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The 'Batman Effect': How having an alter ego empowers you (2020)
- drewcoo 4y ago
- soared 4y agoFull article: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200817-the-batman-effect-how-having-an-alter-ego-empowers-you?ocid=global_worklife_rss https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200817-the-batman-eff...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Barrin92 4y agoImmediately made me think of VTubing. A lot of vtubers now are among the most popular streaming channels on Youtube and many of them are probably what you could call above average performers in terms of what content they put out, from music to narrative fiction. Also reminded of me of an interview with Buckethead explaining his alter ego: ""Because I was always super scared to play, and I didn't really link that together, I just thought 'This is weird.' Like a horror movie guy. And when he saw it he was like 'You should just go for it!' I was like 'That would be cool.' Because I could do everything I liked doing as this character that I'm totally scared to death to do otherwise. And it applied to all the stuff I like, like Disneyland and martial arts and dancing, all that stuff I liked. I was like, 'I can't do it just like me.' It was a great way to get all the stuff out."
- agumonkey 4y agoFrench guitarist Matthieu Cheddid, althought not hiding as much, says he changed his appearance and created some kind of persona (so-called M) to drop his fears to be a public artist.
- bobkazamakis 4y agoYou bring guitar into the idea of an alter ego without https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead
- vmception 4y agoMy friends that I’ve taken to masquarades (or just worn fun masks to clubs with) have said similar things. Its like despite being goofier and less conspicuous, they feel so much more free
- dylan604 4y agoThis is why Halloween is so popular with adults. Once you get past the lazy Sexy _____ costumes and into the ones that took some thought, you wind up meeting some interesting people. If you take the time to come up with your costume, you naturally start becoming that character in just the decisions of what they would/wouldn't wear because you're already thinking of the back story.
- huachimingo 4y agoBy coincidence, I heard this at morning too: "Give a man a mask and he will tell the truth" - Oscar Wilde
- scns 4y agoCarnival comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival
- unwind 4y agoOkay I will fly the Old Guy flag proudly and paste a definition: A VTuber, or virtual YouTuber, is an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics and real-time motion capture software or technology. Straight from Wikipedia.
- drBonkers 4y agoI don't think this one is an old guy thing. No one I know in their 20s would know what a VTuber is. Thanks for the definition.
- psyc 4y agoI'm in my forties and have known exactly what this was for years (ever since Hatsune Miku), but still had to look up the term "VTuber", which I did not recognize.
- csande17 4y agoIf you want to get nitpicky, Hatsune Miku is a voice synthesizer and character design that anyone can use, whereas VTubers usually have one person who "is" the character. A VTuber is basically the video equivalent of someone who uses a fake name on an internet forum; fans generally think of them as real people with coherent personalities. (Whereas any personality Hatsune Miku has is more like a loose convention among all the different artists who use the character.)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mwlp 4y agoRelated: https://youtu.be/OqvQeI_ekVA?t=30 https://youtu.be/OqvQeI_ekVA?t=30 I imagine them being faceless streamers does more to ease their anxiety than their fabricated persona. But my imagination doesn't come with a p-val so guess you'd have to ask them.
- amelius 4y agoPerhaps schizophrenia has an evolutionary advantage?
- Comevius 4y agoI wonder if this comes with side effects, like how mindfulness increases selfishness in those who think that their existence is independent from the existence of others, which is how most people in Western countries think. Playfulness is probably a healthier option for shifting your perception compared to this much self-distancing.
- emerged 4y agoYou managed to shit on both westerners and people who use mindfulness… for no real reason. Or maybe it was your alter ego? Anyway, I used to have an alter ego. But I stopped using it for years, then one day a guy I never met got really mad at me because he didn’t want to use my nickname. It was an odd moment because I had never met him and don’t even use that nickname. He just heard it from someone else and the existence of a nickname apparently made him angry. I quit shortly after because the manager who was also on the call didn’t even react as this guy I never met yelled at me for reasons that made no sense.
