Todd Herman || The Alter Ego Effect

today we have Todd Herman on the podcast. Herman is a performance advisor to Olympians, pros, and business leaders, and he creates proven systems to help teams and achievers win with less stress. Herman's latest book is The Alter Ego Effect, The Power of Secret Identities to Transform your Life. I'm so excited to talk with you today, Scott. Well, I mean it's a pleasure. You've had a lot of my friends on here and well, I just appreciate the podcast the topics that you talk about, so I'm happy to

bring this topic to your crowd too. Thanks. Thanks. So people can't see, but I'm wearing my Captain America shirt. Take us to that shirl in the show notes, which that's actually my pajamas that I've just sleep in every night of my life. But I would say that maybe that would be my alter ego. I don't know, maybe I'll change after we chat today, but I'd love to hear about you know, like I think you said, took like fifteen years to write this book. Is that right? Yeah?

It was? It was I started patients. Yeah, well, I didn't start writing it fifteen years ago. I've been working with this concept and this idea with you know, my pro Olympic athletes and then you know public figures and you know, entrepreneurs for the last sixteen years. So I've been I've been bugged and poked and prodded for a very long time to get this out. And you know, I use the excuse of my dyslexia for not writing it. You know, for me, I come from in my peak

performance and sports science basins. We a lot of the work that we do has to be more evidence based. I think there's you know, I think one of my great frustrations about the self out personal helpment world is that there's so much information that has been passed on for decades that is not proven to work. And you know, I'm paid to help people perform, and so I only you know, continue to have clients if they're getting better results.

And this idea is just it taps into one of the few things that makes human beings unique on this planet, which is our creative imagination, and it gets lost and people forget to continue to develop it. And so an alter ego really taps into that and helps people kind

of unlock that capability that's nested inside of them. Yeah, for sure, So I would like to zoom in that dyslection, I think for a second, because I grew up with the oriane disability as well and auditory disability, and talking to a lot of people who grow up with disabilities, it's almost like we create alter egos as children to help us cope with being treated as though we're less then in some way or yea, I personally created huge

alter egos when I was a kid. Wow, I had this Like I would pretend I was just like Olympian water a polo champion, and when I would go swimming at my grandma's poll, I would enact the whole game in my head, you know, which always had me winning. Yeah, there was never a version of the game where I lost that's a wonderful alter ego. Then if it's winning

all the time, that's awesome. Yeah. Do you think there's something too when you're treated like as the to talent, Like there's something deep here, There's something deep I'm trying to put my finger on, Like you know, when a someone is reduced to a monolithic label like learning disabled. Yeah, isn't there a natural human tendency to want to rebel against such a single labeling? Well, I think that's why. I also when someone says, hey, what do you do?

Or when you talk to anyone who has a has a website, they got to put up the about me page is the hardest thing for anyone to write, right, because it's like I got to reduce myself down into just a few paragraphs or something. But to your point, I will say that eighty two percent of all of my professional clients I have referred off to therapists to work with them on traumatic things that happened to them in the past. And it's a recurring theme amongst people

who do perform at a high level. The danger with it, and that I found was that some of them would identify that as being their edge and they felt like if they lost that edge, that they were going to somehow lose their competitive advantage. Maybe. And again I'm not a qualified therapist, that's not what I do. I would not trained in that. And I think maybe the world would be probably a better place if more people stayed

inside their lanes. You know, I do you know one thing and I'm excellent at it, and that's you know, performance coaching and crawling around inside the six inches between the years and giving people proven tools and strategies to help move past resistance or get their capabilities out there. But that idea of creating worlds, it's such a natural, innate human quality. The great thing I talk about inside the book that I and invent alter egos. They're a

part of the human psyche. And the great thing is is I feel like this book is a great remembering for people that you did this as a kid. We all played with superheroes in our heads, or we pretended to be our favorite sports star, or we were a nurse when we were playing make believe, or a princess

or a cowboy or an astronaut whatever. But there's this time where we start to develop and people say, oh, well, you need to know actor age or grow up, and then we internalize that as Okay, well, the things I was doing as a kid are childish, and so I need to move on to doing adult things, which is being more serious. And yet using an alter ego has nothing to do with being childish. It's definitely childlike, and I think there's a huge difference between childish and childlike.

And I think if for me, especially as well, having that playful attitude internally helped me navigate many of the challenges that I face throughout life. And so that dyslexia that I had helped me face down a world and an industrial educational system that wasn't built to help me succeed, and so I used my again creative imagination to help navigate that. And then you take a look at people with quote unquote learning disabilities, whether it's add or dyslexia,

what have you. You You take a look at the career paths of many of those people. They have a higher

propensity towards going into things like entrepreneurship. And it's because we've built a superpower at a young age of creative problem solving, which is really what entrepreneurship is, or any sort of creative expression, and I'm excited to kind of, you know, maybe lead this charge of bringing this idea back out to people and show how it's actually the most authentic version of you that you could actually have. This isn't about being fake, and this isn't about trying

to trick people and deceive people. Anytime you're trying to do things with your actions and behaviors that are about deceiving someone else, that's definitely inauthentic. This is about you understanding at your core that there's this creative of possibility that you have and to tap into it so that you can be more intentional about who and what you want to go and show up with out on that field of play, whatever it might be for you. Nice. Well, I like that. I would like to unpack that more

as we, yeah, literally unpack the layers of the South. Yeah. So right now you are Todd, Yes, right, You're not wearing your glasses. You're not Richard. So this gets into some like multip personality shit, like when does Richard come out? I just you know, I saw a preview for him

night Shamalan's new movie, you know, coming out. What's the difference between multipersonalities disorder and this what you're proposing, Well, I mean in the psychology world has actually gone under a massive upheople the last few years, where there's been some fundamental theories that have been basically that we're founded

upon experiments that can't be replicated on. Now, one of the fundamental principles of psychology for the longest time was that the people were had the best mental health saw themselves as a single self, and so single self theory was a very very prominent part of psychology. And yet that entire world has shifted and now it's one of the fastest growing areas of psychology is multiple self theory.

