to school on Monday there’s a book in the library I want you to get and read.” I did as I was told and Monday I grabbed the book from the library. Frankly, it was terrible. However, there was one good thing that came out of it, and it was something the author mentioned regarding the mind. It tapped into my curiosity to learn more, and I began to study the inner game, mental toughness, meditation (which back then was still pretty “woo woo”), and how to get into the zone. ANOTHER VERSION OF ME Back in 1877, legendary Native American chief Sitting Bull fled across the border into Canada after the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Colonel George Armstrong Custer. When the natives entered Canada, they were met by Royal Canadian Mounted Police and granted refuge from the U.S. Army. Sitting Bull stayed in the area for four years, brokering peace deals with other tribes until finally returning to the United States and surrendering. My family’s farm isn’t far from where they entered Canada and where they ultimately hunted, gathered, and lived. While this has nothing to do with volleyball outbursts, it does have a lot to do with the rest of this book and helping you find a source of inspiration to unlock a Heroic Self. Growing up on the farm and doing whatever job Dad needed us to do meant we were constantly digging, pulling, and navigating the large swath of open prairie. While out on our tasks for the day, we’d come across old “fire rings,” places where natives camped for the night, and I’d always dig around them to see if I could find any arrowheads or other artifacts.  Because of the rich history of the area, I became extremely interested in Native American culture. One day while lying on the sofa reading up on war dances, a ceremony where a small group of natives would dance around a fire ring, chanting, I learned the purpose was to “gather as one” and channel the spirits to help them in their quest. Suddenly it clicked. I put the book down on my chest and visualized channeling a tribe of warriors to take out onto the field with me. I felt supported, focused, and depended upon. The idea gave me an incredible sense of calm and purpose. The next time I stepped onto the football field, I went out as a tribe of warriors. I was a scrawny but fast little kid, and I wanted to play with more power. It seemed to help keep me focused, but I wanted something more. So, I thought about channeling players I admired, people like Walter Payton, the phenomenal running back for the Chicago Bears, and Ronnie Lott, the devastating defensive player for the San Francisco 49ers. Before football games, I would take five of Payton’s and Lott’s trading cards and strategically slip them into my uniform. I would put one of Payton’s cards inside my helmet, and one on each of my thigh pads, imagining that I would run and see the field just like him. Then I would take Lott’s trading cards and slip one into each shoulder pad, imagining that I could unleash devastating hits and tackles just like he did. I taped everything down and would go on the field as my Frankenstein-like Alter Ego. It was patched together from a few different sources, but it worked. As a result, I played way bigger than my scrawny size. In the end, I reached my goal and played college football. It didn’t solve all my problems by any stretch, because I still dealt with problems at school and in my personal life, but on that Field of Play I left those problems on the sidelines and stepped into the best version of myself so I could compete. Like Shep mentioned, the Alter Ego became a shield for my Core Self and gave me a clear image of who needed to perform on that field to win. THE MYSTERIES OF THE MIND Beloved British actor Rowan Atkinson, famous for his character “Mr. Bean,” was bullied for his stuttering throughout his school years.  As he progressed through school and eventually earned an MSc in electrical engineering from Oxford University, he discovered something profound. While in school, the boy who overarticulated and stuttered developed an interest in the dramatic arts. In the August 23, 2007, issue of Time magazine, Atkinson was asked if he still stuttered. He simply replied, “It comes and goes. I find when I play a character other than myself, the stammering disappears. That may have been some of the inspiration for pursuing the career I did.” Atkinson’s experience highlights a fascinating aspect of the human condition: we don’t know everything there is to know about how the brain works. We’re still working on mapping the “undiscovered country.” However, we do know that our imaginations are an incredible force to create new worlds and new possibilities if used with intention. In other stories I’ll share, athletes have altered aspects of their physical performance by tapping into “another self.” This has happened despite the fact their parents had spent thousands of dollars on skill training that couldn’t fix the problems. It’s a mystery of the mind... but there are some theories on why it happens. DIFFERENT PLACE. DIFFERENT TIME. SAME METHOD. AND JONI JACQUES. Flash forward to my early twenties, and I again returned to this concept of the Alter Ego, although that wasn’t what I called it at the time. I had just started a sports training business in my spare time. I was having success through the referrals I was getting, but it wasn’t enough to sustain it. I knew I could help people, but to actually get out there and market myself tied me up inside. I was insecure about how young I was and worried no one would take me seriously. After all, you need to be at least forty to be taken seriously. (That was actually a rule I had in my head, that forty equals respect. Don’t ask me how it got there, because it was absurd.) It didn’t help that I thought I looked like I was twelve. One afternoon, while I was “self-suppressing,” which means avoiding doing the work I was supposed to, I watched an episode of Oprah that changed my life. That last sentence is a cliché, but clichés are clichés because they’re true. It was 1997 and Joni Jacques shared with the audience how she had purchased a pair of Oprah’s shoes during a charity sale, and it changed her life. She said, “I bought the shoes, and I really loved them, and I kept them in my bedroom. And when I got really, really depressed, and I couldn’t find anybody to talk to, I took the shoes out and—”2 Oprah cut in, “Stood in my shoes. She would stand in my shoes, and now she says she doesn’t have to stand in the shoes as much because she’s standing on her own.” Later Joni shared that “the weight of the world just dropped off. Life totally changed that day.” A lightbulb went off at that moment, and I remembered the Alter Ego I’d use on the sports field. Joni had made something pop. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me to use it in business, but in the end, that world was just another field to perform on. Just as Joni used a pair of shoes to feel more confident, I knew immediately what I was going to use to step into a better version of myself in business. Growing up, all the smart people I knew wore glasses. When we’re young, we establish beliefs and attitudes about the world around us that shape our thoughts and behaviors. I had come to equate being taken seriously and being smart with wearing glasses. So I thought, What if I wore glasses? I figured—as absurd as it sounds —it was worth a try. I thought people looked smart and serious while wearing glasses, so perhaps prospective clients would think so, too. In fact, a variety of studies have found that people wearing glasses are perceived as honest, industrious, smarter, and more dependable.3 Even defense lawyers ask their clients to wear glasses at trial. Lawyer Harvey Slovis explained to New York magazine: “Glasses soften their appearance so that they don’t look capable of committing a crime. I’ve tried cases where there’s been a tremendous amount of evidence, but my client wore glasses and got acquitted. The glasses create a kind of unspoken nerd defense.”4 It also turns out one of the most respected men of the twentieth century and a leader