- katzgrau 4y ago> like how mindfulness increases selfishness in those who think that their existence is independent from the existence of others ... If one was really being mindful, they'd eventually see that the existence of their "self" is only possible in relation to others existing. So there's the self and the other, but in essence, one. And that's one of the reasons the golden rule makes so much sense. So I wouldn't blame mindfulness for any side effects. Negative side effects are the result of the ego/self creeping back into the picture.
- Comevius 4y agoThe problem might not be with mindfulness, but with our self-centered culture, which causes this secularized mindfulness to be a snake oil with a few personal benefits at best. It's more of a self-discipline or concentration tool when you strip it from it's culture, which used to involve ethics as I understand.
- 4y ago
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoDo we not all have a professional alter ego? I'm a completely different guy when I'm at work, I don't give myself a different name, and it's not the same pressure as a rock star but still, it seems natural.
- fsloth 4y agoI am at least and it's terribly exhausting. Need to pretend I care about the product, care about being perceived as a high output individual contributor etc. Need to pretend I'm good with people and generally cheery. I am all of those things at work, but I need to say to myself "be all of these things" and consciously think about "ok how would or should the professional me act in this situation". Maybe everyone does it to an extent, I don't know. Professional life has certain expectations I find artificial and incomprehensible (multiple weird games going on behind the scenes etc) so I try to cope. Weird rules like "every engineer is expected to take pride in their work and have their professional output be a matter of honor" and so on. My take is - "meh. You pay me. I write your high quality code. It's terribly important but also terribly tedious and boring. I really do not appreciate the hours I need to waste at my job but that's what it means to earn a living as a cog in a machine and I seem to be a pretty well performing cog". Every programmer probably dreams of winning a lottery so they could focus on writing programs they find interesting and not just those that pay the bills.
- joshgachnang 4y agoIt is so exhausting. I made the mistake of letting the real me peek out during a "why are you leaving?" conversation and holy hell it led to a kerfuffle: "Why are you leaving?" "<3 other reasons> And, I'm a bit bored, the product and roadmap aren't very technically challenging to me". Queue worried texts and emails from all over the company, thinking my boss isn't explaining the roadmap or hiding things, trying to figure out how to get me to stay, etc. It was a cool company that definitely helped people, but at the end of the day, it's basically a survey app and we were going to integrate with other companies that were doing the challenging technical bits. Lesson learned.
- 4y ago
- danielmarkbruce 4y agoTrump seems to use this to great effect....
- google234123 4y agoFake it 'til you make it - though most people we see or hear about in the news are outliers :p
- jollybean 4y agoChris Gaines [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Gaines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Gaines
- V-2 4y agoTo me the effect occurs - to some extent - with regard to which language I speak.
- phreack 4y agoYou might like this article https://lithub.com/are-we-different-people-in-different-languages/ https://lithub.com/are-we-different-people-in-different-lang...
- thenerdhead 4y agoI taught comedy improv for many years. One tip I would give new performers is to adopt an alter ego for the stage (a fun fake name and/or personality) and to choose a totem (an object) that they wear to do just that such as shoes, a shirt, watch, etc. This helped so many different people such as accountants, pre-k teachers, stay-at-home moms, and even university professors get out of their shells, prevent their stage fright, and to be more energetic on-stage when their normal persona is calm, cool, and collected. I do believe we also have an alter ego in three different situations such as work, home, and play. Another common thing I would teach is that you can alter your characters in scenes easily by adopting one of those personas of the character you're portraying. I believe many people adopt an alter ego without knowing it today. These are YouTubers, Streamers, Conference Speakers, and really anything where there's a concept of a "stage". The book "The Alter Ego Effect" by Todd Herman goes into this further, but my favorite material on this is "Impro" by Keith Johnstone.
- hesdeadjim 4y agoI’ve found five years of D&D to have a similar, and persistent, effect. In the beginning I found it hard to relax and “yes and” what was going on. Fast forward to now, I can be in character in front of random people without a hint of anxiety. It was a completely unexpected side-effect of playing, and I’ve also seen a general increase in creativity as well.
- sklargh 4y agoCame here thinking about how much my time as a B|X ref has helped me socially/professionally.