And multiple self theory is actually understanding that, no, we have multiple selves that go out into these different fields that we or roles that we play in life, and

context matters. And that's what I've been doing for the longest time is helping people understand that contextually that field that you're trying to compete on, whether it's the tennis court or the football field, or it could be in the boardroom in your business, or even when I go home to my three little kids, that's a field of play, Like that's a stage, and that's a place that I'm going to try and bring my best too, so that I get great results with my kids as a parent.

So everyone understands that who you are in business, like how you up and then who you are with your friends, there's a different element of your personality that's showing up there, right. Yeah, you know you're not the same or even when you

go home to your parents like me. I mean, we were coming home from Disneyland when I was ten years old and on the airplane ride back to Canada where I grew up, I left my brand new Disneyland thirtieth anniversary wallet on the airplane and first time I lost something. And yet to this day, I'm forgetful. My mom just branded me as being forgetting. And I don't have a forgetful mind, but that's how my mom trutes. That's how moms are. My mom says, like, you don't have any

common sense. It's like, how do you know that's not true. That's a narrative you created about me. It's like partially true, but not all of me. Yeah yeah, And so context matters, And so what I'm saying when I'm working with people, are there elements of your value system that are creeping in to the way that you're behaving on that field that are actually hurting your performance. I'll give you a

case in point from the book. I talk about one of my tennis players, you know, professional tennis players, Rachel, who was one of these athletes that just naturally well, worked very hard at it, and was better than you know, most everyone else. Rachel, that's right. I remember the story of Rachel. Yeah, yeah, And so she would get out onto the court and she would immediately get up on people very quickly, and then she would do the proverbial take the foot off the gas and allow the other

athlete to kind of gain some momentum. And the most dangerous thing in sport, really in business as well, is momentum. The moment you give someone that's an average player momentum

that begets confidence, which then gives someone certainty. And now as soon as you become certain that you can actually beat someone that's just a deep resonant belief, Now all of a sudden, there's an equalization between Rachel, who is had a far higher capability than this other person, and she was kind of had the moniker of someone who

should be winning championships. But wasn't winning championships anyways. I started working with her, and I was trying to kind of crack the nut on her a little bit about why this is happening, and it turned out that fairness is one of her fundamental values in life. She's very much like, you know, just fairness for everyone and sort

of justice and all that. And the experience after I kind of came to that conclusion with her when we were out for lunch one day, because she was getting angry with me that I wouldn't let her pay the bill after I'd already paid the previous two lunches or something, and I was like, oh, my goodness, fairness, that's what's

getting in her way. And so she would start to feel bad that that other person was getting beat so badly at her core, and it was happening at a very unconscious level, just like most things do, and she would take the foot off the gas and let that person in and so on that field of play, fairness

does not matter, you know. And in fact, in sports, you not giving one hundred percent and you not defeating the other person as you can robs that other person of a possibility to really change their mindset because if Rachel actually beat people the way that she could, she might actually cause that person to go away and go, wow, there's a big gap between me and the best I need to get onto that court more and practice more.

And so anyways, that new contextual self that Rachel brought to the tennis court now values stayed on the sidelines, and we used, you know, the idea of an alter ego to come out so that Rachel could act and behave through that vehicle to help bring her best self forward. I love that, and so that's the heroic self. I guess that's what you're equating with the best self. Let's talk about the difference between what you for the heroic self,

the trap self, and the core self. There started to become so many selves that I started to not be able to make sense of who I like? What am I right now? You know? I don't I'm all confused. Okay, So you know in the book, I have this model where I talk about just the different layers of you know, how a human being's identity gets created. And what we need to understand is that there is this core self that all of us have, which is just almost pure potentiality.

It's pure possibility. It's like that infant that comes out has not been shaped by society by any stretch of imagination, yet creative potential, creative potential, and it's sitting inside of us. When you recognize that it's there, it has not been lost. If someone believes that it's gone, it's a very dangerous place for people because now hope is gone. And so the fact that everyone is even someone is even listening to this, that means that at your core, you do

honor the fact that that is there. And again, the way that we internalize it in our minds is when we put our head down on the pillow at night, and we might beat ourselves up because we didn't take the actions today that we wanted to. Or you know, I wish I would have said this in that moment instead of this, or I wish I would raise my hand, or I wish I would have spoke up, or wish sort of you know, asked that person who is perfect for my business, you know, to say let's get together,

let's meet, or let's do something together. But for whatever reason, resistance gets in the way. And that's what I talk about in the book, where that's your trapped self where you are being influenced by the worries of how you're going to be perceived to others, the judgments of others, the criticism. It could be imposter syndrome that sits there. There's deep trauma that can definitely affect people and that narrative that we create around who and what we are,

