The Alter Ego Effect is a book by Todd Herman that I love which I will explain about in a moment.
Let’s start with just how crazy real estate is as a profession. You get a license, you drive strangers around in your car to show them strangers homes, you write up contracts, make sure deadlines are met, handle negotiations, navigate emotional clients, organize vendors, look for new clients, market, keep the books, balance the books and then do it again tomorrow.
This is one of the few careers where you are looking for a job every single day. You wear a lot of hats and do things you wouldn’t normally do in any other job. So how do you access that?
One way is to model other people’s behavior and attitudes. Find out how someone is doing something and then emulate them.
The Alter Ego Effect
What is really interesting in Todd’s book is that lots of people do what he is talking about but they don’t realize it. He found a lot of athletes access an alter ego to get into the right frame of mind to perform at a high-level.
The best story for me is the one about Bo Jackson. Bo Jackson played professional football and baseball and was a beast. As a kid, he had an emotional streak that his coaches told him was going to hold him back from any real success and that he needed to get it under control. That weekend he watched “Friday the 13th.”
He saw that cold, quiet emotionless Jason and said, “That’s who I will be on the field.” He told Todd that Bo never stepped on the field, it was Jason.
Who do you need to be to do some of the things you need to do?
Todd also talks about how Beyonce created Sasha Fierce. Sasha Fierce could do things that Beyonce wasn’t ready to do. There’s something about that out of body experience.
Have you ever noticed that you can tell other people what to do much more easily than getting yourself to do it? Some have found it’s easier to tell the alter ego what to do and feel like they are sitting back while the alter ego is performing.
Black Mamba, I imagine, was something like that for Kobe.
Exercise: Check out the book at the library or listen to some of Todd Herman’s videos to get a better grasp of what he is talking about. Think about places where you get stuck and how an alter ego could help you,
Do the work, get the results.
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