of millions wore glasses when he didn’t need to. Martin Luther King Jr. wore glasses because he felt they “made him look more distinguished.”5 The glasses on the cover of this book look a little like Clark Kent’s, and a little like mine. However, to me, those glasses are Dr. King’s. They’re meant to be a signal and reminder that Great People have used elements of this concept with purpose, and it’s made a huge difference for everyone. Someone reading this, maybe you, could be a harbinger of change and unlock a part of yourself and make something great happen. In an upcoming chapter, I’ll share the powerful science behind what I call a “Totem” or “Artifact,” to “Activate” your Alter Ego. After watching Joni’s story, feeling inspired, I raced to the eyeglass store and bought a pair of prescription-free glasses, much to the bewilderment of the staff. “You’re sure you want to buy glasses without a prescription?” the clerk asked. “Yes, please.” “But you have perfect vision. Why would you want a pair of glasses?” “Because I’m weird, okay? Can I just get the glasses, please?” This was long before glasses became a fashion item like they are today. I started wearing them when I dealt with prospective clients. Just like I used my persona on the sports field. I now transformed into Richard. (Richard is actually my first name, but I had always gone by Todd and still do today.) I put the glasses on only when I needed to be Richard, and I took them off as soon as business was over. A PATTERN EMERGES I spent years working with athletes before I realized that what I had used to give me an edge and to level up my performance was actually something other athletes used, too. I was speaking with one of my coaching clients, a swimmer with her eye on securing a spot on the Olympic swim team, when she mentioned how she became a different version of herself as soon as she dove into the pool. There was something about her comment that made me pause and think, That’s interesting. There was something about what she said that dislodged other, eerily similar comments that other athletes had said to me over the years. Until this point, I hadn’t noticed or paid attention. I keep detailed notes on all my clients, so after she mentioned this “different version” of herself to me, I pawed through old notepads and computer files looking for other similar statements. To my surprise, I didn’t just find one or two athletes who said similar things. I found many.  They didn’t call it an Alter Ego, a Secret Identity, or any other name. Some would call it “a different version of myself,” like the Olympic- hopeful swimmer. Others said they would pretend to be someone from comics or movies, like Wolverine. A lot of athletes mentioned comic book or superhero characters, or sports heroes, as the person they imagined themselves to be. Now that I had noticed the pattern, whenever a client mentioned they would step into a different version of themselves, I would ask what sort of prop they would use. I figured that since I used trading cards and eyeglasses, other people could use something similar to help this other version of themselves come out, too. My hunch was right. Many athletes had something they used. It wasn’t enough for me to notice the pattern. I wanted a way to use what I had found to help other athletes. A NEW WAY Athletes often struggle with feelings of judgment, worry, and criticism. Their inner critic is the reason many players don’t take the last shot to tie the basketball game, why they strike out with runners on second and third with the score tied, or why they miss the putt to take the lead. Something gets in the way. There are any one of a number of tools in the “inner game” tool kit we can use to help someone perform to their capabilities. Some of them are long-term strategies: Meditation Better instruction Relaxation and breathing control Imagery and visualization Skill development Routine development Goal-setting In some cases, even therapy I used them while working with clients. However, when I was being called on a Thursday to help someone who had an important competition on a Saturday, I needed more than just long-term strategies. I needed to help someone now. Some of the strategies already listed could be used in a tight time window, but I found that only one delivered consistent results, time after time. That is why it’s been a pillar strategy, and why I happen to be known as the “Alter Ego guy” in pro sports. Now that I’m two decades into my career, I have shared the strategy beyond the sports and entertainment world. I’ve seen people use the Alter Ego Effect to secure funding for their start-ups, become better parents, launch new online businesses, write books, and pursue goals they’d been sitting on for years. I’ve talked about the Alter Ego Effect throughout the book so far. Now let me show you how it works and why it’s so effective.  Chapter 3 The Power of the Alter Ego Effect Ian is a smart marketing professional and the founder of a multimillion- dollar e-commerce business. In his former life, Ian was a serious tennis player. “I wasn’t just someone winning a few high school matches; in college I won a national championship,” he told me. A fierce competitor who since the age of three had a racket in hand, Ian had the physical abilities to go to the next level. Sadly, those could only take him so far. “Ask anyone who played tennis with me and they’d tell you the same thing: I was a classic case of wasted potential. I had the physical capabilities, but I couldn’t pull it together mentally or emotionally. I was a psychopath on the courts, breaking rackets and punching walls after I lost.” What drove Ian mad with anger, rage, and frustration? I mean, it was only a tennis match after all, right? Except, to Ian, it wasn’t just a tennis match, and he wasn’t just losing at some weekend match. “In my mind, I wasn’t losing a tennis match. I was failing as a human being because being a tennis player was my identity.” Okay, let’s pause and replay that statement: I was failing as a human being because being a tennis player was my identity. Does that resonate with you? If you’re ambitious, it most likely does. Ian’s prophetic statement lies at the beating heart of the Alter Ego Effect and the model I want to walk you through. The reasons why it’s resonated with thousands of people and empowered people to make decisive changes are: 1. It makes sense and you already know how to do this. 2. It allows you to see the multidimensional person you are, with the different roles you play, and be intentional about who shows up where. So you don’t bring a Clark Kent when who you need is a Superman.  3. It gets to the heart of why talented, capable people underperform. They don’t realize it, but they’re being unintentional about what “who” is showing up on their Field of Play and into those Moments of Impact. What do I mean by “who is showing up”? Let me explain. HOW DO YOU BECOME YOU? Before I get into walking you through the stages of building your own Alter Ego or Secret Identity, I want to show you why it’s so powerful and why it’s very easy to slip into a version of yourself that isn’t built to succeed. Over the next few pages, we’re going to be building out a model to explain how we become what we become. Through the rest of the book, we’ll use it to approach life with more confidence, courage, and conviction. To start things off you need to understand you have a Core Self. The Core Self is where possibility exists. It’s this deep inner core where a creative force resides waiting to be activated by the power of intention. Because human beings have this incredible ability to imagine, create, and decide, it gives you the opportunity to change something in an instant. The Core Self is where your deep desires, aspirations, and dreams reside. If you’ve ever avoided admitting to yourself what you truly want, that’s probably your Core Self talking to you. It’s those internal nudges you get to take action and move toward something that excites you or “lights you up.” It’s also the source of “intrinsic motivation.” If you’ve ever found yourself trying