The Alter Ego Effect with Todd Herman

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimize interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Todd Herman, the author of the Alter Ego Effects. Amazing subtitle. The Power of Secret Identities to Transform youm Life. Todd is one of the world's leading peak performance coaches. I absolutely love this book. Super fun, practical look at a modern hero's journey. Of course, we've got the philosopher's note on it, et cetera. Todd, great to see you.

I might be just as excited about this interview, if not more so. We jammed a little bit earlier, so this is an absolute treat for me.

Yeah, I didn't realize we went way back, all the way back to the sports E Teams days. Yeah. And shout out to Ron. Thanks again for connecting us. Let's start at the top. I always like to go at the very top. The Alter Ego Effect. Why'd we name the book that? What's it all about?

Yeah. So the Alter Ego Effect. Well, one thing, it's what I. Since 2004, I've been asked to write this book because that became my number one tool and process that I started using with. At the time, it was just athletes. And then I ended up building up a leadership company and selling it in the corporate and kind of business world. But that was my number one tool that I had in my toolkit to help people truly get all of the capabilities that they had out onto the field. You know, we all know that a lot of times when you really break it down, we're our own worst enemy. And, you know, whether it's worrying about the fears and the judgments of others. And the Alter ego concept just became my master tool to really allow people to get out there. And people started asking me to write because they're like, this is such. I never heard this before. And I always kind of grinned and laughed because the whole. Like I talk about in the book, every single human being that is watching this or is on this planet has already used this concept because we played with it when we were young kids. Our creative imagination builds up this thing. And it's just our way of asking ourselves this question of what could I do if? And then the if part is we're already creating this argument that, well, if I wasn't from this area of the world, or if I wasn't just 5 foot tall or if I wasn't, you know, skinny, or if I wasn't fat, or I wasn't. Whatever you've Got going on around the story you've got around yourself. You ask yourself, what can I do if I was Brian Johnson or what could I do if I was Sasha Fierce or Beyonce or what could I do if I was Oprah or whatever? And then what happens is we disassociate from our own story and we start to allow ourselves to. To now flow into and allow ourselves to activate the traits that we already have out into whatever that role is that we've got in life. And so the alter ego effect, you know, why the name was, the book had never been written before. There's not a book that's really out there around the science behind this stuff, why it's so important, why it sort of taps back into the. I think one thing that's so important in today's world, which is an attitude of more being more playful. You know, those of us, I mean, people that watch you, you know, they're not people who are just wanting to settle in life. They're people who want to, again, optimize. They're wanting to, you know, pursue ambitious things. They're trying to challenge themselves, do difficult things, level themselves up, whatever the kind of cliche is that's there. But along in that process is we've got to carry ourselves on that journey. And sometimes we have a difficult time with seeing ourselves achieve it. But an alter ego is that trusted friend and ally that we get to bring within that can help us slay that dragon with some more grit and some more grace.

Right on, man. I love it. And to extend, or to add another metaphor, it's to live heroically, right? So to optimize our lives, be the best version of ourselves, and give ourselves most fully to the world. Tell us your story about your own alter ego. I love how you framed it in the book. Then we'll drill into some more details.

So. Well, first, I've had many alter egos. And it's actually one of the most common questions I get is like, how many alter egos can I have? And my question back to people is always the same. How many egos do you have? Because we all have many egos. I mean, we think the dangerous thing is we think that there's like many, or we've got this one self, but we actually have. I've got the ego I have as a dad. I've got this ego I have as a representative of my company selling. You know, I've got an ego on stage, I've got. And those things end up trapping us. So I want to Build an alter ego that allows my best traits to come out. So the story around for me in business was that when I started my business, When I was 20 in 1997, I was 22 and looked like I was 12. I had a baby face. So insecure about how young I looked. And then also insecure about the fact that I didn't have seven letters behind my name with a bunch of degrees. I didn't have five best selling books. And now here I was. I wanted to go out there because I was already really good at mentoring young kids for free. This was just something I did as a coach playing football after I got done graduating or after I got done playing football in university. I was already good at this. But I was just insecure that I didn't have as many qualifications as I was supposed to to get out there and help serve other people. And I wasn't now doing the things I needed to do to grow this little fledgling practice that I had. And I wasn't making the calls to book workshops. I wasn't reaching out to people. And then one day I watched this episode of Oprah where she had this lady on and she was recapping one of her favorite episodes with this lady, Johnny, excuse me, Johnny Jocks, who was talking about how she bought a pair of shoes in one of Oprah's auctions. And anytime she felt down, she had them in the corner of her room. She would go and stand in Oprah's shoes to help her feel better. And I thought to myself, wait a second, I did something similar when I played football. I always went out as Geronimo. That was my alter ego. She's using Oprah as her inspiration. Why don't I do this in business? And so my inspirations and my heroes are Joseph Campbell, Benjamin Franklin, and then Superman. I kind of put those three together. And I went out to LensCrafters in West Edmonton mall where I was living at the time. I'm here in New York City now. But I bought a pair of non prescription glasses when no one got non prescription glasses. I mean, everyone's getting Lasik eye surgery. Back then, the optometrist was even like, you've got 2015 vision. What are you doing buying? I'm like, can you please just sell me a pair of glasses? So I got this pair of glasses and I called up my reverse Superman. So Superman put on glasses to become Clark Kent. I put them on to become the super version of myself. I called myself super Richard. And Richard was the one who started showing up to help get Todd's stuff out there in the world. He was my representative to help sell me. And it disassociated from all my fears and worries. And it wasn't too long after that I just got off a call where I booked two workshops that were big workshops for me, and I noticed that my glasses were sitting on the desk. I had finally merged the two and didn't need that activation anymore.