which is not true. It's not truly who you are because who you are is sitting inside of this core self, but on top of this core self. I talk about how a trapped self ends up showing up when you don't feel like you're getting the results like you know that you can, and you're living in what I call an ordinary world, right, it feels ordinary to you because it's not filled with the color that you know that you can bring to it, and you know the forces

of you know. I just kind of use this sort of metaphorical story in the book of like you know, Joe of Campbell's Hero's Journey, and I talk about just the distinction that's really healthy that we understand that just like Carl Jung talked about with the Shadow Self, I

just simply call it the enemy. The enemy pulls us into the ordinary world and it uses the things of you know, the judgment of others and the worry about how we're going to be perceived, or it uses you know, imposter syndrome and scares us and brings us away from you know, breaching that comfort zone. But conversely, there is the extraordinary world for us. The extraordinary world has no less challenges, no less situations that could challenge us obstacles.

But the reason it's extraordinary is that we start operating from an inside out approach where we're acting very intentionally with who and what we want to bring to that field of play that we're going out to perform on. For me, it could be me being that dad and I want to be very intentional about you know, who is showing up for my kids, and that's it's that

and what happens. The reason I call it the heroic self is because at the end of the day, you feel like you really showed up like and it's that internal kind of feedback loop of you know, you feel like you wore the s on the chest today or in your case, the Captain America shield kind of thing, whereas the trapped self typically will operate from an outside in right we're worried and we're always engaged in our mind of thinking about what other people are thinking of us,

and anytime you operate from that point of view, it traps you because there is no operating from how you want to show up and what you know that you can do. It's from you operating on what you think others want you to do, and that's what traps people. Yeah, and again I just keep winking this back to being labeled with the learning disability, like it's got to be part of why you're so interested in this topic, even subconsciously. Yeah,

like you probably felt trapped. Yeah I did, but I didn't ge labeled until I didn't get to diagnosed with dyslexia until I was twenty one, really after a car accident. So I went through all my schooling, you know, and

I was the typical class clown. But what I unpacked people why I when I when I actually got diagnosed, I was like, oh, my goodness, now I know why I did the things that I was doing in class, because what happened was, you know, you're sitting in class and they give you like a quick little fifteen minute reading assignment, right, yes, you know, and I would struggle

my way through it, and people. There's like twenty nine types of dyslexia that are out there, and my type is the type that you know in a chunk of texts, like say, in a paragraph, by the time I get down to the end of the text, I've jumbled up the kind of meaning of the sentences and now there's just a confusion that's happening in my head. So I need to reread the paragraph over and over and over and over and over again before I kind of get sense of it. So someone else just reads the paragraph.

I got to reread it like twenty seven times to understand. So given the reading assignment, I'm there's no there's no chance I'm getting through that thing. And so what I would do is, about two minutes left, I would start tapping people's shoulders around me, saying, hey, what did you think you know? We are there any takeaways from you, so that I could actually use their takeaways if I got called upon to answer the teacher's question. But also what would happen and I learned this is because I'm

distracting the people around me. My teacher, would you know, give me, you know, call me out, or give me hack or whatever, and because they just talked to me. The chances of them coming back to me to ask me a question were slim, So I ended up winning. I didn't get tasked with answering the Hey, Todd, what did you think about you know, Tom Joad in the Grapes of Wrath and what he just experienced in chapter

you know five? And it was after I got diagnosed with dislexa, I was like, oh, wow, that's why I really acted out the class clown thing a lot. Yeah, it makes so much sense. I was pretty much the class clown as well. Yeah, but to your point, the moment we get the moment we get labeled, we feel like we get trapped. That's why, like I said, and about me page or a resume is so difficult, because what you're doing is you're putting yourself in a box

and you feel like you're trapping yourself. However, when you start operating from this mindset of this is a context on this field of play for business or for my resume, this is the self that I am explaining to people as to who I am. Of course, I'm not going to give you know everyone the information of like the five sports that I play, you know, in my spare time and you know, what I do with my children on Tuesdays and Wednesdays or whatever the case might be.

Just this idea of really compartmentalizing the self that's showing up is really healthy, which you know you had asked the question around, you know, is this Todd showing up or Richard? And what you were kind of referring to was,

you know, to give people some background. When I first started in business, I was twenty one, and I was so insecure about how the fact that I looked like I was twelve, and you know, and I had I had used an alter ego when I played football and I was you know, I went on and had college scholarships. I was a nationally ranked badminton player as well. And when I went on the football field, I mean I was in high school. Is six feet and I was one hundred and fifty six pounds. I mean, there was

not a chance that I was this. I wasn't this physically gifted human. I could. I could feel really insecure about the fact that I was so light, but I wasn't going to take that insecurity out there. So I built up and I had already played with these ideas for so long. I went out there as Dronimo on that because I'm a massive Native American buff. I love the Native American culture cultural appropriation. Well, when do you get criticized for that? Yeah, well may very well be. Yeah,

so I went. So I went out there as Gronimo, and I was also carrying this tribe in my mind of Walter Payton, the Hall of Fame football player, and Ronnie Lot, this whole thing, and I was acting through them and their power, and there was I had no Dramimo's mindset, had no worries and concerns about how big or small he was. I showed up in it and allowed me to pull all of my capabilities out there.