- wilihybrid 4y agoWant to tell what B and X stand for here apart from random consonants?
- Slenth 4y agoA bit of googling suggest this might stand for Basic and Expert dungeons and dragons, after the Basic / Expert boxes the rules came in
- bovermyer 4y agoWhen does it stop being an alter ego and become dissociative identity disorder?
- macksd 4y agoWhen it starts being involuntary and harmful, or perhaps in response to emotional trauma?
- astrange 4y agoAll personality disorders contain normal traits; you’re not supposed to go around diagnosing or curing people unless it’s literally causing them to be “disordered” because of it. I’ve seen a claim that DID is actually caused by psychologists telling suggestible people they’re supposed to have DID, but maybe mr. SSC guy was joking about that one.
- cwaffles 4y agoI recall there was an article of mental models to make the most in life, knowing that their time on Earth is limited. For example one would try to live like they are the protagonist of their own life movie, living like a rock star. Does anyone recall an article like that?
- evocatus 4y agoWhat happens when you assume the alter ego in perpetuity? Where does the "original ego" go?
- tyurok 4y agoArt imitates life until life imitates art.
- QuikAccount 4y agoFunny that you ask this. I recall reading about this a while ago although I can't find what I was reading. Apparently this is called "ego suicide." Killing your original self and letting the personality you created takeover your entire being.
- TeaDude 4y agoI have an further question. No pressure if you don't remember or it wasn't listed. (I'm really interested in anyone who can answer this) Is there a term for when you believe that that "original ego" was killed by something else? Be it killed by "the world" or some serious life event or revelation or something.
- evocatus 4y agoThis is the ego death. You could fill libraries with what has been written on this phenomenon, though under many different names.
- kevin_b_er 4y agoLooking at the wikipedia page, I'd say "ego death" sounds like a very different concept. What the parent posters are talking about is when you have two personalities: the original and the mask, but the mask stays on so long it becomes the new permanent personality. The original "ego" is gone and already replaced. "ego death" sounds like a loss of the only personality. There's no alternate.
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ankit219 4y agoI just wonder what are the other things from comic books that might actually turn out to be true if there is research on them.
- version_five 4y agoJust to nitpick, "Bruce Wayne" is the alter ego of batman, not the other way around, at least in the Chris Nolan movies. In reality he's smart and tough and hardened by the League of Shadows, etc. But as Bruce Wayne he plays a bimbo billionaire so that nobody will realize who he actually is.
- tomcam 4y agoMany consider me a bimbo thousandaire
- hackernewds 4y agodon't be so harsh on yourself. there is no such thing
- tomcam 4y agoBimbo hundredaire?
- Rzor 4y agoIn many comic books too. He thinks of himself as Batman, not Bruce Wayne, and never feels entirely comfortable without the mask.
- endominus 4y agoNot just the Nolan movies; a number of comics mention that, and a memorable scene in Batman Beyond makes it even more explicit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t7yiN_Z5eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t7yiN_Z5eg
- FridgeSeal 4y agoEven better, these panels from the comics: https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/a1QNOLv_700b.jpg https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/a1QNOLv_700b.jpg
- throw7 4y ago
- smoe 4y agoReminded me of something my mother told me about her school years in Finland in around the 60s: In the beginning of the year for the foreign language classes every student had to came up with a fictional persona that fits the culture of the language being learned and stick with it during the entire year. As I understand one of the main rationales was, that if it less likely for you to fall back to the native tongue when you don't know how to say something when you are playing a role. I found that pretty interesting. I have no idea how widespread this sort of thing is/was.
- stiltzkin 4y agoNot sure if related but when i was an ESL student in Canada it was really common to see Asian students using English names as their natives ones are difficult to pronounce, maybe changing your name could play part of it.
- langsoul-com 4y agoDo you know how effective it was? Sounds like an interesting idea. I
- netsharc 4y agoHere's someone (one of many DDG hits[1]) talking about personality changes when speaking different languages: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-bilingualism-almost-drove-me-crazy https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-bilingualism-almost-d... [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=personality+when+speaking+different+languages&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=personality+when+speaking+differen...
