What if the games we played as children held the greatest gift to helping us achieve more today?”
That’s how this book grabbed me. This is a frickin’ fantastic book.
This book, The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman is a life-changing book for business and personal reasons. It is amazing.
This book is exactly what it says it is – creating a superhero, or an alter ego, of yourself. That’s basically what his, the author, business does – he works with the world’s elite athletes, movie stars, people at the very top of their field, and helps them create their alter ego to become the best version of themselves on whatever field of play they’re in.
An example would be working with an NFL player. When they step out onto that field on game day, who do they want to become? It’s the same with an actor, a CEO, or for a father who doesn’t get to see their kids often and wants to become the best father imaginable. Who do you become on that field of play when you are with your kids.
He describes not only why this works, but how he developed it, in an easy to understand way so it’s not boring at all. It’s really fun to read about and he gives you the step-by-step on how you can do this for yourself.
Step 1: Write a List of Things You Want to Stop Doing/Start Doing
He starts out with what this is all about. And getting into how you develop your own alter ego, to become the best version of yourself, is in writing a list of what you want to stop doing or do less of. My list came to 20 things. So, when you have that list, naturally the next thing you think about is what you want to do more of. And then that’s where it all begins. You start to think, what do I like about myself, my behaviors, my character traits, etc.? And then … How do I do more of what I like?
Step 2: Define Your Enemy
The very next thing he does in the book is to define the enemy. The enemy is not a person or a place or an animal or anything like that. It’s actually the traits that you don’t like about yourself when you’re on that field of play. Things that you kind of want to go away. Back to the example of an NFL player, he talks about fear, doubt, and self-doubt. Those feelings or emotions have no place in that game. If you’re on the field, you want, you need to play your best game, right? So he talks about defining the enemy and what you don’t want to happen on your field of play.
Some of the characteristics he mentions are:
- getting anxious
- getting too emotional at certain times where it doesn’t work for you
- doubting yourself
- being fearful
- feeling like an imposter
You are pulling these character traits that you don’t want to show up “out of the shadows”. You can identify them and then you find a way, through your alter ego, to cast those aside so that the best version of you can come through.
The second thing he says to do is write a story. We should all know by now; the power of story is one of the strongest powers we have in the universe. Our brain works around story. The author tells us to create your own story – how you want your story to be written or be told.
Step 3: Determine Your Why
The third part is the “Power of a Mission”. It’s very important to determine “why” you are even doing this in the first place. You need to have a core mission to be able to drive you forward and ‘power’ what you do and who you are. This step dives into how you define what your mission is.
Step 4: Define Your Superhero Powers
The fourth part is defining your actual superhero powers, and then crafting a name. A lot goes into this and this is a really fun exercise to do. And you can do it in a couple of ways. One way is you can just write out all of the characteristics that you would want your superhero, your alter ego, to have. Once you write down all of the characteristics, step back and take a look at that list. Someone, some thing, some animal might develop for you that you’ll be able to spot. OR… Some of you might actually already have a superhero in mind whether it be Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman or whether it’s a lion or a fox or a mountain or anything like that. Then you take that image, and list out the characteristics of that image, ie. a lion would be powerful, fierce, confident, loyal etc.
In the book, he suggests three different prompts for you to do this.
- Start with the list of superpowers.
- Choose someone or something that you really admire.
- Make sure it’s right in front of you, meaning, whatever it is that you choose to be the inspiration of your alter ego, make sure you have that image in your daily life… whether it’s a picture on your office wall, or in your wallet, or on your phone or an artifact or whatever it is, just make sure it’s always there so you can always call it forward when you need it.
And then you customize it. Here the author goes through a whole process about how you customize your alter ego, and you give it a name and so on.
Step 5: Breathing Life into Your Alter Ego
Breathing life into your new alter ego. In this section, he walks you through two layers of breathing life into it. The first one is how are you going to show up? In thinking about your field of play, whether it be feeling more confident standing in front of people and giving presentations, or whether you want to be more confident playing soccer or at the gym or in communicating with your partner or with your employees, whatever it is you want to feel more confident in – how do you want to show up? The second layer is – who are you? If you are on the sidelines and you’re watching someone approach their “game” or situation on their field, how would you describe them? The author encourages you to write in detail who this person is and how they show up.
Step 6: Your Heroic Origin Story
The sixth part is your heroic origin story. You are really going to want to write an origin story for this Alter Ego to help you connect to it deeply. Such as how this developed, who they are, what they’ve been through, what makes them who they are today, what struggles they have faced, what triumphs they have won, this is really breathing even more life into making your alter ego that much stronger.
Step 7: Activate Your Alter Ego
And then the seventh part is activating your Alter Ego with a totem or an artifact (my personal favorite part of this journey). This is also a really fun part he walks you through. It covers how you find whatever that artifact is going to be for you. For me it’s a watch. For other people, it could be an article of clothing – for him it’s eyeglasses. Which is why eyeglasses are on the cover of his book (he actually doesn’t need glasses.) He puts on these glasses when he wants to activate his alter ego such as when he’s going into a big client meeting or anyplace where he wants his alter ego to show.
For other people, it could be ‘superpower pills’ like a tin of Altoids – when you grab one and put it in your mouth and step onto your field of play, you’re becoming the best version of who you are – activating your alter ego. For someone else it could be stomping your left foot three times or cracking your knuckles (gross). Whatever it is, it’s just something that works for you and is going to activate your alter ego when you need it.
It is All Just Child’s Play?
He says, “Now all of this could sound like children’s games to some, stomping a foot, yanking up socks, playing with a pebble, that stuff’s for kids, and I’m a grown adult. And you’re right, if that’s your attitude, then just go with it. It’s just that you’re denying science, you’re denying the way your mind already works, and you’re denying the way people live and perform.”
Again, the business this author created is working with high-performing people and making them the best in their fields. And this is how he does it – through helping them develop their alter ego. And a big part of that is how they activate it.
Not Just for Your Professional Life
Lastly, there is another part of this book that I love and it’s a quote from one of his clients… “Every time I come home from my office and before I step into our home, I pause, grab a bracelet my daughter made for me and slide it on. Now it’s time for fun dad to show up, not the coach, the businessman, the investor. It’s fun dad.”
I love this. After reading this book, I took so many notes and had so much fun developing my alter ego to be the best version of myself at work and to grow my business and who I want to be as head of this company. AND I also developed another alter ego that when I go home and I’m with my kids, I am fully present for them. Because I want them to say, “I have the best mom in the world,” and how am I going to make that happen? Well, I’m going to show up for them, and I’m going to be the best mom in the world for them. And that’s a completely different artifact that I have for being that best version of myself. 😊
So, anyway, that’s my long history of this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.