Actually allowed me to find the zone in flow state as well, because I was acting through my creative imagination, which is a gateway to the zone. And so when I got into business, I was like, wait a second, I used this whole Gernimo idea in football. Why didn't I bring Gernimo into the business. And then I was like, well that doesn't kind of work. Was very aggressive and

all that kind of stuff, and so context matters. But I had I was like, well, how do I want to be showing up because right now I'm you know, I lack confidence, I'm insecure about how young I look, and you know the fact I don't have college degrees behind me on this topic or something. And I was indecisive. So I was like, Gronamo doesn't work. But when I think of like all the people that thought they're growing up all had glasses, So why don't I go into

a pair of glasses? And that can be what activates this altered because when I played football, as soon as I put on that helmet and clicked that chin strap, boom, that's when Gronimo showed up. And so I wanted that potum and that are a fact to help activate. So

that's what I did. I lived in I mean I live here in New York City now and have for a long time, but back then I lived in in Alburgh, Canada, and I went to West Edmonton Mall, which was the largest mall in the world at the time, and went to Lens Crafters and bought myself non prescription glasses to do my reverse Superman. I called it Superman put on glasses to become Clark Kent. I put them on to

become my Superman. Version of myself in business, and those glasses they meant that what I was activating in that moment were the traits of confidence, decisiveness, and being articulate. And that's what helped me bridge the gap that I had internally between Todd being insecure but what I wanted to go and do. And so that had nothing to do with whether I was being inauthentic, because that was actually me bringing my best, my best version or like I say in the book, that heroic version of myself

so I could serve clients. Yeah, and so right now you had said, I don't know if I'm talking Todd because I don't have my glasses on. But what happened is exactly what I share in the book. This great quote from the kind of Golden Age actor Carrie Grant. He had this great quote where he said, I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be, and I finally became that person or he became me, or we met

at some point. And it's such a useful visual to think that who you are today and how you're defining yourself with your narrative is almost like you think of like a ven diagram of two circles it's this, This is how you're defining yourself now. But then you have this vision of like how you truly do want to be showing up, and it's a separate circle. There, there's

some friction and gap between the two. But then over time, with you acting through this idea of an alter ego, you actually bring the two closer together and they meet at some point. So I don't need those glasses anymore. I simply just wear them now dress. I mean, back in nineteen ninety nine when I got those glasses, it was not cool to go and buy a pair of glasses for dress. This is a new phenomenon. Now I

do because I like wearing them. But you know, I became that person, and the only thing I would change in carry Grant's quote is the word pretended, because this has nothing to do with pretending. This is about I would say change it to I activated, somebody I wanted to be and I finally became a person. Activate is the word that I care about. Yeah, that's really good, And you're answering a lot of questions that I was

going to ask. So now this say it's good. It's it's just automatically in the flow of things, because I was going to say, isn't the goal to have healthy integration of these various signs so we don't feel like a fragment itself. Yeah, well, I mean you one hund percent, right, But most people feel fragmented. I mean, how people feel fragmented is when the results that you're getting in life do not connect with what you know you have on the inside, right, Like I mean, I mean, my great frustration.

What's I don't know how the quote exactly goes on. I'm going to butcher it is that the ignorant are cocksure and the skilled lack of confidence something like that, Right, Like, there's I don't know how many smart people, academics, people who've actually done the work feel so insecure about getting

themselves out there. And yet the people who shouldn't actually have an audience and shouldn't be out there having eyeballs paid attention to them are the ones who have all the confidence and lead people off of a cliff a lot of times. I mean, and again, that is the story of a lot of the self help world. Again, like Scott, I wrote this book twenty two years into

my career. A lot of people write a book six months in and they go, well, I'm going to write a book because that's the way that you position yourself as an expert. And I have six over sixteen thousand hours working with people one on one. You know, that is a phenomenal amount of time to truly see what high performing, elite people are truly using to perform and

what people who are struggling are doing. And that golden thread that started to show up for me in the beginning was that, man, my most consistent the clients that are consistently performing to their capability, they keep on referencing this idea of a character. When I step out, I go at it as a different version of myself. You know.

They wouldn't use the word alter ego specifically, but they would say persona and they would say these things, and I'm like, that's amazing because I did the same thing when I played football, and that's kind of what I did when I started or that's what I did when I started my business. And then I started unpacking it. I'd go back through my notes and started calling back up old clients and go, remember when you had said this thing about this character, can you tell me about that?

And I started kind of unraveling things and putting things into a process. And that's all I did with the book was again, I didn't invent alter egos. They're part of the human consciousness. Everyone's used them at some point in time in their life, so I don't own it. But what I just did was I just codified the process for how to build one out responsibly healthy, so that it really does bring out the truly heroic part

of who you are. And again, Cisaro said it. Cisoro was the first person to coin the phrase in forty four PC and I love the way that he said it from the very beginning. And if people just have this one takeaway, this is it. The root of the

word actually means the other eye or trusted friends. And I think that in most people's minds, if they brought another ally in between the six inches of their ears, and it's that trusted friend that helps them get the best of themselves out there instead of always just having this circular merry go round conversation with themselves, which can all oftentimes spiral people down into a darker place. That alone is a very healthy way to think of it.