- lioeters 4y agoWhen I studied French in high school, we started by choosing a French name. It's not necessarily a fictional persona, but it had the same effect on me - I was able to act like (what I imagined to be) a French person, without worrying about how it reflects on my "real" self.
- tomcam 4y agoChildish Gambino, Donald Glover’s alter ego, covering a song by Chris Gaines, Garth Brooks’ alter ego: https://youtu.be/yBPKdl_YeqE https://youtu.be/yBPKdl_YeqE
- egypturnash 4y agoFurries have known this power for decades.
- unknownus3r 4y agoStrongly disagree. While “alter ego” helps short term it just delays the reckoning and imposter syndrome for later and leads to identity issues and confusion. Take the hard path in the present and watch it get easier later
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y ago> leads to identity issues and confusion I was going to agree with you, but what do you define as identity here? Aren't people really a collection of hundreds of thousands of various spirits they have encountered and chosen to imitate? Most primarily their parents/siblings and beyond that spirits from friendships, books, religious study, movies/TV, music, etc. All of these are mini alter egos and shape an overall dynamic. At the core one could argue there's that baseline "chooser" identity which is fairly set in stone and has predisposed traits based on some initial nature/nurture settings.
- blueflow 4y agoWhat you noticed is correct, the concept of "identity" is constructed. Stop caring who or what you actually are and you gain like, several new dimensions of freedom and agency.
- softfalcon 4y agoYeah, what you say makes sense. Pretending you’re something else can be detrimental for a lot of folks. I’m not going to say the article is wrong either though. Some folks need to pretend they’re something before they graduate to the level of actually living the ideals they want for themselves. Everyone is different. In my opinion, at least for me, what you are saying is the long game truth though. The people I meet who are truly at peace with themselves and live with a quiet acceptance of who they are, seem to do exactly what you say. These folks make the hard decisions necessary to define for themselves who they want to be. This is difficult but forces them to accept who they are and what actions they take. I’m sure some folks will say, “well that’s just a multifaceted person playing many roles”. However, I think there is merit in what you’re saying. Reducing a strong character down to “many roles” seems almost disingenuous when that person might think of their actions and person as singular. I think what you say accepts people as who they are and holds them accountable as such, without masks or personas, for better or worse.
- LAC-Tech 4y agoThis can most clearly be seen in professional wrestling, where their alter egos are front and centre of the whole presentation.
- anyfactor 4y agoWhat's up, you got Ed Chambers. https://youtube.com/watch?v=vnug6i5SkQQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=vnug6i5SkQQ
- bigmattystyles 4y agoThis is an anecdote of 1, but I grew up in France speaking French and moved to the US at 11. I don't have an accent when I speak English or French. I'm truly bilingual. I feel like I have way less anxiety, am more relaxed and have more confidence when I speak French, and it's not just the setting. I've done it for long periods of time professionally, on dates, etc.. I don't know if there's anything to this. To me it's always felt like there was.
- ryugarden 4y agoI believe this phenomenon is called “linguistic relativity”, or “The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis” [1], which says that a language affects its speakers' cognition or even personality. I'm probably not truly bilingual, my native lanuguage is Ukrainian, but I too feel as if my personality and behavior is slightly different when I talk or write in English. Further reading: 1 // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://qz.com/925630/feel-more-fun-in-french-your-personality-can-change-depending-on-the-language-you-speak/amp/ https://qz.com/925630/feel-more-fun-in-french-your-personali... Chen et al 2010, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167210385360 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014616721038536... Chen et al 2013, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12040 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12040 Athanasopoulos et al 2020, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02643294.2020.1769050 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02643294.2020.17... M. Keith Chen 2012, https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3167&context=cowles-discussion-paper-series https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
- earthboundkid 4y agoI was told I had a different personality in English by fellow Japanese learners. I think it’s sort of common.