Yeah, that's great. When we connected, you didn't have the glasses on. I'm like, hey, man, I hope we're going to get a peek.

Well, now I just wear them as, like, a totem and a symbol to other people. And I actually do wear them just for, like, dress. I like wearing glasses, but, yeah, you know, now that the book is out, I can't go anywhere without carrying the glasses with me.

That's so great. Well, I do appreciate you donning them, of course. Let's continue that again. Before we go into some details, give us one of your favorite stories from either, you know, someone who's inspired you that you haven't worked with or someone you've worked with. It's kind of gives us an example of how this alter ego kind of comes into play.

Yeah, I think probably my favorite story is actually the story I lead the book off with, which is I was doing a talk in Georgia, and I was backstage in the green room. And so anyone that's spoken before or ever wondered what the green room is, it's definitely not as fancy as you think it is. There's not like a bowl of M&Ms. With all the green ones taken out or something. It's typically a, you know, a janitor's closet or a lunchroom if it's a school. So anyways, I was kind of pacing back and forth, getting ready for my talk, and in through the door comes this, like, physical specimen of a human being, Bo Jackson, who's. If you're not familiar with Bo, Bo is the only athlete to ever win the all star in two major sports. NFL, National Football League, and Major League Baseball. So as he comes in, and I was like, in my head, I'm like, oh, my God, there's Bo Jackson. And so Bo comes over to me, and he's like, hi, I'm Beau. And I'm like, yeah, I know who you are. You won me a lot of games on Techmo bowl as a K. And because he was the cheat code, you could hand him the football, and he would just couldn't get tackled. So he laughed, and then Said, oh, are you going to talk today? And I said, yeah, I'm going to go out there and talk to the kids about Mental Game, but specifically about how to use this idea of an alter ego to really unleash all of their abilities and not get so caught up in their own head. It's a really great way to find the zone and flow state. And so he looked at me and kind of cocked his head to the side and he said, bo Jackson never played a down a football his entire life. And I said, interesting. Tell me more. And he was like, yeah, well, anyone who knows my story knows that while I was a really good athlete, I was also very angry kid growing up. And while anger sounds like it could be channeled in a positive way on the football field, it would actually get me into trouble. I'd take some bad penalties or I was a little bit uncoachable. So one night I was watching this movie and I saw this character come on screen who was cold, calculating, methodical, unemotional. And I thought to myself, wait a second, what if I just took that out onto the football field? And so I don't get my own way. And it was Jason from Friday the 13th. So serial killer Jason, Friday the 13th. And people want to hear the story. They're like, what? That's crazy. He's angry and he's going to. And I'm like, no, but what? Again, this is the beautiful thing about us as human beings. Anytime we hear a story, we relate to it in our own personal way. Like, you know, when someone hears your story, Brian, there's going to be three people, and each of them have a different part of your story that they're like, oh, that really resonated. Or I really like that part. And so you kind of. You. That's what you get to do when you share parts of yourself, is you get to break off some of you to allow other people to take that with them. And so for him, his whole thing was he didn't like that he was so angry on the football field. What he was relating to was the fact that Jason was unemotional. So he wanted to go out there and Jason was just simply his vehicle to be unemotional out there. And so, you know, he's like, I'm sure you're gonna talk to kids about goals too. But he's. I seriously did not have any goals in sport. My only mission on the football field was to destroy anything in my path with no emotion. Whereas before he was trying to destroy everything in his path. But this sort of hiccup that he had in his own kind of personality at the time was that he was angry. Now he was able to sidestep that thing and use this inspiration of an alter ego to sidestep his own sort of self that was getting in the way of. And now all of his abilities were coming out of him. And that's the powerful part about this is it's not you being fake. This is actually just you allowing the stuff that's in you already to be released in its most pure way and consistently.

And on demand is one of the big themes that you make throughout the book. Let's connect actually the kids using the alter ego with the science that you talk about in the book and specifically comes to mind is that Batman study. And Dora, can you walk us through them? Because again, I think it's so cool how you bring it from the. Yeah, it sounds cool, but it actually has been empirically proven to work in a laboratory environment.