to answer a question about “why you do something” or “why you care,” but you can’t find the words, you’re probably being driven by an intrinsic motivator. They’re the intangibles. Something you can’t touch, hold, or show someone else. Human beings have a collection of intrinsic motivators that, when you tap into them, drive a more meaningful level of action. Things like: Growth, the desire to improve and constantly get better Curiosity, the desire to discover new things Mastery, the desire to learn and become excellent at something Adventure, the desire to be challenged and explore the world and ourselves  Enjoyment, the desire to feel satisfied with our efforts and lost in the moment Self-mastery, the desire to feel autonomous and to direct your own life Love, the desire to care deeply for someone or something These intrinsic motivators are shared by everyone in some way or another. They’re baked into the human condition. And they’re extremely important to leading a life of meaning. The problem arises when we start to confuse all the other layers that influence our thinking, emotions, and behaviors with who we really are. If you’ve ever tried to unravel the mystery of how you became who you are, it can feel like being caught in a spiderweb. The more you try, the more you wrap yourself up and get stuck. You can’t explain why you became indecisive when faced with an important decision. You can’t understand why you clam up and get nervous or second-guess ideas when you’re in a room with certain people. You don’t know why you keep talking and talking during a sales call, which talks a potential customer out of the sale. Or why you keep dreaming about starting a business but it never happens. It’s critical to understand that at our core, we are a force for creative possibility, whatever that may be for you. You may have wondered how you became the way you are, or you said to yourself, “... but that’s just me. That’s just the way I am.” Maybe not. Who we are, specifically the person we bring to our various Fields of Play and how we perform, is heavily influenced by external and internal factors. I break these groups of influence into four layers that surround our Core Self. (If you’d like a complete map of the Field of Play Model, go to AlterEgoEffect.com/resources.) LAYER 1: YOUR CORE DRIVERS (WHAT MOTIVATES YOU AT A GRANDER SCALE THAN YOURSELF)  This is where you’ll find what you deeply care about, deeply relate to, and deeply identify with. These give you a sense of purpose and can often be things people feel define them. Your deeper purpose could be related to Family, Community, Nation, Religion, Race, Gender, Identifiable Group, Idea, or Cause. However, as you’ll see, these Core Drivers, and any of the layers, can also affect you negatively as well. LAYER 2: THE BELIEF LAYER (HOW YOU DEFINE YOURSELF AND THE WORLD AROUND YOU) This is where you’ll find your attitudes, beliefs, values, perceptions, experiences, and expectations toward how you see yourself and how you perceive the world around you. [Figure 3.2] LAYER 3: THE ACTION LAYER (HOW YOU SHOW UP) This represents the skills, competencies, and knowledge we’ve developed over time. It’s also the behaviors, actions, and reactions we have on the Field of Play and during our Moments of Impact. [Figure 3.3] LAYER 4: THE FIELD OF PLAY (WHAT’S HAPPENING)  This is the area of context. In this layer, we’re influenced by our actual physical environment; the circumstances; the constraints; the people, places, and things that we interact with; and their expectations. [Figure 3.4] All of these layers influence and shape how you think, feel, and see yourself in relation to the different areas of your life or what we refer to as the Fields of Play. Each of those layers is built up over time. Often, we’re unaware of some behavior, and it’s because the influences are outside of our awareness. We’re going to be looking at these layers more deeply and how to use them to change our results with the help of an Alter Ego. You may see yourself as someone who’s a kind and nice person. (Those are great qualities.) However, on the Field of Play of work, people may take advantage of that kindness and heap more work on you than is fair, or use it to negotiate unfair terms. Instead, I’m asking you to be more intentional about who needs to show up on that field. This isn’t about dishonoring who you are. This is about really looking at the characteristics that will help you succeed, and bringing that part of you to life with the help of an Alter Ego. FROM CHURCH CHOIR TO SOLD-OUT STADIUMS Sundays were a day people looked forward to in the Black Bottom neighborhood on the East Side of Detroit. They’d wake up, put on their Sunday best, and head down to the St. John’s United Methodist Church to “hear an angel sing.” The choir was always filled with great singers, but there was one who stood out. Jada came from a religious family that loved gospel music. Their home was filled with music, and she and her sister would belt out any tune you’d ask them to sing. The people in East Detroit loved it when she’d share her gift with them on Sunday. Her father recognized her unique voice and started taking Jada and her best friend, Alicia, around the Detroit area to talent competitions. After a while, their group of two became a group of six, and they formed a girl group that began rapping and dancing their way to competition wins. As the years went by, this gospel-singing girl from a religious family started to gain more national attention, but a problem emerged. Jada found it hard to perform the more “suggestive” lyrics and dance moves onstage. But she loved the creative expression and freedom she felt up there. Her ambitions were creating an internal conflict. Her solution? She turned to an Alter Ego, “Hailey Storm.” Unlike, Jada, her “real self,” Hailey embraced the provocateur. Hailey Storm wasn’t afraid to shake, shimmy, and shine onstage in front of crowds that were swelling into the thousands. The young gospel-singing girl who grew up dazzling the parishioners of the church had grown into an international superstar. Except, she wasn’t actually from Detroit, her name isn’t Jada, and her Alter Ego wasn’t Hailey Storm. If you didn’t already guess, this superstar is Beyoncé Knowles, from Houston, Texas, and her Alter Ego that helped bring her to fame was Sasha Fierce. However, St. John’s United Methodist Church was the church she wowed people at every Sunday. In multiple interviews, Beyoncé has mentioned how and why she used her Alter Ego: “When I see a video of myself onstage or TV I’m like, ‘Who is that girl?’”1 “I have created an alter ego: things I do when performing I would never do normally. I reveal things about myself that I wouldn’t do in an interview.”2 “I have out-of-body experiences [onstage]. If I cut my leg, if I fall I don’t even feel it. I’m so fearless, I’m not aware of my face or my body.”3  “I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m onstage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am.”4 Then famously, after her 2008 album, I Am... Sasha Fierce, she retired her Alter Ego. She didn’t need her anymore. Whatever transformation or experimentation Beyoncé needed “Sasha” to help with as a performer was complete. It may be difficult to look at your life and call yourself a “performer.” You may not be “performing” in the context of a Beyoncé, Ellen DeGeneres, or David Bowie, with thousands of people expecting a “show,” but if you think about “show” as simply a fulfillment of expectations, you’ll see the parallels very quickly. We do have expectations to fulfill, “a show.” We do have to perform our responsibilities, “a show.” Many of us have ambitions buried inside us that are difficult and challenging, and demand something we’re not quite sure we can fulfill, so why not use an Alter Ego? You have stages you’re already performing on and stages you might like to perform on, and my question is: Would you like to show up there as the heroic version of yourself? I’ve spent more than fifteen thousand hours working one-on-one with elite performers like Olympians and