The alter ego is a trusted friend to help you navigate the natural difficulties that we have when we're trying to be ambitious and do things and really bring this fantastic creative possibility that we all have inside of us out onto the field. It's great. It's like your self, compassionate self. Yeah yeah, I like that. Well, what's get into some nitty gritty practical things, because you know, like how do you become you? So let's start with the

wow mindset. Let's get into the wow mindset right now. Sure, So you know I had done this study this in the sports world back in early two thousands around why are some athletes who were at the top of their class just a couple of years later not playing their sport? And we did this study in province of Ontario of

the two hundred top hockey players. I mean, hockey is obviously a religion in Canada, and so these are the two hundred top hockey players at the age of thirteen fourteen going into this next phase, which is the phase right before they get drafted into the national Hockey League. And I wanted to see how many people three years later were still playing the sport. So we tracked all the data and then we saw that out of the two hundred top athletes, there was only twenty four people

who were still playing the sport. Now these are the top of the top. That's a huge drop off in numbers. Okay, so then why was it? Well around eighty percent of the reason why was because of coaching and parental pressures and stresses was the number one caused by a long shot. Injury was another, and another one as just they were playing multiple sports and they decided to pursue another path.

But we wanted to look even deeper into it because a lot of the stuff that the reasons why they were saying that they had quit was circumstantial and it wasn't based on skill. So when we looked into it further, we found this kind of our mindset is what I call it, and the wow mindset. Friend Carol Dweck, who wrote the fantastic book Growth Mindset, calls it fixed mindset and growth mindset right. And so we just happened to

be doing separate studies. She was in the academics, I was in sports, and we kind of, you know, ended up coming to the same place. But an our mindset person is someone who they are very much motivated by pain by you know, the lion is chasing you right now, and so you're going to sprint away from it. The moment you get some distance, you stop because the only motivation that you had was to get away from that danger.

Whereas a WOW mindset individual is motivated very much more intrinsically, and they're mot motivated by growth, possibility, adventure, by curiosity, all fantastic qualities that we all have intrinsically, or exploration

as another one. And the subtle difference between the WOW and the OW type individual is you could have two people that are climbing the same mountain, let's say, and they both make the same amount of progress after a week, and after that week is done, what an our mindset individual will do is the very first action they will take is they will pick their head up and they

will look to the top of the mountain. And what that does is that drops people into what I call the chasm of despair because you've just put in a bunch of effort and then you look and you see how much further you have to go, which is important because you've now just created the frame in your mind of a gap and you go, oh, man, I've put in all this effort, and look how much further I

have to go? And so it creates this bit of a self defeating self talk, whereas in the other hand, this wow mind set individual has got to the exact same point standing next to the other person even and the very first action behaviorally that they do is instead of picking up their head and their eyes gazing to the top of the mountain, they first quickly look over the shoulder to see how far they've gone. And that frame of mind, they immediately see their growth. Oh, look

how far I've come. Oh Jesus, see the big rock that was I thought that was like, you know, a day ago. Look at that's actually three days ago. Look how far away that is. Whatever it might be in their head, but they're seeing that's the chasm of confidence that now they they've crossed that and they and they now they'll still look to the top of mountain, but they've again they've just filtered their mind through look how

far I've come. And then they look to the top and they go, oh, perfect, you know I've made my way. It's the subtlest of distinctions between people. And so in all of the work that I do with clients, the way that we set up the relationship, the way that I set up my like online programs, is there is a constant recording of winds and achievements, so that people

start cataloging these miles zones more. And when you do that, you start to wire your mind more naturally to that of someone who is growing, expanding, exploring, And you're no longer always going to be motivated by the pain of something. You're going to be motivated by the growth towards something, which is really important. Yeah, Abraham Maslow distinguishing deprivation needs and being needs our growth needs. Yeah, our growth motivation

versus deprivation motivation. And again now to create a caveat with this. So that's that's all nice and wonderful, but here's what we all know. The most powerful form of motivation is actually pain to get someone going and started. Actually, pain is the number one That's that's why most people

go and buy products. It's that, you know, the doctor just said, okay, well, you know you've been consuming nothing but Big Max and sodas for the last ten years and if you don't stop, you've got your heart disease is going to kill you. Well, now that's pain motivator, You're like, well, hell long, I'm going to get started. What's important is so pain is a great way to get started, but you want to quickly move your mindset towards what are you gaining within about two weeks to

seventeen days. If you don't make that transition early, your motivation is lost because you started to you know, work out or do whatever the case is, you're not seeing the results right away. We need to flip someone's mindset towards what are you going to be gaining looking towards that future, seeing your growth constantly, because if you're only looking at you know, how close the lion is to you and chasing you, then of course motivation is lost. Dude,

that's awesome. That's awesome. How much were you motivated by the desire to prove something big time? You know? My backstory is rooted in a lot of trauma. I know, and I you know, and I'm actually at this place now where I'm completely fine talking about it, which is

actually a recent experience. But I was sexually assaulted when I was twelve at a church camp by two men over the course of a couple of days, and the kind of more sinister part of that, which it's already sinister, but they videotaped that experience and now it's a very and this is again this is you know, thirty years ago, but that video is a very popular video in the kind of pedophile community and in kind of the dark web, and I get, yeah, I get consistently messaged in my

email with gifts of that and you know, people trying

to torment you or whatever. And yeah. But for the first time, so I lived with that, didn't share it with anybody until about seventeen months ago, September of twenty seventeen, September fourth, specifically, I shared it for the first time with a close friend of mine here in New York because I had just been, you know, running the red line of life, and I had just for the previous nine months had been going through a really, really hard challenging This is just some tough stuff in my business.