Yeah, well, I mean the thing that I love about you and your stuff and you know, you love to try to get down to like the research and the science behind things. And it's a big part of the values that we have as a training company is all of the stuff that we train people on needs to have some sort of backing. Now you can't have everything because I mean, we're still dealing with an undiscovered country between the six inches of human beings ears right here. But there are a lot of different psychological triggers that are maybe weird to other people, but just how we operate as humans. One of them is I talk about in the book is this study that was done on four to six year old children at the University of Minnesota. A lady had heard about this whole alter ego stuff. At least that's the kind of lineage of the story. Was a friend of hers told her about a speech that she saw me give on this and so she wanted to kind of jump into this idea a little bit further. So she brought a bunch of four to six year olds into a room and there was this, you know, those kind of puzzles where it's a bunch of locks on a, like a house or a puzzle box and then you got keys and you got to try to like unlock all these locks. So they gave. They divided the kids up into three different groups and they gave them all keys to unlock these locks. Thing is though, all the keys didn't work. Which was going to now test how long they were going to get, how long they would stick with it before they got frustrated, Right. So the first group is kind of working away at this, and they track all the data. Second group, so they were just operating as themselves. Second group is they said, you know, think about your favorite hero or superhero and pretend that you're them when you're doing this. So they did it. And in the third group, they rolled in a rack of clothes that were Dora the Explorer and Batman costumes. And they said, pick your favorite one, put it on, and then gave them the keys to do it. The fascinating thing that they didn't expect to actually gather was the data on their self talk. So the third group lasted longer than the other two groups. They stuck with it longer. So what they were trying to do is measure up their grit and perseverance, and so they lasted longer. Why is it, though? Well, their actual self talk was the thing that sort of created a window into what was happening. When kids were acting as themselves, they would say things like, oh, I'm. I'm not really good at puzzles, so, you know, I'm just gonna quit. Or they would say, like, this is just too hard. I can't figure this out. And they'd quit. I can't. I can't. They're using that language. Those words are important to me because words are the things that can trap us sometimes, you know? So I work with people on that language. The other kids, though, the ones who are wearing the costumes, would say things like, batman would never quit, so I won't quit. Dora the Explorer always finds a way, so I'm going to find a way. And they, again, they lasted way longer. So the question I like to pose back to people because the term like authentic self and authenticity are very popular ideas that are out there right now. Unfortunately, though, like many words, sometimes they get a societal meme wrapped around them. And right now I think it's a signal that people are using to sometimes virtue signal to other people when really they're not acting like they really want to. So I don't really care about. In their root form. I think it's a great word, but it's not being used that way right now. And so I say to people, so who's being authentic? The kid who was walking away from the challenge or the kid that stuck with it? The reality was, in that moment, they both were. So let's remove our. Remove that idea. And how can we give people tools that allow them to, you know, in a way, more positive? Like, I mean, I want my. I got three little ones. I want my little ones to talk to Themselves that way, like, I can figure this out. Or if they were using alter ego idea, you know, Batman will figure this out. And now they're acting through Batman's abilities, not their own. Their own perceived limitations are acting through Batman's abilities. Dora the explorer's mindset, which is she's curious, you know, and if that helps those young kids find a different gear, find a different way that they can, you know, relate to themselves when they don't have the costume on, then what a wonderful gift to give people. And you know, now as a, as a, as another study that was, that had come out and, and I've been teaching people this, that when you're out there, like if you're. Brian, what's the, what are the kind of the. The physical activities or sports that you. That you kind of really lean into?

Well, it's funny because I actually wear this as part of my trigger, so it's a Spartan sweatband. So I'm into Spartan races. So we do a lot of work on identity as well, which is one of the reasons why. Yeah. Many reasons why I love the book so much. But for me, I channel the athlete identity. Me at my optimist best.

Yeah.

Is a Spartan athlete. So that actually is one of my little triggers that I've kind of adopted. Yeah.

And I've done the Spartan podcast and Joe to Senna, I spoke at their big leadership conference here in New York as well. So. Love what they do. So, you know, when, when people are out there competing, especially long distance stuff, or even if it's in games, you know, you're. You're taught to kind of say like positive affirmations to yourself, like, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. Actually, what increases performance and grit and perseverance is actually not saying, I can do it. It's actually talking to yourself in the second person and saying, you can do this. Think of yourself as a cheerleader on the sidelines, cheering on that athletic best person that's out there. And again, what this does is it honors the root form of the idea of the alter ego, which was coined in 44 BC by Cicero, you know, arguably one of the greatest Roman statesmen and philosophers to ever live. He's the first person to actually, in recorded history, at least talk about the alter ego in a letter to a friend right before he passed away. So one of the wisest people of that gen of that era. Its root form, when he was explaining it, means the other I, or trusted friend. So to change up our language from saying, I can do it to thinking about, you've got this trusted friend inside who's going to sit there and encourage you, is such a powerful and positive way to operate. Because we all know the power of friends and relationships and mentors and coaches and, you know, boards of advisors and people around us that are positive and encouraging. We know how important that is outside of ourselves. But the six inches between the ears is the place that people forget. The really, really important area of bringing in some allies and alter egos are a fantastic way to leverage what we already have as a gift, which is a creative imagination to stick with the dreams that we've got and attack them maybe with our best selves.

I love it, man, so much there. I want to talk about author.

Are we going to have enough time to dive into all this? Because we can speak out on this.

This is perfect timing. You just said your best self, so let's come back to the author. I made a note to come back to author in a moment, but your best self. So again, optimize is from the Latin optimus, which means the best. So we talk a lot about the fact that there's the best version of you kind of hanging out. And then I connected Joe. I just did his world championship race a few weeks ago and he interviewed me the morning after. And we jokingly said, I'm his brother from Athens, he's from Sparta, I'm from Athens. So I connected his ideas to Aristotle's ideas of eudaimonia. So I like to say that optimize equals optimus equals best. Aristotle would call that a eudaimon. And he would say that if you want to live with deep sense of flourishing, eudaimonia, which is of course weekly translated as happiness, but means more along the lines of expressing the best version of yourselves. You need to have, literally, etymologically, a good soul, you daimon. So we call that optimist, best version of ourselves, our daimon. Right, that's it right there. Our dear friend is there all the time.

Yes.

And I love your distinction about. Yeah, sure. You can say I or you can say it's almost like we're the character.

Yes.