CEOs, all the way down to ten-year- old kids. The Alter Ego Effect is and has been my weapon of choice when trying to help good people do hard things. It’s also a very natural way humans can deal with adversity with more calm, cool, and confidence, and researchers at the University of Minnesota showed its effectiveness. ACTIVATING YOUR HEROIC SELF If you’ve already started to play with this concept in your head, maybe you’ve started to think, Hmm, it would be kind of cool to show up with a secret identity. If something doesn’t work out, I don’t need to be so hard on myself and my secret identity can take the blame. I can leave that identity on the field, like Beyoncé, and save my “Self” from the worries and judgments I normally kick myself with. (I’m taking a few liberties with your self-talk, but let’s run with it, cool?) Well, the idea of using Alter Egos to create some distance between how you currently see yourself and how you’d like to perform is not only smart, it’s backed by research. A lot of my clients initially talk about how their Alter Egos protected them, only to later realize that their Alter Ego was actually who they always were and who they had always wanted to be. This idea of space and distance between our identities is something that researchers are starting to validate. A recent University of Minnesota study of four- and six-year-old children found that to teach kids perseverance, parents should teach children to pretend to be like Batman or another favorite character—because it creates psychological distance,5 the very thing my clients like Ian talk about, and what I’ve observed happens when people create Alter Egos. The study split kids into three groups. The researchers put a toy in a locked glass box and gave the kids a ring of keys. The catch? No key worked. The researchers wanted to see how to improve the children’s executive functioning skills and were interested in seeing how long they would try to unlock the box and what they would try. To help the kids, the researchers gave them what they called strategies. One strategy was to pretend to be Batman. The kids could even wear a cape! Dora the Explorer was a choice, too.6 Researchers found that the kids who worked the longest were the ones who impersonated Batman or Dora, followed by children who just pretended, and, finally, the kids who remained in the first-person perspective.7 The kids impersonating Batman or Dora were more flexible thinkers, they tried the most keys, and they were calmer. One four-year-old even said, “Batman never gets frustrated.”8 The study shows us the power of identity—the power of how we see ourselves—and what happens when we, for a moment in time, can call forth a different self. Superman created Clark Kent so that society would accept him, so he could walk around unnoticed and never consider himself above everyone else. I created “Richard” so I could move away from my insecurities, launch my business, and better serve the people I wanted. Beyoncé created “Sasha Fierce” to explore her creative side and experiment with her art form. I hope this starts to peel back the proverbial onion on why an Alter Ego becomes such an effective agent of change. When you become more intentional about what characteristics will show up on an important Field of Play for you, you’ll Activate a creative energy powering a new level of performance.  If Ian had recognized that just one Field of Play doesn’t define him as a person, he could have avoided the emotional outbursts, frustration, and mental grenades going off in his head. THE ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY WORLD I’m going to reinforce this point throughout the book because I don’t want you to get a sugary sweet taste in your mouth from the words on the page. You’re not a terrible human being if some area of your life is “average.” You won’t put this book down and become Batman, Black Widow, or Black Panther in EVERY. SINGLE. AREA. OF. YOUR. LIFE. Frankly, I’d kick my own ass if that was the book I wrote. Instead, treat this idea like a compass, orientating you to one stage. Find one Field of Play, and let’s look at creating something extraordinary there. It’ll make this process far simpler, far more accessible, and a helluva lot easier to implement. In this section, I want to simply give you the landscape of what’s happening in what is called the “Ordinary World” and the “Extraordinary World” inside the Field of Play Model and prepare you for the journey ahead. [Figure 3.5]  The terms ordinary and extraordinary are in essence metaphors we use to orient you to the common experience you’ll have when you shift your mindset. Also, the short- and long-term effects of your “orientation” will affect your level of confidence to face the challenges ahead. There’s also research to support the positive effects of this shift in mindset. Researchers have found that “self-suppressive activation” and “self- expansive activation” are keys to opening the vault to more confidence and courage.9 10 In the research and work we’ve done, we refer to it as the Ow Mindset and the Wow Mindset. Suppressing the Ow Mindset means your intentions and actions are motivated by negative emotions; you’re trying to prevent bad things from happening. Whether they’re thoughts, feelings, or experiences, you’re “suppressing” to avoid perceived pain, the Ow Mindset. If you approach any activity to avoid a challenge, it’s a form of suppression. When you set the orientation, like a compass, to negative motivation and do something to avoid some pain, or avoid something altogether, it makes it more difficult to see yourself as the person who can solve your own problems. This suppressive cycle of avoiding who you are and who you want to be creates a Trapped Self. “Self-expansive activation,” on the other hand, and what we refer to as the “Wow Mindset,” is when your intentions are motivated by a positive or growth mindset. You’re trying to activate or gain something more in life, whether it’s positive thoughts, emotions, or experiences. Setting the orientation to positive emotion and being motivated to create something positive in your life, over the long term, habitually and as a routine, enhances your self-efficacy. It builds your confidence, courage, and sense of control over your ability to face life’s challenges; it creates a Heroic Self. Becoming clear about your intentions, identifying the benefits you get from an activity, and determining what you want to achieve on a Field of Play is what will help unlock your Heroic Self. Easier said than done, right? That’s why we use Alter Egos and Secret Identities; they help us suspend any disbelief and leverage the power of aligning with someone or something else’s strengths, capabilities, and superpowers. So, to help you see how this plays out in the Alter Ego Effect, there are two worlds we’ve created. We live in a world of opposites, up/down, hot/cold, outside/inside, light/dark, and on and on. The separation is there to delineate the worlds we can choose to live in, the Ordinary and the Extraordinary World. Each of these creates two totally different experiences. Neither is devoid of challenge, but both create a useful view of what happens when we choose to “suppress” or “expand” our Core Self. We’re going to be expanding on these more in the coming chapters as we build out your Alter Ego, but you can see that the separation of these two worlds has created another zone at the center of the Core Self. In the Ordinary World you can find a Trapped Self, and in the Extraordinary World you can find a Heroic Self. Both of these represent the typical experience someone feels, depending on how they’re approaching and experiencing a Field of Play. This is why we call it the Alter Ego Effect. It creates a completely new result or outcome. If you imagine standing at the center of the Field of Play Model, and you turn to face the Ordinary World, the common thoughts, emotions, and experiences you have as you move through each of those layers “suppress” your Core Self and you end up feeling Trapped. How? As with any good story, if there is a hero, there