I was going through a major lawsuit with my former business partner that I was suing, and we had a

new boy that showed up. We've got three little kids and that and the childbirth was a very tough one on my wife and Charlie, and so that was kind of tough to see, and it just was just bringing a lot of that stuff that I pushed down for a long time to the surface and I basically, you know, I just couldn't handle it anymore, and I you know, I had I ended up writing just on December thirty first of twenty eighteen, a long Facebook post about my experience of life and you know how I had many

suicide attempts and you know, this trauma that happened to me. And really the message was a lot around, you know, don't do what I did, Like, don't hold on to this, because I'm actually coming out the other side of facing this thing down and you know, being able to drop this weight and this trauma and this shame and guilt that sort of naturally people have to hold on or they not naturally, but they hold on to through that

experience of trauma. That is theirs to hold on to. Like, I mean, there's nothing that I need to shame myself with. I didn't do it, but to get rid of that. I just as encouraging people to if there is something that they can get help with, to get help with it, get professional help with it. Because yeah, while I have been able to navigate and you know, achieve some things in my life. I wonder what else I could have done, you know, if I would have been able to, you know,

do this sooner. But yeah, so you know that is a big part of how I've been shaped. But then also probably why it's given me one superpower, which is an extraordinarily high level of empathy towards other people, and why it's also I would say, why I've become and why I became a really good coach and confident on advisor to people, because you are just so sensitive to the fact that you know, human beings are nuanced, they're complicated.

You know, everything in life isn't just more about just do it and work harder, and you know, there's just some people need to be handled with a little bit more gentleness and to understand that. So it turned me into a good coach. But you know, it would have been great if I had maybe dealt with it a lot sooner. So yeah, it's never too late, you know, yeah, exactly,

don't you Oh no, I don't. I don't. And you know it's it's what's amazing, is uh, you know, after I you know, it's it's actually just been one month since I wrote that, and I wrote that I was sitting down, and I say it in the post even I was sitting down to I talk about this concept of scripting with specifically my sports clients, you know, pro clients where visualization is always in using our imagination is

obviously very powerful. What people don't get about visualization is it's it's actually quite difficult for people to learn as a skill. People just accept that, oh, you're just visualized. Well, it's not that simple. Visualization is a challenging thing because most people's context of visualization is they've just sort of left let their their monkey brain, you know, run the circles in their heads, and now you're deliberately creating the movie in your mind. And that's a challenge for people.

And so scripting, which is sitting down and actually writing out that story of what you want things to look, is actually way more powerful because it slows down the cognitive process and when you're writing something down, it actually activates your mind in a different way and allows you to paint more color with it. So anyways, that's what

I was doing. I was sitting down to script out my twenty nineteen and how I wanted to look, and you know, of course I got the book coming out and this is going to be a new experience, and instead that post is what came out of me. And I mean, I'm fine with you. You can put it in the show notes too, if people wanted to go and read just my personal experience, because I've got nothing to hide with it. But now a month later, it's amazing how much more grace I feel like I can

walk through life with. It's just dumping all of that baggage at the end of twenty eighteen, And I said in the post, I just didn't want to carry this into twenty nineteen. And I'm highly motivated by you know, if there's something that I can be world class at, I'd much rather, if of anything, be the most world class dad to my three little kids than anything else. So I was motivated to not give them secondhand trauma.

It's sort of the idea that we have this, we have this trauma, and then we end up acting it out and kind of onto other people. And you know, just like secondhand smoke isn't deserved, secondhand trauma isn't deserved as well. So I just felt it was my responsibility to do that for my kids. Yeah, thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing that. And think of all the benefit to the world that came from healthily integrating that, finally integrating that into the rest of who you are.

I mean, it kind of gave you even more superpowered, isn't it. Yeah? Absolutely, And I mean I've always been very mindful of the fact that sometimes the perception of me and I don't create this because I don't. I never pretend that I'm perfect. In fact, I like kind of thinking myself as being massively imperfect. But I always take really, I don't pretend because I know I am. Yeah, that's gold. That's my favorite part of this entire interview.

But yeah, I don't need to pretend. Yeah, so I just know that I take a lot of imperfect action. And you know, I think the majority of our answers are found on the field of play of life, not sitting on the sidelines trying to think about them or outthink them. So, but but I'm mindful of this idea that you know, perception of me is that I'm polished and I'm put together, and it's you know whatever. I wear a blazer with a pocket square, and that's just how I like to dress or I've got glasses on,

and I don't do that. I never did that as a way to try to impress people. But to your point about that vulnerability, it has definitely. One guy had a post He's like, you know, I've always respected you, and I've always liked the work that you do. Now I absolutely love you because of the person that you've had to become and just sharing that. And you know, and since that post too, you know, I've had seven conversations with people who reached out to me that were

suicidal and I'm talking like really high achievers. In fact, I know two of them are actually in our circle together that reached out and just for help. And you know that was a great win for sure. So well, yes, thanks again. And you know these common forces you talk about, they call them the hidden forces of the enemy. I imagine there are things you've been grappling with personally as being human as well, you know, like imposter syndrome, tribal narratives. Yeah,

let's discuss some of them. You know, I think a lot of the listeners will resonate with that. Yeah, there's three really hidden I talk about. There's common forces. They're the ones that we always talk about, right, The common ones are doubt and worry and the judgment of others and criticism and fitting in and and things like that. That those are the common forces that the tricky little enemy likes to use to pull us into the ordinary world and away and off our track that we want

to kind of march down. But then there's more sinister, hidden forces that operate a lot more below the surface. Imposter syndrome is actually now being talked about a lot more. It's it's almost common, it's almost become a common force. Exactly right. We know that imposter syndrome is just is that idea that you don't actually give yourself any credit for the achievements that you have. You downplay what you've achieved to things like luck, you know, right place, right time.