That's acting out what the ultimate author, you know, that. That divine power as described or as felt through the daimon in our day to day lives. Which leads me to the author part I loved. I think it was Dan Millman who turned me on to the idea that the etymological root of the word authentic is shared with the word author. So it actually means to Be the author of your own life. If we want to live heroically, the most authentic thing we can do is to write a good story.

Exactly.

That means putting on Batman's cape. We better put on Batman's cape, right?

100%. And the thing I love about this conversation, I'm going to go back and replay some of this stuff because it just maps so perfectly to the ideas that I'm talking about in the book and the training that we give people. But that, that one, when I share this idea, people, people often go, I think I've actually been doing this. And I'm like, no, I know you have. All I'm doing is I'm getting you to intentionally activate that best self through ideas and psychological switches and triggers that are already built into how we operate. I don't want to give people. I don't like giving people ideas or tools that run counter to the way that our psychological switches or biological switches are already kind of flicking. Because now I'm going against the grain, right? I want to, like, dig into these things. I'm like, oh, in clothed cognition, we as human beings will, if we put on an article of clothing, we will unwittingly and unconsciously start to cognitively activate the traits of that item or thing, right? Which is when the. So when the kids put on the Batman costume, they enclosed their cognitive abilities in the traits of whatever they thought about Batman, whatever they thought about Batman. So to some kids, maybe putting on a Batman costume if they don't like Batman wouldn't be a good thing, but there would be another uniform that they put on. So a hundred percent, it's that idea, one of the kind of core of the different principles in the book. I tell that idea of intentionality you are authoring how you want to be showing up in that specific role. The mistake people make with this is they think they have to have one alter ego for their entire life. No, we have many selves. In fact, for the longest time, you know, to get to more science on this stuff is the psychological or psychology community had for generations trotted out one of the core pillars of it, which is single self theory, that human beings who recognized themselves as having one main identity were the healthiest mentally, meaning they had lower rates of depression, anxiety, stress, any sort of mental kind of anguish. Now, from my experience, and I think from anyone else, if you've ever met a pro athlete or an entertainer or someone that was in the public eye and you're like, oh, that person's a lot different in real life than I thought they would be. That should be a signal to other people that that whole theory would be broken. Because Bo Jackson, I don't want him walking off the field as Jason. I want, you know, because he's a very nice, kind, soft spoken person if you've ever met him. So I want that person in my interaction with him. So now the entire world of psychology has flipped on that particular philosophy. And now one of the fastest growing fields of study is multiple self theory, which happened about a decade ago. And multiple self theory is that the understanding that people who see themselves as having many sides to themselves, many selves that show up in different areas, are the healthiest mentally, feel more fulfilled, actually navigate life with more grit, and have less occurrences of any sort of mental sort of anguish. Well, that's what this does. And this does beautifully is on that field. So even like Brian the interviewer, how do I want to show up as. That's you authoring how you want to show up in that specific role. That's something you got to carry those traits with you in another area that's just like, oh yeah, I do have many roles even in my own business. Like even you in your own business. There's Todd, the guy who's got to sell the idea of alter egos, or, you know, there's Todd, the guy who goes on stages, who's going to have a bigger, more playful personality. I'll who my alter ego is there. It's Hugh Jackman. He's the inspiration for how I want to show up when I'm on stage. Way more playful, big all those amazing things that I really appreciate about him. But when I go home to my kids, very different side of me that I bring there than the one that shows up in business. So this is, it's such a fun way to think about, just to use your words, authoring how you want to be showing up.

Yeah, that's awesome. And you do a great job of channeling your inner Joseph Campbell in the book. So I highly recommend get the book to get details and exercises I went off. I mean, I just had so much fun kind of mapping it over how we've been thinking about things with our identity work, just really looking at those individuals, kind of my own heroes who, you know, I aspire to embody on a more consistent basis. And the way that you help us get clarity on that is amazing. So if you're watching this or listening to this and thinking, oh, that sounds pretty neat, how do I do it? Well, that's exactly what the book is all about to go back to the science for a moment longer. That's really cool that the researcher was inspired by your work first of all. And then the way you described it is so compelling. And then it reminds me of Ellen Langer's work at Harvard decades ago where she actually did similar work, which you probably know. But just to say it out loud right here, she actually had people role play pilots and gave them an eye test, just a normal eye test. Or she had them dress up as a pilot and read the exact same letters off of the from a make believe cockpit and read letters off of a make believe wing or whatever it was. And their vision went up by simply channeling the implicit bias that we think pilots have better vision than non pilots.

I haven't actually, I haven't seen that study, so I'm gonna have to go dig that one up.

Okay, I'll send you my note on it. I don't know if I referenced it in this note, but I thought of it as I read it because it's just one of those things.

Even fascinating too is I mentioned it in the book that the glasses. Now think about glasses as a totem or artifact for people to use. Is there's a lot of psychological narrative around glasses already. And I talk about in the book how defense attorneys will get their clients to wear glasses because the data shows that they will have lower prosecutory rates or their sentences will be less than if they didn't. Because, you know, people look at them and like, oh well, how could that. Because glasses soften the face. How could that person have committed that crime if they were. Again, it's so strange how human beings work. But with it is there's some new studies that are coming out now around how simply by putting on a pair of glasses increases your IQ by 10 to 15 points.

I gotta start wearing glasses. My next interview, you're gonna see me with a pair of glasses.

