Create An Alter Ego
Before she steps on stage, she turns on her alter ego.
The alter ego is everything the public knows about her, because she has crafted the alter ego that way. It was born in 2003, when she was in the studio.
When this alter ego was revealed during an interview for People Magazine, some were surprised. Why does she need to change herself?
But to her, Sasha Fierce is encapsulates all of the characteristics that Beyonce doesn’t want to have all of the time.
We can learn a lot from this, and science has studied the phenomenon quite a bit as well.
One of my favorite newsletters IFOD (great newsletter, high recommendation to read), a 2014 study by the University of Michigan found that people who engage in distanced self-talk (using your first name or alter ego’s name) were more likely to perform better than those who simply referred to themselves in the 1st person “I”.
One example cited in the study was about Lebron James who, when explaining his decision of whether to stay at one team vs another said “I didn’t want to make an emotional decision. I wanted to make the best decision for LaBron James and do what makes LaBron James happy.”
This concept goes along the lines of something i’ve written about in the past which is “make the mind run the body”, and having hard and fast rules for yourself as well.
The point is, if you want to change something about yourself, consider giving yourself an alter ego, assign it those characteristics, and invoke those characteristics when you are in the right situation. Caveat - make it a cool name that you’ll want to associate with.