- gverrilla 4y agoI'm bilingual portuguese/english, and two completely different personalities. I have a really hard time flirting in english, for instance, when in portuguese it's very easy. Also I always write perfectly in portuguese very rarely mispelling a word, whereas I'm a full blown dislexic in english. I think it only shows how much language is the code of learning.. I learned to read and write both in E|P at the same time, and spoke english daily for 2 years as a child in Africa, but after that I went back to speaking only portuguese in Brazil, and having english mostly for the sole purpose of entertainment. Another notable differences I could notice is that with English I have a much more flexible accent, which can easily vary after spending a few days speaking it on travels.
- restlessdesign 4y agoGeorge likes his chicken spicy.
- SMAAART 4y agoThat's interesting because as recently as a couple of months ago I read "The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life" and found it pretty good for at least 90% of it. There's something about the overall principle, worth investigating on an individual basis.
- GartzenDeHaes 4y agoYou'll see politicians do this back stage at events. There will be some jet lagged, annoyed guy who is late for an appointment standing there. Then some reporter will come up, turn on their camera lights and suddenly the guy from on TV is there, confident, cool, and on point. CLICK the lights go off and late-for-an-appointment guy is back. It's kind of disturbing if you're not expecting it.
- goatherders 4y agoTed Cruz is well known for being 2 people. A Texas monthly pc a couple years ago caught both sides at once when a staffer kept letting an elevator door ding as it was being held open. Ted was doing his politics side with the reporter and lost it on the staffer then went back to gentle Ted.
- teddyh 4y agoHave you ever had a conversation with a parent of a small child? They’re like “Yes, very nice, we should totall—PUT THAT DOWN THIS INSTANT GREGORY—totally get together next week or so. <smile>”.
- supertofu 4y agoWow. I've never been able to articulate this experience, but it is something I find very jarring. It's jarring for me to see people behave outside of their usual persona. A favorite teacher of mine once had his young son in class for some reason. The class was normal except for when the son started playing with something he shouldn't have. The teacher snapped at the son with such anger and fear. I had never seen the teacher behave this way and it was deeply upsetting at the time.
- noisy_boy 4y agoBiden's hot mic gaffe was another example - from gentle grandpa and distinguished statesman to a glimpse into the "hunan" side
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y ago
- throw7 4y agoAll the world's a stage and we a merely players.
- b212 4y agoFunny fact: I’m a totally different person speaking English (I’m not a native English speaker). Much more outgoing, confident and extrovert. It’s been like that since I was a kid. I think I might even like my English-self more than the actual me, lol :)
- milleramp 4y agoAldous Huxley wrote about this in Antic Hay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antic_Hay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antic_Hay
- everybodyknows 4y agoHuxley's second novel. His first, highly autobiographical, was published two years prior -- Crome Yellow. Discussed on HN a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30997257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30997257
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- firecall 4y agoThe author gets is backwards though. Bryce Wayne is the 'alter ego'. Batman is the OG persona!
- soheil 4y ago> Adopting an alter ego is an extreme form of ‘self-distancing’ or self-delusion in doublethink terminology.
- goodoldneon 4y agoThis reminds me of the great Vonnegut short story “Who Am I This Time?”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Am_I_This_Time%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Am_I_This_Time%3F
- danamit 4y agoyeah science hell yeah lets go baby 6 paragraphs about celebrity quotes and some questionable study. also i remember when at least titles for questionable "facts" have "may", "can", "might" in them, now its just given like it is a trueism. all the similar "facts" i grow up reading in newspapers and seeing in documentaries are myths today, or just Instagram/facebook posts with no merit (like your left brain is for science/right brain for arts or the opposite i don't remember, women being better with spatial thinking while better with navigation, women have smaller brains which make them smarter...).
- bendbro 4y agoPowerful. This is similar to the 'Horocrux Effect': another academically defined psychological property that makes you really motivated to defeat evil.
- pingwing 4y agoI'll pass on giving myself a Dissociative disorder. Why would I want to live as someone that isn't myself? This may be useful, but very situationally.
- fsloth 4y agoThe article is about intentional acting (in the thespian sense) not intentionally giving oneself a clinical psychiatric condition.
- langsoul-com 4y agoI wonder if there's a mental break situation when your alter ego is so drastically different when your real self.