is also an Enemy lurking in the shadows. And because your orientation has been set to “negative or pain,” the Enemy feeds off it and fills you with doubt, worry, self-judgment, avoidance, and fear. All of this can cause you to not show up on a particular Field of Play like you’re capable of and in some cases, not show up at all. Basically, you completely avoid the field or you avoid letting all of your abilities shine. The reason is that you’ve been hit with the powerful Hidden Forces the Enemy deploys to keep you trapped. The Enemy uses all the layers to challenge you. It tells you things like: The Core Drivers Layer: “You’re not meant for that; after all, nobody from your family has ever done that before.” The Belief Layer: “You don’t believe in yourself, because if you just take a look at your past, you’ve quit on a lot of things.” The Action Layer: “You don’t have the skills or knowledge, so you should probably just wait until you do more research, work on it more, and finally get it perfect.” The Field of Play Layer: “You don’t want to make a fool of yourself. Are you sure you want to take such a huge risk? I’d hate for everyone to see what happens if you fail!” The common experience in the Ordinary World is this sense that it’s not you running the show. It’s this feeling like the “real you” is trapped by some negative story, belief, or circumstance you can’t find a way to overcome. But the Enemy is a wily little bugger and it’s always waiting any time it senses just a bit of trepidation, negative motivation, and lack of clear intent on who is going to show up on a Field of Play. The Ordinary World can be summed up with two words: destructive and uninspired. It is destructive to our Core Self and uninspired through our results. So it’s important to realize that this Trapped Self, which most people feel is who they are, isn’t you. The Core Self has resources available to activate a different side of you, the Heroic Self, with the help of an Alter Ego. So, is everything in the Extraordinary World all sunshine and rainbows? If you go back to the center of the Field of Play Model, and you turn to face the Extraordinary World, the common thoughts, emotions, and experiences you have as you move through each of those layers “expand” your Core Self and you end up feeling Heroic. How? In the Extraordinary World, your “orientation” has been set to “positive.” The Enemy has a harder time stopping you with its arrows of doubt, temptation, anger, ego, and fear because you build an Alter Ego using all of the layers to bring a powerful set of characteristics or Superpowers onto a specific Field of Play. You activate this creative force from your Core Self to show up like you want to. And you say things like: The Core Drivers Layer: “I’m doing this for my family.” “I’m doing this for a greater cause.” “I’m doing this to show others in my tribe what can be done.” “I’m doing this to honor the people who came before me.” The Belief Layer: “I am a powerful force for change.” “I love the challenge.” “I can’t wait to see what happens.” The Action Layer: “I may not know everything, but I’ll give it my best.” “I have this incredible power to focus on what’s important.” “I’m extremely calm in high-pressure situations.” The Field of Play Layer: “Failure is a block I turn into a stepping-stone.” “I’ve got so many allies, waiting to help me.” The Extraordinary World is extraordinary because we tackle life head- on, we challenge it, and we don’t let distractions slow us down. It also allows you to suspend disbelief about your capabilities, because you’re taking an Alter Ego onto the Field of Play. And this Alter Ego, just like Beyoncé’s, Sasha Fierce, protects your Core Self from the tools the Enemy uses to stop you. Plus, it turns out there’s research to back up the power of intentionally bringing predefined Superpowers to your world. Martin Seligman and Christopher Petersen are two of the most widely cited researchers of happiness and well-being.11 Over the period of a decade, they studied almost one hundred cultures around the globe. The team tested 150,000 people to determine how people that were coping with adversity and the challenges of life operated. They found that the people who identified their core characteristics or Superpowers and deliberately and intentionally focused on Activating those Superpowers were more resilient and fulfilled. We’ll be digging into uncovering those Superpowers your Alter Ego will Activate throughout the book. THE IMAGINATION GAME You and I have this incredibly powerful ability to create worlds in the mind with our imaginations. Most people are unfortunately using their imaginations to play out scenarios that look like horror stories. It causes them to retract and move away from their goals. But if I asked them to imagine themselves showing up in that same scenario as Wonder Woman, Mother Teresa, or Princess Leia, they could imagine a very different result. (For the guys, you can imagine yourself as Superman, Nelson Mandela, or Yoda. But if you want to be Wonder Woman, I won’t judge.) Let’s play a quick imagination game. Scenario: You have to give a speech to a thousand of your peers in a huge auditorium. How would you perform? Would you be nervous? What would your body language look like? How would you sound to others? Now imagine yourself going onstage as Wonder Woman or Superman. How would you act, look, and sound now? What about as Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela? Or Princess Leia or Yoda? Now, here’s one of the most important points of the book, so pay close attention. From an observer’s perspective, who is the “real you”? Be careful how you answer, because this is the paradox that has tripped up most people in their lives. It is also how many people in the amateur self-help world have led people astray for decades. To help you with your answer, think of it this way: We are judged in our lives by what we do, not by what we think or intend to do.  If I think about calling my mom and telling her exactly why I love her, and I actually pick up the phone and call and tell her, it creates a totally different world. One is Ordinary, the other Extraordinary. If you show up for a speech incredibly nervous but everyone in the audience experiences you as being confident, articulate, and funny, does it really matter to them if you showed up as an “Alter Ego” in order to give them that experience and yourself the reward? No. At the end of the day, I care about how people perform. When I first started my business, I wanted to be a confident, decisive, and articulate professional who could help athletes get better results on their Fields of Play by improving their mental toughness. The problem? That person wasn’t showing up. I was trapped by one of the Hidden Forces the Enemy likes to use to snuff out action taking: worrying about what other people would think of me. People weren’t going to respect me or listen to me because I looked so young. Those doubts, worries, and fears rattling around inside my head got in the way. But when I slipped on a pair of glasses, my Alter Ego stepped forth, activating the specific traits, skills, and beliefs I wanted so I could perform. They were there all along, and “Richard” stepped in to make them happen. This isn’t being fake. Pretending to know about particle physics when you don’t is fake. Using an Alter Ego to entertain a group of physics students when you have been a boring physics professor until now is just bringing the right tools for the job. One of my favorite parts about the feedback I get from clients and people is the sense of amazement people have about the depth and breadth of their abilities. This is the classic case of “it’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle.” Michael Shurtleff, a Broadway and Hollywood casting director in the 1960s and 1970s, said that acting, contrary to what many people believed, is about tapping into what already exists inside. “Most people go into acting to get out of themselves, to get away from their everyday humdrum selves, and become someone else who is glamorous, romantic, unusual, different. And