Of course I was supposed to do that because I was X, Y Z, whatever the case might be. But the other two that are hidden and sinister. The other one I talked about is tribal narratives. And tribal narratives are things like, well, my family has never been an entrepreneur,

so why would I be an entrepreneur? Or you know, people that are Jewish don't do that, and so I'm not going to go and pursue that, or it's you know racial, then you know, well a black person can't do that, or you know, an Indian person doesn't go and do this, and they operate at such an unconscious level with people that they don't even know that they're acting through them, right, And so that's why I created that model that sits inside of that in chapter number

three to kind of give context to people, because I think, you know, for people like you and me that are out there helping people, context really matters the moment someone goes, oh, now I get it. I see how that's built. Now you can actually start to self diagnose and you can start to work with it yourself, because it gives context,

gives form and substance to something. And bringing up the fact that tribal narratives really are very common ways that stop people, but they're often hidden below the surface of other things like I just don't believe in myself. Well no, no, no, let's not throw yourself under the bus here. Let's really take a look at this and see if it's something else. And then that third you know, hidden force that I

talk about is of course, personal trauma. That narrative that gets created, that shame, shame and guilt rule many many people when they have dealt with really tough trauma. And again, all human beings have had trauma. We've all experienced trauma at some point. You know, there is because trauma can come in the form of a car accident, even witnessing something.

There's it gets processed as as trauma. But then there's degrees and depths of trauma too, Like obviously, you know, the one that I had to navigate through is a pretty deep one, especially when it hasn't been you know, diagnosed and pulled apart for thirty years. And you know, however, just because I would be working with someone and I would poke, and you know, and I'm crawling around between the six inches, you end up poking something that's pretty

sensitive to people. And I'm like, okay, perfect, that is not my skill set, but I'm going to get them to somebody who can help them navigate that if they're willing to do that. That doesn't mean that just because you have that trauma that you need to stop pursuing things and getting yourself out there. And that's where that using an alter ego. You know what, if you want to suspend the disbelief right now that you you can

do this. But if you want to tap into your inner Captain America and allow him to pull those qualities that you do have inside of you out onto that field to play, it creates that great suspension of disbelief and you're simply just tapping into the creative imagination, which

is such a powerful force to beat resistance. You know, so many people when you think about force, there's resistance is a strong force, and it's typically propped up by unconscious stuff, those tribal narratives, that trauma possibly for someone that imposter syndrome, or the more common forces, and resistance sits there. And what the personal development or self help world for the longest time is said, We're going to meet that resistance, that force with the force of willpower.

Just do it. And that's the equivalent because willpower is very much a conscious thought. Resistance sits in the unconscious, and that's the equivalent of the mouse staring down the elephant. Right, best of luck with that. Now, have some people used willpower to overpower some resistance, absolutely, but it is extraordinarily rare. So if that is how most people are operating. What is a force and a power that's stronger than resistance. Our creative imagination the truly the thing that we are

innately gifted with as human beings. And I talk about how the creative imagination is like the back door to performance. Resistance doesn't even see it coming. And one of the tools we use is just an alter ego to help make that back door open up, to suspend our own disbelief and act to and through someone and something else to get ourselves out there like we know that we can. And I'll give you an example for myself specifically so that people have another idea of how this has been applied.

And again I've got like tons of stories in the books of people throughout history that have used it. But for myself, you know, I am a challenger personality when it comes to how I work. I'm dealing with pro athletes, Olympic athletes, you know, public figures, people with you know, very strong type of personalities. But I'm a challenge. They've got nothing but yes people around them, typically people who

are trying to kowtow to them. I don't do that, And you know, so if I'm spending eight hours in my working day with that personality. When I go home, it's very easy for me to just continue that momentum going. The last thing my kids need is confident, decisive, articulate Todd showing up. Who's a challenger? Right? They want fun, playful, get on the floor and play with them. Todd. And my middle daughter, Sophie one day, she's got a fantastic

emotional bandwidth. She can have fantastic eyes, and she can have these tantrums that can last a very long time. And she would get into this tantrum and then so that's a force, right, and then I would bring that kind of adult parent force to the situation, and I'm going to lord over that and get her to you know stop. Well, that never works. And you know, one day I caught myself doing that and I was like, wait, Todd, again, this isn't working. So how what's going to be a

better mode for you? And to deal with this? I call it in the book the moment of impact. That's a moment of impact for me as a parent to you know, calm her down. And immediately I went to well, I would want to much rather bring a gentle self to this situation, and mister Rogers came in my head immediately. And so that's who inspires me as a dad to

act through is mister Rogers. So the very next day, the same tantrum, the same type of thing that's going on, I did exactly what mister Rogers would do, got down on one knee, reached out, grabbed her, pulled her in for a hug. She melted in eight seconds what would have typically been a twelve minute long tantrum, and me, being just as agitated, evaporated right away. And then just like any kid, she was off playing doing you know, forgetting about whatever it was that she was upset about.