- nsteel 4y agoThere's a 2021 episode[1] of BBC Sideways that looks at this same thing and specifically features both Beyonce and this same kids study. It's worth a listen, as is the podcast in general. I don't recall Syed mentioning this earlier BBC article which is a little weird considering there's another whole episode[2] of Sideways where he talks about being (wrongly) accused of ripping off someone's else's work[2]! 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y6nw https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y6nw 2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x4wh https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x4wh
- buro9 4y agoWhere is the paper? This appears to be a BBC journalist and writer, covering some research without citing it directly, and then pointing to a longer article on the BBC America website whilst still not citing the work. Is it because the work by Ethan Kross isn't open access? So instead the Michigan psychology department organise press coverage for their own website? Help a person out, does anyone have links to the research? The closest I've got is this http://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/papers/ http://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/papers/ which doesn't appear to list it.
- vlttnv 4y agoI guess this can be view from Jung's point of view where you adopt different personas in different situations. If I understand correctly this is necessary for normal existence but identifying too much with a specific persona can lead to undesired side effects. I've adopted a mindset where each persona is just a tool for a specific situation or setting, but I always try to be aware that it is just the self using the persona, not the other way around. I had fallen into the trap of strongly identifying with a persona and was wondering why I was feeling so confused, so stepping back a bit helped a lot. Reading about Jung's map of the psyche has been quite interesting and useful.
- leobg 4y agoWell, but Jung is wrong. What did this guy know about humans, anyway? You have one identity and only one. Anything else is just lack of integrity. Said Mark Zuckerberg.
- westhom 4y agoAlter ego is the true self coming out. The “true self” is the real mask - the struggle with excepting the horror of what is exposed by the mask. Maybe?
- a3w 4y agoI have a post it that says "What would batman do?" at my wall. When unproductive at work or struggling, I look at that.
- ben_w 4y agoMy first thought I’m reading this is "Ah, so us furries have natural superpowers".
- blueflow 4y agoDespite all the hate that furries and furrie-related things get, this was actually a great joke.
- ak39 4y agoThis is a fascinating topic, some of the comments are interesting too. I wonder whether some folks who knowingly or unknowingly use this technique to their advantage are the ones recently insisting the end to WFH and a return to the office? It's possible they're not given a chance to unleash their alter ego at home while the family members are around?
- Jhsto 4y agoYou can also reinvent yourself whenever you move from a place to another. I used to live in a small and enclosed community to my twenties until I moved out into an environment I knew nobody. It gave me a clean-slate, and after returning a year later, people close to me told I had changed a lot. Moreover, I continued to be the new me. The gap in the shared history cut both ways: I could forever hide behind it and explain e.g. some opinion of mine to come from influences of that time, but on the other hand, it was also the last time someone else than I knew a coherent history of me. Since then, I have moved into new environments four additional times. Each time I see it as a possibility to reflect what I'd like to change and work towards that. And whenever I return to home, I feel like a tourist now.
- stiltzkin 4y agoThis could be downvoted but this was really common to see on 90s Seduction forums or later Pick Up communities as "fake it till you make it". Back then it really helped me to move on of my introvert side to a more outgoing one.
- jmurphy-atl 4y agoThe definitive book on this is ‘The Alter Ego Effect’ by Todd Herman (there’s also a bunch of extra resources on his website https://alteregoeffect.com https://alteregoeffect.com ) He goes into great detail about the method and the science of what’s happening in your brain when you use it. It’s helped me go from introverted engineer to successful start-up founder that just exited.
- rafaelvasco 4y agoThis enforces the idea, which I believe is absolutely true, that our identity, the concept we have of ourselves is actually a persona created by us, throughout our entire lives, built from our experiences, memories, traumas etc. It is not set in stone. It is a fabrication. We can change it at will. We could even destroy it and build a new one from scratch. Once you realize this, you can see how powerful this is. You can in fact do anything or be anything just by manipulating your persona and putting in the work to make it a reality.
- mrleinad 4y agoI wouldn't say you can destroy your identity completely. Most of it will always remain as the foundation for what you build.