what does acting turn out to be? Using your own self. Working from what’s inside you. Not being someone else but being you in different situations and contexts. Not escaping you but using yourself naked and exposed up there on the stage or silver screen.”12  Daniel Craig isn’t James Bond. But James Bond is somewhere inside Daniel Craig. Most of my clients say the Alter Ego feels more like their truest self— I’ll let you judge that for yourself later. My good friend Ian says, “The Alter Ego is your deepest self, the truest version of you.” This was Joanne’s experience, too. Joanne, who was trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and transactional analysis, began her career working for yacht brokers before working in sales and marketing on the technology side for British Airways in London. A self-described introvert by nature, she had a side that would come out at the office that she never quite understood. “I had experiences early in my career, like getting blocked for a promotion after I landed a huge global deal and after handling accounts worth millions of dollars, that made me realize I had to take charge of my career. I had to go out there and get my career myself. I wasn’t going to leave it in anyone else’s destiny.” Joanne knew she needed to show up differently in her job if she was to succeed. Working in a largely male-dominated world, Joanne began to switch into a strong, bold, decisive woman in meetings with her peers and boss. When Joanne first heard me talk about the Alter Ego, it was like everything clicked for her. “When I heard you talk about it, I thought, That’s Giovanna! I’m part Italian, and when I go into certain work settings, I switch from being the quiet girl who sits in the background into this other persona that has no hang-ups. Where I may normally worry about what someone thinks of me, Giovanna doesn’t think any of that. “All along, Giovanna has shielded and protected me, and helped me to go places I’ve always dreamed of.” When we talked about the concept of protection, she explained that when she was in a toxic environment, where people “did and said unsavory things,” having her Alter Ego helped her realize “it was other people and their issues, not me. I could walk away from the circumstances and the people. You’d walk away from something someone said or did in the boardroom, thinking, This is terrible, but Giovanna could take it. As Giovanna, I stood up for myself. As Giovanna, I can come across as fierce and powerful and scary when I needed to.” Joanne’s Alter Ego was helping her stay rooted in her true sense of Core Self, without succumbing to the poisonous whispers of the Enemy.  “I used to worry that I was too harsh with someone, but I wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t allow my Alter Ego to take charge and be fierce. There’s no place in business if you’re not able to step up for yourself and be fierce when you need to be.” Using her Alter Ego of Giovanna helped Joanne to show up as the best version of herself so she could accomplish her work goals. “Over the last two years, I’ve realized that the Alter Ego is actually who I am, and ultimately, who I’d love to continue being.” Like Ian, Beyoncé, and Joanne, your Alter Ego is really about defining how you want to show up, defining the Superpowers, and borrowing the characteristics of an existing person, character, superhero, animal, or whatever to help Activate your Heroic Self. You get to define who shows up on the Field of Play. The layers that make up your experience of life are fluid, and as I walk you through building your Alter Ego, you’ll get to create the outcome. Which will end up being the most real, most true version of your Core Self? Over the years, psychologists have noticed the benefits of using the Alter Ego concept, too. Psychologist Oliver James chronicles how the late entertainer David Bowie created a number of Alter Egos, including Ziggy Stardust, to achieve his ambition of rock stardom and to overcome an abusive, damaging childhood. James even makes the case that Bowie achieved success and became an emotionally healthy man because he created these personas. “The key was the therapeutic use he had made of personas to develop authentic selves.”13 (Even David Bowie was actually a persona, as the famous entertainer was born David Jones.) The idea of different personas wasn’t confined to only a select few or only to elite performers like Bowie. As James explains, “Working as a therapist, I have not met a single client who does not have several or numerous different selves.”14 James even advocates that all of us can use different personas to achieve our goals, too, just like David Jones used David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust to achieve his, “understanding the different parts of yourself better, identifying them and their origins, and then being much more self-conscious about which person you choose to be in different settings.”15 That’s all we’re doing with the Alter Ego—we’re consciously and intentionally choosing to bring the best version of our “selves” forward for the different roles we play in life.  YOU MAY ALREADY BE DOING THIS I’ve coached, taught, and presented on the Alter Ego Effect for almost two decades. After I explain the concept to people, just about everyone tells me they’ve used an Alter Ego or aspects of one without realizing it. That’s what happened to Kisma, the founder of a coaching and training company. When she first learned about the Alter Ego Effect, she realized that she’d used a variation of it in her previous life as a professional musician. “Playing in professional orchestras, there is a certain level of nerves I would feel before solos. I played the flute and performed a number of concertos, and I had to get into a different mindset. As I would walk across the stage, preparing myself for the concerto, I would think, Who do I want to channel? Who do I want to be like? Sometimes it was Yo-Yo Ma, other times it was Emmanuel Pahud. Whoever I chose, it was like an instant drop- in, as I told myself that I would pull from them.” Without knowing it, Kisma was leveraging some elements of the Alter Ego Effect to show up on her Field of Play and appear during her Moments of Impact—her solos. But she didn’t realize she could use it in other aspects of her life, especially her business, until we met. A lot of people are like Kisma—maybe even you. They’ve intuitively tapped into their imagination and created an Alter Ego. They just haven’t used it to its fullest extent and intentionally, but they recognize its form. It’s familiar to them. They just didn’t have a name for it or a process. Now it’s time to choose your adventure, because just as there are many ways to get to the center of town, the Alter Ego Effect has many doorways you can enter and walk through...  Chapter 4 Your Ordinary World “There’s no way to describe it other than, I felt trapped. Every morning I had the intention of sitting down at my kitchen table to write, but it was like the chair and my butt were magnets that repelled each other. The resistance was incredible, and I felt like I was trapped in this purgatory of wanting to create something, but not having the power to overcome the resistance.” I sat in my airplane seat listening to a well-known author recount what it was like to struggle to pursue his lifelong dream. The funny thing about being in my line of work is that it opens people up to sharing their challenges in life. It always makes for great conversations, especially with people who found a way to overcome those challenges. He went on to tell me that even when he did sit down to write, he’d stare at the blinking cursor on his computer screen and with every flash of the cursor imagine it was saying, “You can’t do this. You can’t do this. You can’t do this.” “It haunted me every time.” He also had a small globe sitting on a shelf nearby that he’d stare at blankly. He said, “I’d stare at that thing for an eternity and get lost in this endless spiral of self-talk that I wasn’t ‘cut out to write’ or whatever words I typed out were going