And again, this is all happening like completely unconsciously, which is the stuff that I love to help people with. I don't want to get you to think more. I want to get you to just use the amazing gifts of what we've already been given to help us elevate. You know what I call like that, that peak self you call the best self. Right. We're all at the end of the day, we're still trying to pursue the same thing, which is just to really help people, you know? Fricking for me it's just crush life. Like just get to the end and go, I did It.

Yeah. And then again, to go back to Campbell, what I love so much about the book is you extended his ideas around the hero's journey within your alter ego and using those archetypes and the broader archetype of being heroic on the field of play. And you use some great kind of modern tweaks in your own creative insights on that process. Let's go there, actually, for a moment. So tell us about what it means for you. I usually end the interview with this, but I want to go to the hero side of it right now. So what does it mean for you when you think about being a modern hero? And we can run Campbell through that. We can do whatever we want with it. But what comes to mind for you when you think of. Of us aspiring to be modern heroes?

How I sort of describe it to people is. And the way that I think about it is a modern hero is the person that's showing up how they most want to. It isn't about the accolades or even the doing of something, but it's the, like, you know, if I, if I show up in the way that I most want to and I don't get the result that I want, I still get to walk away from that experience going, yeah, but I did that in the way that I wanted to do it. Like with the way that I showed up, not because of the way that I wanted my parents to think about me or what everyone else. I did it the way that I wanted to do it. And so I think that is when you can see Jordan Peterson in his 12 Rules book, which is a phenomenal book as well. And he's sent me some lovely messages about my book, which is great to get. But his second rule, which is, I think, such a powerful rule, and it maps perfectly to the stuff that we're talking about, which is you want to treat yourself as if you're someone that you want to take care of. Like, if you really sink into that idea, I share this on stage and I could see people tear up over it. But honestly, if you treated yourself and you saw yourself as someone that you want to take care of, that probably is going to allow you to show up in a very heroic way, because you're not concerned about the narratives of other people. So I think that the pursuit of. That we talk about, you know, dreams or goals or the attainment of something or the aspirations and those words and the way that they're used in society are typically an out there thing. Like, I'm going to go and pursue that. We've got to climb the mountain. It's a journey. But I really try to relate to people that actually there's this core thing that's inside, or there's this best you that's inside. And our job is to continuously journey towards that, that heroic you that's just filled with nothing but core possibility and capability. And the moment you get it, it's like just this burst of light. You're going to know that you found it. Sometimes it's in a moment, sometimes it's in a moment of zone and flow state where just stuff came out of you. Like, that's the experience of the athlete. They're like, I can't even tell you, like, what happened. And I'm like, you don't have to. You don't need to say it. You just got to experience it. That's more important. Don't language it to me. You got to feel it. That's the pursuit. The pursuit is within. But here's the crazy thing. The only way to get there is to constantly put ourselves out there. So it's this, you know, great relation, the symbiotic relationship between in and out that goes back and forth, like pushing yourself, doing hard things and finding yourself in that moment, pushing yourself even more. The pursuit of struggle, I think, is one of my big missions in life, is to totally change the narrative around that word struggle and suffering. I think struggle and suffering are so powerful. They've allowed me to find a lot of myself through the process, whether it's through traumatic things that happened to me as a youngster or just putting myself into just, you know, challenging moments. I've got to see what I've made of and allows me to become more and more valuable to other people.

I love it. The modern hero who's living a life to get to go back to our use of the word authenticity, of authoring their own life, as Campbell would say, following their bliss and having the courage to leave the comfort of the known. Which you talk about, which I want to get to in a moment of crossing the threshold and actually answering the call independent of the success, and then embracing the fact that I like to say that when you're on your hero's journey, you're battling dragons, not sidestepping lizards. There's a big difference, you know, when you're battling a dragon, every once in a while you lose an arm, you know, and often they grow back, sometimes they don't. But that willingness to suffer, as you would say. And then what's funny, when you mentioned Jordan, I love to the second rule that you mentioned of caring for yourself like you mean it, you know, like you're a dear friend and a child. I thought you were going to mention. I don't know if it was rule one or what it was, but the one where he has basically have a straight back, you know, and kind of having that posture of authority. Which brings us back to the Clark Kent Superman idea. And you make the great distinction that the alter ego for Superman was actually Clark Kent. So he can relate. But we use. I actually share a clip, like a 15 second clip of an old school Christopher Reeves, you know, Superman, where he's being Clark Kent and you know, he's hunched over and then you literally see him flip the switch is what we say. And your point that to get in that state of flow requires a constant. We would call it a flipping of the switch.

Yeah.

Bring back Optimus right now in that shift, you know, of actually channeling. And again, you give so many great ways, kind of the. What do you call that? The fist?

The ground punch. The ground punch.

Yeah. But that, that ability to notice when we've slipped and then to close the gap habitually such that when we need it most, that, you know, the difference is right there and we can channel it anyway. A lot of. A lot of stuff.

