By Douglas Kruger
WE say it like we mean it: “New year, new me!” But now that we’re two weeks in, how are you faring?
Here’s a thought-exercise designed to help. It utilises something called “avatars”.
An avatar is like you, but not you. It is an imagined character through which you explore what your life could be. The power of avatars lies in helping us to step outside of our usual parameters. This is a classic “reframing” technique, and it’s surprisingly powerful.
Imagine an ideal version of yourself. The optimally successful incarnation of you, living your best life. What does that person do differently to what you are doing right now? Walk through their day, considering their actions.
Doing so helps you in two ways. First, to conceive of what might be possible adjacent to your current life. Second, to dislodge your own investment in unsuccessful patterns of behaviour.
Avatars create distance from the self. Distance lets us perceive alternatives. Perhaps most usefully, it helps us to see beyond the cloud of emotions that may prevent us thinking strategically about our futures. We get stuck in things, and can’t see it, until we ask whether our avatar would live that way. Once we see more clearly the acts we should carry out, and the ones we should dump, it is easier to adopt or discard.
Here are some useful questions to prompt the exercise:
- How does this ideal version of me look and act?
- What do they do each day? And what do they not do?
- What have they done to get to this point?
- What do I wish I’d done from the start, in order to be this person? Is any of it still available to me?
- What would the ideal version of me do differently in scenarios that make me unhappy?
- What mistakes have I made that the ideal version of me would not? Can I change that?
- Faced with my current challenges, what would the ideal version of me do that would not only solve the problem but also turn it into a success?
- What does my ideal walk, talk and body language look like? How do I sit, stand, occupy space and express myself? How do I dress, and present myself to others?
Taken together, the acts and mannerisms of this ideal avatar are called a script. Scripts are powerful prompters. You can abandon an unsuccessful script and begin to imitate the avatar of a more successful one, and you can start doing it immediately.
As you move away from old behaviours towards the script of an ideal avatar, these are the kinds of thoughts you might explore: what would the better version of me do now, today, this week? How do I make a good decision here, despite my desire to do something wrong? The answer might be “walk away from this and have nothing to do with it, even though I have never done that before”. Or it could be “walk in confidently and greet people with a warm handshake, even though that is not how I usually act”.
New script, new you. New you, new results.
A merit of the avatar technique is that it doesn’t require emotional stewing. Rather than asking: “What’s wrong with me?” it simply asks: “What would right behaviour look like?” Your avatar simply does the right thing, without equivocation. Copy your avatar.
It is the simplicity that makes this mental model effective. A few seconds’ thinking about how our avatar would handle this scenario reframes our approach.
Take finances. “Obviously, the avatar version of me would have been saving all this time and wouldn’t waste money on that… I guess I really should do what the simple but successful avatar version of me would. Up until now, I haven’t saved, but I’m going to disrupt that momentum and simply do what the avatar would do. I will begin saving now.”
Feeling brave? You can take the idea one step further by involving additional brains?
The point of a fictional avatar is to extend your own conception of what is possible. But involving additional brains can take you even further. Are you courageous enough to submit your life for audit?
As a professional speaker, I am able to imagine an optimally successful version of my own career. However, there are people with more experience who can see further. When I accept mentorship from such people, they remind me that I could aim even higher than I have been. When they paint verbal pictures about what is possible, they expand my own avatar. This further dislodges me from the limiting specifics that I currently live by and shows me how much more is possible adjacent to my current life. The value is extraordinary.
To incorporate other minds, find someone who is closer to the avatar that you are pursuing. Don’t come on too strong by asking them to be your lifelong mentor, particularly if they don’t know you well. Instead, approach gently. Tell them you admire what they’ve achieved. Ask them if they might suggest your “next few steps”. This is a smaller request. Most people are flattered by such a question and are often willing to provide insight.
Then trust their insight, even if it is difficult to believe. It is the “difficult to believe” that is of greatest value, because it’s far outside of what you are doing now. You are asking for their input because they can see more than you. So act on what they can see.
This new year does not have to be the same for you as the previous one. If you can conceive of a greater version of yourself, then ask practical questions about what such a person does each day; you can alter the trajectory of your life. New year, new you.
So… who is that best version of you? And what does that person do differently?
Douglas Kruger is a Hall of Fame speaker and bestselling business author. His books are all available via Amazon and Audible.