to be rubbish anyway. It was crushing to my soul.” Before I finished the thirty-thousand-foot conversation with the accomplished author, here’s what I knew: He wasn’t a special snowflake. His experience wasn’t particularly unique. I’ve spoken to car enthusiasts who wanted to rebuild and restore a car from scratch, spent years collecting magazines and ordering boxes of parts, and even planned a Saturday to start their project only to walk into their garage, sit on a stool, and watch those boxes collect dust. I’ve heard stories from sales reps who started out driving their cars into vacant parking lots, reclining their seats to hide, and sitting there for hours because they were terrified of knocking on doors to sell their widget. One man even said, “When I put my finger on the electric recline button on my seat and flicked it back, it was like I was sinking into the quicksand of fear. And this heavy weight would start to build on my chest and get heavier and heavier the more I reclined. It was terrible.” I’ve heard athletes tell me about the games they’d play and never attempt a shot because “that was for [insert any name of a better player] to do, not me.” I could go on and on with stories from artists, singers, actors, scientists, students, corporate professionals, traders, mothers, and entrepreneurs, of how some force was stopping them from moving toward their goals or dreams. This is what is known as the Ordinary World. It’s a world where it feels like the “real you” is trapped. The you that has aspirations, dreams, and goals that aren’t being actualized. They aren’t getting out onto the Field of Play so you can see just how good you are or what you can do. It’s frustrating, stressful, and typically creates a pile of self-judgment. It’s also a very easy place to stay stuck, because it’s not life-or-death for most people. I mean, it’s not like there’s a saber-toothed tiger chasing you down and going to devour you. Unless you take action, right? It’s an internal world you know about, filled with aspirations, hopes, dreams, goals, and visions of a better, different, or more evolved version of who you are today. It’s not like you’re a character on a movie screen and the whole audience knows these struggles exist. It’s an easy place to stay trapped. There’s an internal justification of “Nobody will ever know anyway if I don’t do this.” But you will always know. YOUR ORDINARY WORLD By now, you might already be thinking about what your Alter Ego will be, or your Superpower, or maybe just what problem you need solved. There’s no one way to get started. Choose what’s best for you. Start where you’re comfortable. If you get stuck somewhere, skip to the next step. It’s that simple. For the book, I’ve laid out the chapters to begin by delving into the Ordinary World first. Then I’ll help you see the Common and Hidden Forces the Enemy likes to use to suppress and keep you trapped. I’ll help you reveal what has influenced you in the past and what part of yourself has been showing up on your Field of Play and during your Moment of Impact. As you move through this chapter you’ll decide which Field of Play you’ll focus on, so you can enter the lab and create your first Alter Ego. Let’s examine this idea of a Field of Play and uncover what’s “ordinary” about it. Or possibly reveal those Moments of Impact on your field when you feel discouraged, frustrated, and disappointed because you’re not showing up like you want or can and maybe get trapped by any of the Hidden Forces. Now, we’re not going to lay you down on a psychologist’s sofa and unravel years and years of trauma, because, frankly, it’s not needed. The power of the Alter Ego Effect is rooted in its simplicity, and how fast you can apply it to get results. When I first start working with my clients or people I meet and ask them what problems/challenges/frustrations they’re facing, they’ll tell me things like: SPORTS “I’m not taking enough shots during the game.” “My coach is harder on me than my teammates.” “I’m in a slump and I don’t know how to get out of it.” “I have a big tryout coming up and I need to perform at my best.” “I’m overthinking things too much on the field.” BUSINESS “I’m launching a new business but I’m struggling to get new customers.” “I can’t find investors for my start-up.” “I’m not sure what I should do next to grow the company.” “My staff is killing me.” “I’m fed up that my business isn’t growing and I’m burnt out.” CAREER “It’s freaking painful that I can’t finish my manuscript.” “I’m a nice person, and I like being a nice person, but in business, people are walking all over me.” “I’m tired of working so many hours and not getting recognized for my work.” “My entire industry is shifting and the uncertainty is stressing me out.” “I hate walking the red carpet and doing the media tours. All I want to do is act.” I could go on and on in the areas of finance, health and fitness, family, relationships, and personal time and well-being, but I’m sure you get the picture. Life is a challenge. Ask yourself: What is it about a particular area of your life that’s frustrating you? What’s making it “Ordinary”? What don’t you like about it? What’s not working in it? What do you feel you’re capable of doing that you’re not? You know yourself better than anyone. And your ability to be honest and real with yourself here is going to set you up for a lot more success later on in this book. There’s no need to beat yourself up, shame yourself, or judge harshly. Allow yourself to be objective and real. YOUR FIELD OF PLAY “John is a beast, man! He’s relentless and one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.” This was the most common remark I heard from the employees of a client when I interviewed them about their boss back in 2011. John was a proud “Italian Bronx kid” who loved his mom’s manicotti and said “bro” more than anyone I’d ever met. John had flown me into Houston to meet with his staff to help improve the performance and morale of his trading and brokerage company. Ever since the 2008 and 2009 financial meltdown, the company had taken a beating and he was struggling to keep the business profitable. He wanted my help to get his team “running on all cylinders” and “clear up some head trash” that had started to create a toxic environment. Over the course of a few days, I met with thirty-five different team members, from Sylvia the diligent executive assistant to Marcus the stressed-out broker. And each of them would follow John into battle. After talking to all the team members over a few days, John and I sat in his meticulously decorated office with sports memorabilia lining the walls and filling the shelves of his bookcases. We unpacked the events of the past few days and talked about the future. When John originally reached out to me, he had heard about me from an NBA client who was his friend. I’d helped the friend build out an Alter Ego and John was interested in doing so, too, because he felt like he lost his edge. Now sitting there, months after we started working together, I asked him, “How’s your Alter Ego working out for you?” “You should probably ask my wife and kids that question!” he said and laughed. “So it’s working.” “Bro! You have no idea. You nailed it. She’s got a stack of cannolis waiting for you to take back to Nu Yahk.” Earlier, I mentioned how we have different roles we play in life. Each of these roles—parent, spouse, business owner, leader, sister, son— corresponds to a Field of Play. You can pick any Field of Play that you want to build an Alter Ego for and, just like John, you might automatically default to thinking about your professional life, sport, or vocation. But in John’s case, he discovered he didn’t need any more help with his business. He already had a great work ethic and good attitude, and his current working persona was already a “beast.” His home life, though, was a completely different story. He’d grown up in a family where his dad was never around, and when he was around he was either yelling at the kids or buried in “his chair” ignoring everyone. John’s home life was starting to mirror his father’s