This is fun. This is fun. I love, I love this conversation. Well, I'm hoping I can maybe blow your mind for a second here because you just mentioned what is probably Joseph Campbell's most popular sort of sound bite, which is follow your bliss. Now, I did some work with the Joseph Campbell foundation because they found out that inside of my sports coaching company that we follow the hero's journey model. And we've actually adapted it as a coaching model with people. Because when you actually understand that, you know, everyone's in their own story and they're actually some. There is somewhere on that path, you know, so like, let's say they're at the point of crossing the threshold, meaning that they're at a decision point or even what I talk about in the book, like a moment of impact, where, you know, it's basically them truly taking action towards this pursuit. Well, when you know what's actually ahead in the next point, I need to give them then a tool, maybe an introduction to another mentor or something that helps pull them into the cave. Right. Cross the threshold. So anyways, we use this model and I'm just, when I'm talking to people, I'm just like, I'm always like, okay, well, they're here on the path. And so that means. I just love that sort of game that's played. Now, what's fascinating about that quote is it's a bit of a. It's not a misquote, because he did say that, but what he actually said is from a larger quote, which was, follow your blisters, because in your blisters you'll find your bliss. Which I love that because so many people want to avoid the tough things, you know, and whether, like, for me, as someone that had to, 30 years after the fact, really go back and revisit and finally conquer some traumatic stuff that happened to me as a young kid, I finally faced that down after avoiding it for such a long time or, you know, and it was manifesting itself in not the. Not the best way as a dad. And that I wanted, you know, I was becoming too triggered and angry and I needed to get rid of that because I said to myself, I didn't want to give my kids secondhand trauma. And then. But for me and then for others, the blisters is where all the value is, man. Like, it's just. And then now saying that now I want to give people tools and strategies to help face those blisters in a more graceful way or with more persistence or with a more playful attitude of all things, because we talk about these things like challenges and obstacles and struggles and suffering, but there's still a way that we've got gifted to us. It's playful, like, it's just like when you imagine that you get to show up on stage and no one else knows that I'm up there sort of embodying Hugh Jackman. That's a fun thing for me, you know, and then even for you, the whole optimist thing, like, no one knows that. In my own mind, I'm cheering myself on from, like, this place of pure possibility, this best self version of me. That's like saying, you can do it.

Yeah. And then. So I don't know if you know, my background with the Joseph Campbell foundation, but Finding Joe, the documentary, which I happen to be in, where I discuss exactly these ideas and I drill into the etymological root of where he came up with follow your bliss in addition to what you just described with a compliment of follow your grunt. He wished he had influenced, you know, emphasized that even more. But the classic to go to the joy, to connect it to the true joy and the playfulness of, you know, him studying Sanskrit and looking at sat chit and ananda as the three jumping off points into enlightenment and he said, look, sat and chit. My beingness, my consciousness, I don't know what that is, but my ananda, my bliss, that feeling of being alive and truly on purpose and in integrity with who I am, I know that I can have fun with that. I can follow that, and I'll let that be my personal jumping off point into enlightenment. So I love the multifaceted way to kind of approach this with the essence of it being what tools you need to use at whatever phase you're in. And then he also said, say yes to it all. You know, there's no denial of any part of our life in the moment we try to ignore one part or wish it didn't happen. As he says, we unravel the whole thing. Right. Like there's nothing there. So I think everything you said is beautiful. We could talk about it for a weekend. It's so good.

Yeah. If only there was an event that we could both be at and maybe.

You know, I think we got something coming up. Optimize 2020. You, the modern hero.

That's. That's just a little nugget there. I drop in for you.

You're welcome. All of my Personas appreciate that.

Yeah.

Let's go back to science for a moment. So you also talk about. Which again, was one of the reasons why I just wanted to stand up and scream when I'm reading the book of. Yes. This is awesome. Connecting all my favorite dots. Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey, and then a lot of deep science. You talk about Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson, and you did an awesome job of. Again, the whole book is run through the metaphor of the hero's journey. If we haven't made that clear.

Yeah.

You combine the ancient wisdom and how the positive psychology movement was started.

Yeah.

You brought those virtues into life as superpowers. Can you talk to us about that?

Yeah. So, you know, Martin Silligman and Peterson, they probably have the largest study that's ever been done on, you know, character, virtues and values and the way that people kind of show up in their life and through their research. Again, I might get this wrong. It's either 24 or 26 virtues that they. 24. Yeah, 24 character traits, basically. But what they found, though, is that the people who purposefully pursued those character traits in the way that they showed up, like, recognized and then tried to find practical ways to activate those character traits daily or weekly or monthly based on their studies, lived the most fulfilled life. And, you know, to the conversation we just had about bliss and that I understand that. Like, I know. And that gets to the whole point of, like, when you show up and you showed up in a heroic way, in the way that you decided that you wanted to show up. And even if you didn't get the win or you didn't win the race or you didn't win the medal or close the deal or whatever it is, you still honored the core way that you wanted to. And that's extremely powerful. Because really what I talk about is, that's when you're the heroic self, is the feeling that you get when you lay your head on the pillow at night and you're like, you know what? I killed it today. Like, whether I won or lost, I still gave it my best. My best. And. As opposed to sitting there and beating yourself up because you're like, I thought I should have done it that way and I did it that way, and I didn't even get the win, and I should have just listened to myself or whatever it is. Like, that's. It's that feeling of being heroic. And so what I talk about in the book is that's the power of this. Again, part of the process is when you decide the traits and abilities or character traits that you want to bring forth in that role for you, you're simply. All I'm doing is leveraging that idea that Marty Seligman and Chris had talked about and using it in this way of building out this best version of me to go out onto that field and win.

Dude, you're so firing me up while you're saying that. I reached down and I had something on the floor here that I had to pick up. So very briefly, we're training our coaches, our first inaugural class of coaches. And one of the big things that's become even more salient is something we call the big three, where we help them identify the big three areas of their life, energy, work, and love. I won't go off on how we came up with that, but energy, work, and love create an identity that is their optimist, best version of themselves.

