I want you to think back to most of the movies that you watched as a kid. Odds are that most of them taught of one of the characters something along the lines of, “Be yourself!” This is great advice for little kids to try and figure out who they are. However, as we get older here it may not always be the best advice for us.
When you have tried to accomplish something being yourself and it has not worked maybe it’s time to be someone else.
You may be sitting there thinking this is a bit crazy so let me explain a bit further. I often work with clients that are working to achieve what they feel are impossible goals. I even tell people I’m the “it’s possible guy”, I help people turn IMPOSSIBLE into IT’S POSSIBLE. These impossible goals include: Finding the person of their dreams, starting a business, or writing a book. People feel that they have tried everything that they know by being themselves and doing what they believe is their best and it still hasn’t worked .
Remember that what got you where you are, will not often get you to where you want to be. We must change and improve as we strive to grow and achieve our impossible goals.
So when people come to me and tell me they have done everything they know how, I begin to help them stretch their boundaries and test their limits. Our boundaries and limits often times were set for us years ago and we have never tested them out. So when they approach me, Do I tell them I am unable to coach them and help them get what they want? No, I ask them who would you need to be in order to reach this goal? Who is a character from a movie or otherwise that could accomplish this?
And even I myself have personally done this…
I remember 10 years ago attending a coaching training course in my early days of coaching. All of us were put on the spot and the entire group was able to offer suggestions of charachters they would like to see us harness more of their qualities. A few different suggestions were thrown out for me, but the one that was selected and given to me was James Bond 007. My classmates wanted to see me be more certain, bold, confident, suave and risk taking.
For the next part of the day, I was supposed to walk, talk and act as if I were James Bond. I even was supposed to coach a client as James Bond. I still remember the experience, acting confident and talking to a girl as is if I was James bond with a glass of ice water in my hand. As I first attempted to be James Bond, I wasn’t that great at it. However, after I had played around with it, I got better.
I’m pleased to say I went to assist in this same training course 8 years later or so and as an assistant we were supposed to also have a character. I assisted in 2 of the same trainings, the first training as an assistant they let me pick the character I was going to play and of course I chose James Bond. I was able to act as if I were James Bond and coached a girl from that perspective as if we were just sitting on a beach talking and flirting. I was able to own it and felt very good and actually did some pretty good coaching.
The interesting part of the story though is the 2nd time I went back to assist in a training, I offered up to the leaders that I wanted to be James Bond for this exercise and they pretty much just laughed, saying that I was already very much James Bond and instead this time they wanted me to coach as if I were a Buddhist Monk.
When I had moment I thought to myself, how awesome it was that I had literally embodied James Bond 007 on an everyday basis. This helped me realize that I had shifted so much from who I once was and become much more of who I wanted to be… and that’s really what coaching does, it helps us become the person that we really want to be. It doesn’t happen overnight but through work, discovery and just playing around – we change.
We do not have to settle for being anything less than who we want to be. I know sometimes when starting out this can feel unattainable but with practice you can do anything. Everything in your life seemed unattainable at one point, but you kept progressing and you learned. Remember, Everyone has good days and bad, but to be honest most days start off average – and we just make the most out of each of them. Be kind to yourself, there are days that we feel confident, bold and daring and there are days that we don’t.
But when you do want to harness certain attributes of your favorite character. Just watch a movie and practice. If you feel like you need to make a comeback, you could watch the Rocky Movies. If you feel you too want to be more confident like James Bond, and seriously who doesn’t want to be as suave and confident as James Bond. Then, watch the movies and practice the way that he walks and talks. You don’t even have to study what the characters do. Just act as if you were them.
This is not a new concept. Remember that you have been doing this for years. Remember, when you would be in the back yard and you would pick up a bat and say… “It’s the bottom of the 9th, with 2 outs and Luiz Gonzalez is up at the plate. It’s a full count, and here’s the pitch… he hits it well, its going going GONE… Home run the Diamondbacks win the world series!!” And then you excitedly run around the bases and even see yourself being dog piled by teammate. Other times you become cops and robbers. And yet other times you become your favorite Ninja Turtle – which of course is Leonardo . You would become other people all the time as a kid and you loved it!
So do that today! Re-ignite your imagination, and start playing! If there is something you need to do for example being bold and asking out the person of your dreams, and you feel the regular you can’t do it, then ask yourself, “who would I need to be in order to ask this person out. And then pick someone, maybe for you it’s Chris Hemsworth or Thor… And then walk up that person with the same level of confidence you see Thor use in the movies.
Just have fun and play with it. The great part about it is there are endless characters out there that you can play with and learn from.
And if you feel like you are still struggling with doing this and you want to explore with a coach, contact me. We can dive in and discover what your life would be like as you become someone else.
– Joseph