Book SummaryThe Alter Ego Effect, by Todd Herman

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Alter Ego Effect

In The Alter Ego Effect, athletic performance coach and leadership advisor Todd Herman reveals the trick that many professional athletes use to bring their A-game when it matters: adopting an alter ego. By doing this, you consciously decide which of your existing talents and skills to bring to the fore and use these to excel in defining moments of your life and career. As a result of years of coaching athletes and other high-performers in implementing alter egos, Herman’s created a multi-step system for...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary What Is an Alter Ego?

According to Herman, an alter ego is a science-backed tool that lets you adopt the traits, behaviors, and demeanor of a person who excels in a particular realm of your life (like your career or your social life). In practice, when using an alter ego, you set aside your usual mindset and behaviors and instead take on the mindset and behaviors of your alter ego—though you still filter these through your personality, so you avoid “playacting” as your alter ego. For instance, to excel as a businessperson, you might adopt the alter ego of Martha Stewart and negotiate shrewdly and confidently. If you’re a professional rower, your alter ego might be a graceful heron, and you might take on the heron’s single-minded focus and gracefulness to succeed.

(Shortform note: Herman argues for the adoption of fixed alter ego identities to perform at your peak. Others disagree entirely with the premise that you should take on defined characteristics to succeed: In [The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck](https://shortform.com/app/book/the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-f-ck), Mark Manson argues that you’re better off releasing *firm ideas about who you are because [this gives you the freedom to...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Why Use an Alter Ego?

Now that you know what an alter ego is, let’s discuss the five advantages of creating one.

Advantage #1: An Alter Ego Lets You Perform at Your Peak When It Counts

Herman claims that athletes often adopt alter egos because doing so lets them consistently perform their best at critical moments. When you use an alter ego at key moments—for instance, in presentations, games, and exams—you greatly increase your chances of success.

(Shortform note: While Herman believes an alter ego lets you perform at your peak in important moments, Ryan Holiday, author of Ego Is the Enemy, might caution you to avoid adopting an alter ego with a too highly inflated sense of self. This is because an overly inflated ego can cause your alter ego to overestimate their abilities, which could lead to failure at those key times.)

Advantage #2: An Alter Ego Lets You Set Aside Your Weaknesses

Further, when using an alter ego, you drop unhelpful traits and personal weaknesses and adopt positive ones, Herman believes. Let’s say your alter ego is Michelle Obama,...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Step 1: Decide How You Want to Change

The first step of creating your alter ego is to determine what behavioral and mental changes you want to make in a particular realm of your life. We’ll break this larger step into three sub-steps.

Sub-Step 1: Choose a Realm of Your Life to Focus On

First, pick a realm of your life in which you feel you aren’t achieving your potential, says Herman. This might be at work, in your family, or your artistic career. Additionally, determine what the high-stakes moments in that realm of your life are. These are moments where you can stand out and achieve glory, recognition, or ascend to a higher level of success—but where you currently often fail to do so. Examples include key moments in sports games, important exams, negotiations and speeches, and so on.

(Shortform note: Herman encourages you to target high-stakes moments in your life for improvement, but in The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath argue that it’s actually in small, everyday moments that you can enact the greatest change and pursue success most fully. You can only do this, though, if...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Step 2: Identify Your Inner Nemesis and Its Forms

Now that you’ve set your purpose-driven goals, your next step is to identify the inner nemesis preventing you from achieving them, writes Herman. Your inner nemesis is a cluster of negative thoughts and beliefs that keep you from rising to the challenge in high-stakes moments.

(Shortform note: Both Herman and Jen Sincero, author of You Are a Badass, frequently personify mental states and processes. For Herman, your “inner nemesis” consists of negative thoughts, and for Sincero, negative thoughts are created by "the Big Snooze" (the part of you that needs validation to tame your insecurities). Both authors’ use of personification to explain otherwise complicated and unwieldy principles is effective because humans tend to naturally personify things anyway.)

Your inner nemesis can appear in a single form or in a combination of forms to prevent you from doing your best: imposter...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Step 3: Build Your Alter Ego

Now that you’ve identified the inner nemesis that currently prevents you from rising to the challenge in high-stakes moments, let’s move on to constructing the alter ego that will rise to the challenge in high-stakes moments. There are four sub-steps to doing this.

Sub-Step 1: Decide on an Alter Ego

To create your alter ego, decide which traits you want to bring to bear in the high-stakes moments of your chosen realm of life, advises Herman. These can be strengths, skills, behaviors, beliefs, values, attitude, posture, style of speech, mannerisms, and so on. If you struggle to pinpoint traits, you can also ask yourself: “Who do I look up to in this realm of my life and what qualities do they possess?”

(Shortform note: At this point, you might find yourself resisting Herman’s implied idea that you can take on the desirable traits, strengths, and skills of others. However, in Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins offers up the notion that [your current identity isn’t fixed and that you can change...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Step 4: Turn on Your Alter Ego

Now that you’ve created your alter ego and attached a trigger object to it, you can use the alter ego, asserts Herman. Do this by determining how specifically you’ll wield your object to turn on your alter ego. You must have a simple, repeatable action that officially signals the assumption of your alternate identity.

(Shortform note: Herman discusses how to use your trigger object to “turn on” your alter ego but doesn’t talk about what you can expect once your alter ego has taken over. It’s unlikely that you’ll experience the [complete dissociation from your usual self...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Step 5: Give Your Alter Ego a Hidden Weapon

You’ve just learned how to turn on your alter ego. Now, let’s discuss what to do when even your alter ego faces unforeseen challenges: Give your alter ego a hidden weapon. According to Herman, your inner nemesis may even attack your alter ego, leading to doubt and the resurfacing of negative self-created stories. For example, if, when you’re giving a speech, your audience protests what you’re saying, even your alter ego Michelle Obama might allow the inner nemesis to sow seeds of doubt in her abilities.

(Shortform note: Herman advises you to give your alter ego a hidden weapon to counter doubts and negative self-created stories. An alternative to this “spot treatment” approach is to cultivate general emotional intelligence. [Emotional intelligence is the ability to be in tune with your emotions...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Step 6: Practice Using Your Alter Ego

Now, put all the pieces of alter-ego creation together and practice using your alter ego in low-stakes situations, recommends Herman. Do this in familiar public settings (a restaurant, the grocery store, or the library, for example), when meditating, or when playing a game.

(Shortform note: Herman recommends you practice applying your alter ego in low-stakes situations. Indeed, practicing a new skill or communication technique in a controlled setting is commonly done in the business world to [increase the chances of having a successful interaction with a...

The Alter Ego Effect Summary Bonus Step: Experience the Merging of You With Your Alter Ego

The final, bonus step of bringing out your alter ego is to notice and appreciate when you and your alter ego merge, writes Herman. Once you’ve been using your alter ego for a while, you adopt their traits and qualities and no longer need to intentionally activate...

Shortform Exercise: Bring Out Your Alter Ego

Complete a truncated version of Herman’s process for choosing and bringing out your alter ego.

Think of a high-stakes moment in your life—a recurring situation in which you feel you consistently underperform. What is the “inner nemesis” that’s getting in the way of your success in these moments? (Remember, an inner nemesis is a cluster of negative thoughts and beliefs about yourself. For example, maybe you never speak up in weekly staff meetings because you believe you’re not experienced enough, or maybe you sabotage yourself on dates because you believe you’re too awkward.)