Right?

And you're giving me ideas on how we're going to optimize that and improve that, and then the virtues that that best version of them embodies. And then the number one thing they're going to do today to basically manifest that and actually be present to that, and that's a day in and day out, Carpe diem is what we call our journaling. But when I had to reach down and write on, because this is literally mine from this morning, right, there's this identity of an athlete. So I show up throughout the day as an athlete. I eat, I move, I sleep, I train like a professional athlete. And then a leader, right, is obviously a big part of my identity. And that shifts depending on where I'm at. It's more philosopher, more CEO, but a general leader and then a father, you know, is a really important part of my love identity. But what I wrote down was in addition to the, you know, affirmation of the personal I am, you are and having that voice of the Optimus bastard, however, it's framed basically coaching that the character we're playing to do this. So I just love that as you were riffing on that, the connection there.

It'S such a, it's. I mean, if anyone gets took that away as a huge distinction and a way that you operate, I'm telling you, it is just so transforming. I've seen, I've just seen it with people where they start being so much kinder with themselves, you know, and as someone who's like a mental, like people have this perception that because I do mental toughness or whatever and you know, I am, I'm a challenger personality type, but I'm trying to challenge people to like, again, I am, I am literally, I think every single day I think of slaying dragons. The biggest dragons I'm slaying every single day are the societal narratives and paradigms that people are operating through, sometimes through poorly written self help books that are very popular and they're written by people that might be researching or they're propagating old ideas. And so they don't. It's not that they set out to not mean well, but I want to pay attention to the practitioners, the ones who are on the field every single day working with people on this tough stuff. And so I just feel like every day I'm picking up a sword and I'm trying to slay these dragons that are very pervasive and that really trap people. And again, that's why I brought up authenticity and authentic. Their, their words, the root words are so valuable, but the way that they're used now I think are trapping a lot of people because they're concerned about being authentic to other people. No, no, it's for you.

Yep.

Not for others.

Let's go there. Let's go to. You made a point that has triggered something for me. If you want to work with the people who are on the field, you know, who are out there slaying their dragons, talk to us. About motivation and that, you know, you talk about emotion and motivation. And you also made a really powerful point that I've shared a number of times with our coaches in different contexts of you can't, you cannot insert motivation. No, you know, you said something like, you won't touch that. You got to have that fire.

I don't touch it. So where that came from was early on working with, you know, different, different clients. You would, you know, again, I was working with young kids early on and a lot of the people that were bringing me a client were the parents. And they wanted the, they wanted the kin to kid to be more successful at the thing than, than, than the kid did. And it was only after me discovering that that I was like, hey, parent, you know, stop trying to put your dreams inside of this kid's head kind of thing, you know. And I used to break down parents law because they would say things like, you know, you know what if I actually would have been a little bit more committed or I would have been, you know, more disciplined, I would have made it. And I say, and I just flat out would say that if it was me and you talking, it's like, brian, no, you couldn't have made it. Here's how I know that you didn't make it. So stop trying to force that narrative on your kids because you know what they're doing when they walk away, they're rolling their eyes at you. You're losing all credibility. How do I know that? Because I've worked with thousands of them. They don't want to hear it anymore. But getting to the question about motivation, so I started. I have the seven pillars of sort of the inner game world. And the seventh one was my outlier one, which was about motivation. So how much desire do you have? And then it would be like a scale of 1 to 4. To practice because. Not to play because the winners have a desire to practice, not play. Very big distinction. There's this kind of saying that I've had for a long time that everyone wants the noun without the verb. Everyone wants to be the best selling author without writing the actual best selling book. Everyone wants to win the medal without actually doing the work it takes to win that medal. So nouns and verbs important. So anyway, motivation. The moment they have themselves low on that, I'm like, I can't do anything with that. Everything else. Everything else is a skill that we can build up. Motivation though that isn't a skill as much. I can ask you lots of stories. That's what I want to get to. Because the story is the way that I can maybe help you find that internal motivation. But again, that's a you thing, not a me thing. I don't touch it. Bring it to me. Bring it to me. Because I want you to be really, really hungry. And that's why I love that idea that Jordan Peterson gave around, you know, treating yourself as if you're someone that you want to take care of. That's such a powerful idea for people.

Yep. So wrapping up reluctantly, I feel like we can just go off here. We simultaneously covered a fair amount, but barely scratched the surface. Is there any idea that kind of jumps out that we haven't talked about that you want to make sure we shine a light on?