and he hated it. So instead of taking more of his energy and devoting it to his work, we diverted it to his home-life Field of Play. John built out his Alter Ego to be like his best friend’s dad back in New York growing up. “Timmy’s dad was always roughhousin’ with us, crackin’ jokes, threw the best neighborhood barbecues, and just flat-out loved life. He was fun to be around.” John found out through the process that the more he turned his attention to creating an inspiring home life, the more it transformed his work life, and his team loved him for it. I mentioned that his team called him a “beast” over and over again. Now here’s the thing: they already had respect for his work ethic and business savvy, but they called him a “beast” and “inspiring” because of what he had become at home. As you work through this book, I’d encourage you to think about one Field of Play to build your Alter Ego for. Is it your personal life? Some people lead phenomenal professional lives, easily achieving success. But when you look at their personal lives, they are less than ideal. They have no idea how to connect or form intimate, loving, stable relationships with their significant others, family, friends, or kids. Although most of my work with clients starts in their professional worlds or athletic worlds, as with John we often slip into their personal lives when they realize they want to be a better spouse or a parent. Do you want an Alter Ego for your professional life? Some people lead awesome personal lives. They have loving, supportive relationships, but when it comes to achieving success professionally, they haven’t made the impact they dream of. I recommend going with the Field of Play that’s causing you the most frustration, angst, or heartache. It’s the one where building an Alter Ego is going to make a monumental impact on your life. By the way, there are two reasons I call it the Field of Play. The first one is the obvious reference to the sports world and the idea that there are chalk lines, borders, and a starting and end point to the activity happening on the field. This is to help you recognize that we carry ourselves into many different fields in our lives, many different stages and arenas. And each one demands a different set of skills, attitudes, and mindsets to be successful. It’s one of the reasons why the Alter Ego Effect is so powerful: you become truly intentional about who’s ending up on that field. The second reason I use Field of Play is because of the final word, play. It’s to remind you that you can have fun with this process. Life is already hard enough, and serious things or real struggles are a natural part of the unfolding of life. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take that same playful attitude you had when you were a kid and play with this concept and have fun with it. It’s exactly what John did, and now it’s your turn. THE LITTLE SHOP OWNER THAT COULD MaryAnn and her husband opened an automotive repair shop in 1999. Her biggest challenge was her customers. She had come from the banking world, so she understood the financial pillar of running a business. But when customers called and she was the one to answer, they didn’t want to talk with her. They wanted to speak to a technician or owner—they wanted to speak to a man, not a woman. “I was frustrated with people,” MaryAnn admits. “But when I stayed up one night and thought about it, and asked, ‘What am I really frustrated with?’ I realized it was myself, and my inability to walk people through that process and help them.” MaryAnn knew she was smart and competent, but she didn’t sound like it on the phone, so of course people didn’t want to speak to her. She set out to do two things. First, she had to go get the skills and knowledge she needed, then second, she created an Alter Ego to help her show up the way she wanted during her Moment of Impact (the customer phone call). Before long, people were calling to specifically talk to her about their vehicle issues, and she especially made other women comfortable because they were being helped by a woman in an industry dominated by men. What’s happening in your Ordinary World may also be what’s not happening. It could be what you’re avoiding. Maybe you started a business, but you aren’t out there getting the message out about your new products or services or making sales calls. Maybe you want to start a business, but you haven’t. Maybe you want to ask for a raise or a promotion, but you haven’t. It’s the classic and often-quoted quip from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.” Maybe you have what I call “focus-itis,” the inability to focus on one thing and get it finished, which leaves you with a lot of wasted effort and nothing to show for the blood, sweat, and tears. Whatever it might be, use this framework to get clear about your Ordinary World, so we can unleash your true performance capabilities.  THE FIVE BRIDGES TO PROGRESS Quick question: Have you paid attention to the content or topic of the conversations you’ve had with people lately? I can guarantee they’ll fall into one of the following Five Bridges. I refer to them as bridges because bridges are pathways to allow things to come in and out of an area. For you, these Five Bridges can either help or hurt the quality of your professional, athletic, or personal life. Stopping Starting Continuing Less of More of The vast majority of life’s conversations when it comes to someone changing something is found in one of those five intentions. “I want to stop smoking... stop eating unhealthy... stop drinking so much... stop going to bed so late... stop yelling at my kids... stop leaving things to the last minute...” “I want to start eating more vegetables... start working out in the morning... start marketing my business more consistently... start having more fun... start spending evenings with my kids...” “I want to continue working out... I want to continue my pregame routine... I want to continue engaging on social media for my business... I want to continue having weekly team meetings...” “I want to watch less TV... I want to spend less time on social media... I want to feel less tired after lunch... I want to spend less time with that toxic group of people...” “I want to read more good books... I want to go on more date nights with my wife... I want to hang out with friends more... I want to swim more... I want to laugh more...” If you really started to pay attention to your life, you’d find these topics repeat themselves hourly. For the purposes of this exercise and to help you uncover even more helpful material to work with on our quest, we’re going to add one final filter to your Five Bridges. Thinking, feeling, doing, and experiencing.  These are the four planes we’re always living in: What are you thinking, what are you feeling, what are you doing, and what are you experiencing or getting as a result? In the context of your Ordinary World and the Field of Play you’ve chosen, we’re going to use the Five Bridges framework throughout the book to help you get clear about what’s working and not working and power up your Alter Ego. Because we’re specifically talking about the results or outcomes you’d like to change, we’ll only be using two of the “bridges” to help define your Ordinary World on the specific Field of Play you’ve chosen. Make a list for each category below, and ask yourself, “What do I want to...” Stop experiencing/stop getting as a result or outcome Experience less of/get less of To make it easier for you, these results would all be things you could hear, see, taste, touch, or smell. For example, maybe you want to: Stop not seeing my creative work get out there Experience less incomplete work Stop seeing my sales numbers decline Hear fewer people complain about my cooking/painting/writing or creative work Stop seeing my day wasted with social media Stop living where I’m at Lose less Stop hearing my coach criticize my poor performance Spend less Eat less Hear less rejection Make fewer bogies as a golfer Take fewer penalties Spend less time on the bench Spend less time at home Stop seeing my