And it was such a great feedback loop to close to me. I'm like, yeah, this is so powerful. It just all I did was, for that second tap into that creative imagination, act to and through mister Rogers. And now it's now I really think about that's gentle self that needs to show up for my kids. Also. Okay, so how can we empower our listeners to be that self they want to be? Give them two missions. One

involves a coffee shop, right. Well, the first thing is a first mission is let's always rebuild out this alter ego in context to a specific field of play. Right, So, Todd's self that I bring to my home with my kids is different than, of course, that self that I bring to operate at my best and work. So what field of play is most frustrating you right now? Would

you like to most use this idea? For that's the first step, always context, And then the second one is okay, well, what are the qualities that you most want to be showing up on that field? Who might already embody them? Is it Captain America? Is it Wonder Woman? Is it like Kobe Bryant bringing the Black Mamba onto the basketball court? Or is it any one of a number of different forms of inspiration could come from fiction, could come from TV, could come from you know, your own family. I'm deeply

connected to my nana. I just loved her spirit, and so there's parts of her qualities that you know I used early on. So what are those qualites you want to bring and show up and then go out and activate it. I talk about in the book that we

use a totemin artifact. You know, I used glasses as a way of representing it actually taps into a natural psychological phenomena we all have called in clothed cognition, where we as human beings, we attach meaning to clothing and when you put it on, you actually start to adopt the traits of that. So the Kellogg School of Management did this. They did this study on in clothed cognition where they brought a bunch of students into a room,

got them to do it this. Have you ever seen that kind of puzzle where it's got the word of a color and then you have to say, but the word is actually colored in a different color, So it's the word green, but it's in yellow. Yeah. The Stroop test. Is that what it's called? Yeah, Okay, So it's actually because the first thing that you're very doing, the first thing your brain reads, is actually the color, not the

actual word itself. So they gave them this test and I think it was like twenty five boxes of words, and you know, tracked their attention and their accuracy and the amount of mistakes that they made and how quickly they did it. So the students came in, they did it individually, and then they leave. Then they brought in

another group of students. This time when they came in, they handed them a white coat, and they told them to put it on and that it was a painter's coat, and then they got them to do it, so then you know, track the information and they leave. Then they brought in another group of people, and this time they handed them the same white coat but told them it was a lab coat or a doctor's coat, and then

they got them to do the test. Now, the results between the plain clothes people the first group, and the painter coat people no difference whatsoever. Why because the in clothed meaning of wearing a painter's coat is that you're probably tapping into a more creative self in that moment.

Creativity isn't what was going to help you master that test. However, the third group, the lab coat wearing doctor coat wearing people, they did it in less than half the time than the other two groups, and they made half the amount of mistakes as the other group. Why because having on a lab coat, people started to in clothe themselves into the traits of someone who's more focused, methodical, careful, and detailed four qualities that are going to help you do

that particular kind of test. And so all we're doing and what I'm trying to work with people on and what's inside the book is we're simply tapping into the things that are already there as human beings. And I'm, you know, with using a totem or artifact and putting on the glasses. Oh shit, you have the glasses. Do it?

Do do it? Wait? Wait, holda, I'm gonna take a picture of both of us in our superpower cool And so all I'm doing, all I did early on was I ascribed the meaning to these glasses and they confident, decisive, articulate Todd And I was stepping in through my inner Joseph Campbell, who's a hero of mine, Abraham Lincoln, And that's what I was showing up. And so my point is is whatever your superpowers and those qualities are, is there a tot them that you can put on, that

you can wear. I've got clients who you know, have a pebble in their pocket from their family farm in Iowa because they're tapping into the values and the character set of that group of people that they're bringing to the table and honoring their family name, and so what could it be for you? And then we're going to go out and have a mission. So it's like whatever

that self is that you're now creating. Go to the local coffee shop and whether it's a Starbucks or anywhere else, and order a coffee as that version of you, so I can walk in with my glasses on and just I'm in a confident and decisive way order and move off to the side. Right. And the thing is is, this isn't you being fake. This is but you playing more with what you've already got inside of you, just to see what results might change for you. This isn't

about me tricking anybody. It's not about me being deceitful. And again, we as human beings, we're always unfolding that we're always spiraling up as a generation of people. We're always hopefully getting better and better and better. Right, you know, that's what I struggle with with people saying, well, this new generation is we want the new generation to be better than ours, because if we didn't, if they don't, then we've screwed up somehow. Right, we'res human beings. We're

always spiraling up. So same thing with ourselves. We're always unfolding and finding out new parts of ourselves. And this is just actively playing with an idea that already exists. In ourselves to see what we can and cannot do. Oh that's so good. I'm going to end with this and even and also a good quote from your book. At the end of your life, you won't remember the thoughts or intentions you had. You remember the actions you took.

You'll judge yourself by how you showed up, by what you did, what you said, how you acted, and whether you perform the way you knew you could in any of the stages of life. Thank you, Todd Richard, You know all these things are you? And thank you for inspiring so many people. You're champ. Thank you and for being my podcast today. Thanks thanks for listening to the

Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a rating and review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.