There's so many. There's so many. I love getting across people. I think. The one thing I really love touching on, because we're kind of talking about some like, you know, and I said this before, some, you know, difficult things. And again, we're navigating the six inches of people's ears. But just the power of being playful with this. And we can do it in, like, you know, to start out and play with this. We can start out with what's the area of your life that you're most frustrated with that you could, like, start to reacquaint yourself with this idea because you've already done it. You actually instinctually already know how to do this. You know, that logical thinking brain is going to get in the way, like, oh, am I doing this right? No, no, just you're going to. You're going to feel yourself through this process. But I just said this to someone else who was like, you know what? I've had a tough time, like, finding this. I'm like, here's the simple thing. Go out and do a mundane task and just for fun, play it as some character that you're inspired by, whether it's. You go shopping. The example I gave. Go to your grocery store and go grocery shopping as Thor or Wonder Woman or James Bond. How would they shop through there? Like, I don't know, just as an idea. Just to reacquaint yourself with the creative imagination. That's a fun way to do this because again, that gets into the role playing idea. Like, how would. Again, you said pilot. How would a pilot, if you were gonna navigate your way through a grocery store, how would a pilot go in and order a cup of coffee at a. I don't know. I mean, that's up to you to think through. But just seeing there's so many different opportunities that you can play with this. Maybe not starting out with going out and doing a speech as your alter ego, even though that's probably the one that I've gotten the most feedback and wins on with people. That one. And losing weight, ironically enough. Lady came up to me, lost 100 pounds after reading the book. She had never been in a gym in her entire life. She built out an alter ego. There's really that optimized self that's sitting up there that loved working out. And another lady, like, eight minutes later came up and said, I've lost 35 pounds with this idea. So. Yeah, but just that idea of playfulness. I love to kind of hammer home with people.

Yeah, that's cool, man. And then I love the very practical, simple tool of, you don't need to go to the hardest thing. Just next time, go to the grocery store, who are you going to be? Show up, have fun with it.

Or even if you're in the kitchen and you're cooking, like, who's a favorite chef that you're inspired by? Like, what if you, like, prepared your meal as if you're Gordon Ramsay? Maybe not that one, maybe, but someone else that you're inspired by? Just play with this stuff.

I love it, man. So taking the spotlight off of the book for a moment and putting it on you. I like to. We talk a lot about fundamentals. So what are the basic fundamentals that we engage in that help us stay plugged into that best version of ourselves? Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing properly, focusing our mind, et cetera. What are your core practices? The things that you've learned just keep you plugged in that you'd like to share?

Sure. So I would say that one of the enemies that I had as a young. As a youngster was being quite selfish, thinking about myself all the time. And so one of my core practices I do every single day, what I'm known for amongst my crowd, is I sit down, I start my day by writing a handwritten note to someone. And it's just one page. I have my letterhead or whatever, but it's just an expression of gratitude for reading their book, having their YouTube channel or something like that, congratulating them on a win and just letting them know that someone was watching and appreciates what they've done. And I have a kind of a formula and a process that I do. But that's. You know, people talk about gratitude journals. I think gratitude is such a powerful idea and emotion. I don't want to hold it to myself. I want to Share it with other people. So that's what I do every single day. I've got a little wax seal and I. It's all. All old school, you know, Socrates would appreciate it, maybe. And that's my. That's why that's how I start my day, is with that practice. And so there's. That's one of them is that. And again, I've done 4,000 plus one on one. 4,000 letters since I was. I'd started when I was 22. I've done 4,000 of those, you know, sent them to, like, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan. They were actually my fifth and sixth letters I sent out. They responded back on presidential letterhead in the late 90s with a response which was really lovely. Ronald's was actually more thanking me so much for sending Nancy one because he usually got all the accolades and she never did. And so he was very effusive in his thanks for sending her a nice message. You know, Daniel Day Lewis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, before he passed away. They responded, you know what the number one response is? I get back from people, you have no idea how much I needed to get this today.

Wow.

I mean, it's. I mean, if that doesn't motivate you to want to, like, do a lot for other people, you know, say hi, reach out, how are you? Anything that you need or just recognize them for doing awesome stuff is powerful. But the one that starts my day, I've got a video that kind of went a little bit viralish on Instagram, is a lot of people talk about getting up and drinking a glass of water or brushing their teeth or going and meditating. Mine isn't that. Mine is. I want to throw down a ground punch in the middle of my head, sending a message to the goblin of fear that I'm the one who owns this real estate. And so the first thought that's in my head every single morning is, come and get me, Come and get me. Because fear can't hit a moving target. Fear cannot hit a moving target. Fear sits in stagnant water. Fear sits on the couch with you. Fear sits with you when you're just not moving. So come and get me. Because you cannot catch me even when I say it right now, like I'm vibrating.

I got it right now. Yeah, yeah.

Come and come and get me. You cannot win. I'm the one who owns this space. And, you know, if there was something I could give to other people, it's that attitude of, you know, you can't be stopped.

So where's the microphone to drop.

That's my Thor's hammer. That's my ground punch. Yeah.

So that's so good. So I need to see that. So if you can send me a link, I'm going to send you a couple things. You can send me a link to that. I want to share it in the context of this as well. Yeah, come and get me. Gratitude. I'm also going to hit you up, by the way, for your source for that seal.

Yeah, 100%. You give me your address and I'll send you a custom one.

Man. Even better. I'm honored and grateful already. I know who I'm going to be writing my first letter to. So. Good man. Well, I appreciate you and your lifetime of work and all you've done. Again, the alter ego effect is the book, obviously. Get at Amazon, wherever you get your books. Where's the best place for them to find you?

Oh, my home base on the Internet is Todherman Me. And then all the links to the social channels LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook and elsewhere are all right there. And yeah, information about our trainings and workshops too. But Todherman me is the home base.

Right on, man. All right, great to connect. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks, Johnson. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

Hey guys, this is Brian with a quick little P.S. i'm really excited to let you know about an event we're working on. Plan is to make it the premier self optimizing event of 2020. We're calling it Optimize 2020. You the modern hero. Basic idea. Five days, 101 world class luminaries. One million people. You can learn more and get your tickets to the online and offline event at Optimize Me 2020. Again, that's Optimize Me2020. Hope to see you there.