It’s also a strategy that can be found in several books that are broadly about gamifying your life, like Steve Kamb’s (quite good) Level Up Your Life, Chris Hardwick’s (also quite good) The Nerdist Way, and Jane McGonigal’s (excellent) SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully 2 She calls the concept a “Secret Identity,” but it’s the same basic premise., among others.

Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce NFL/MLB double-all-star Bo Jackson famously never played a single down of football as “Bo Jackson,” instead literally pretending he was Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th movies according to biographers, Steve Jobs perfected and embodied a “Steve Jobs, Apple CEO” persona that only tangentially resembled who he was when with his family. One of the ways I harness these peccadillos productively (as opposed to letting them stun me into doing nothing, ever, for fear of bad outcomes) is with alter egos.Īlter egos and alternate personas have long been used by entertainers and other highly successful people. Clinical anxiety is a very different thing, and there’s no shame in getting professional or chemical help for this or any mental health issue. 1 Important caveat: the amount of anxiety I’m talking about is more or less “standard human with an overactive inner life” the kind that can definitely be overwhelming or cause second-guessing, but normally exists as low-grade background radiation. It’s not the cleanest-burning fuel, but more often than not, it gets me where I want to go. When I can keep it at reasonable levels, it gets me moving more effectively than a general, non-urgent desire for improvement. I don’t consider this an inherently bad thing - I have a semi-productive relationship with my negative self-talk, anxieties, and impostor syndrome. As a general rule, the person that I am meanest to, rudest to, most demanding of, less forgiving of, regularly show a lack of confidence in, think is most likely to fail at a given task, and am generally hard on is me.

Alter ego game+ eat as much as you can