Developing Your Dark Side

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the mindset mentor podcast the number one mindset podcast in the entire world thanks to you guys. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you haven't yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you're looking to grow and improve yourself even more, I have a free video training and also 15 days of journaling that you can access absolutely for free. If you want to get it, all you got to do is go to mindsetmentorjournal.com. Once again, mindsetmentorjournal.com where I'll teach you how to journal and then give you 15 days, basically two weeks of journaling questions to help you get better at it.

0:43And once again, it's absolutely free. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about developing your dark side. Now, it doesn't always have to be just dark, just so you guys know, but that's what we're going to kind of dive into is we're going to talk about what it would look like to step into the most badass version of yourself. And we're going to talk about the idea of an alter ego and to basically see what it would be like to pretend that you are someone else. to, uh, it's, it's basically like wearing a mask that you can wear at all times or anytime that you feel like you need it. And so the reason why it's, it's important is because when I say, as I'm actually saying this out loud to you guys, just a second ago to pretend you are someone else, the very first thing that popped in my head is we're all pretending to be who we currently think we are because we're not who we think we are.

1:37We're just playing this character every single day and we're waking up and subconsciously just deciding to be this character every single day. And, you know, when you look at, you've heard me say before, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, when you look at the word personality, the actual root of that is persona. And persona was the mask that Greek actors would wear in theater on stage. And so who you think you are is also just a mask that you are wearing and pretending to be. Nowhere is it written into the fabric of this universe that you have to be who you currently are. Like you can't change bodies.

2:12You can't change the physical aspect. Well, I guess you can't change the physical aspects. You can lose weight, you can gain weight, you can gain muscle, all that stuff, but you can't like change out your body for someone else's, but you can absolutely 100 % change out your personality at any moment because your personality is just a set of beliefs of who you think that you are. And you know that your personality is built based off of all of the people that you interacted with up until this very moment, what your parents said to you, what your society said to you, what you learned from other people.

2:40At any point, you can decide to be someone else. And if you've been listening to this podcast, I don't know if you know that one of my favorite episodes, one of my favorite quotes, excuse me, is that you're under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago. Alan Watts says that all the time. You are under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago. And so that there's aspects of yourself that you don't necessarily feel fit into your future, change them. You're not a tree. You don't have to stay in the exact same spot. You can change at any moment. And so how can you release who you are?

3:13How can you get to the point where you start to step in to the person that you could be, step into the person that you could become? And so when I say alter ego, it could be a couple different things. It could be, hey, I'm going to decide to be this alter ego all of the time. Or as I'll give you a couple of examples of other people who have used it. You can use your alter ego, your dark side at any time that you want to. So you can be who you currently are normally. And then you get into a point where you're like, maybe you're just, you're, you're sweet and you're amazing around your family. And then you get into the boardroom and you're just an assassin, right?

3:47That could be you if that's what you want. And so developing an alter ego can help you find a hidden potential to achieve goals that quote unquote, you right now might not be able to do because that's just not something that you, quote unquote, you do. It might be out of your comfort zone. You might be, oh, you're just shy. Oh, you're just not that type of person. So it's like, all right, what if we develop this alter ego that when you want to click it in, you can just immediately be that person and act as that person would be. Not just be like, oh, well, that's not me. That's not what I do. No, it's like, hey, I'm going to be different.

4:21I'm going to decide to be a different person. And we can all tap into different sides of us and different personalities at any moment when we need to. You know, it's like when I see people and I talk to them and I coach them and sit down with them a lot of times, I'm realizing, wow, this person just thinks that that's who they are. And I can, my job as someone who's coaching somebody is to see through their bullshit, to see through who they think they are. Oh, I am this way because of this. I am this way because of this. I'm like, no, you're choosing to be that way because of things that have happened to you in your past.

4:51It is 100 % a choice, but you could change at any moment if you really truly want to. and this can really start to help you get past what you perceive as your limitations what you perceive as your limitations and I had a friend FaceTime me yesterday his name's Nick Stanton Astasso Nick is an incredible speaker he's on stage with Tony Robbins all the time he speaks in front of 9 ,000 people and just lights up the entire crowd he was born with no legs he was born with one arm and on that one arm he's got one finger and you could look at him and think like I was talking to him yesterday and we were FaceTiming and I was like, you have every excuse to be insecure.

5:30You have every excuse to be like, I can't do this. You have every excuse to be like, I'm not going to get on stage in front of 9 ,000 people. Those could be perceived limitations, but he doesn't perceive any of that as limitations. When in reality, there's other people out there who have had not a whole lot of challenges in their life and they have all of the working arms and all of the working legs and things are okay. And they're like, I can't do this because of this. And it's all just limitations that we place on ourself and we perceive to be in our way, but they're actually not really there in front of us.

6:01And this isn't some crazy thing that some weirdo will do where they're like, oh, I'm gonna be somebody else, right? There's many, many examples over years and years and years of famous people throughout the years who have had alter egos. Years ago, Beyonce created an alter ego called Sasha Fierce to help her overcome her shyness and become a more confident performer. Lady Gaga created Joe Calderon and Lady Gaga created the alter ego Joe Calderon as a way to express her masculine side. David Bowie is known for having Ziggy Stardust and he created the alter ego Ziggy Stardust to help him achieve success as a musician and to be more out there and be a better performer and be more flamboyant and more theatrical.

6:44And, you know, it helped him develop his music side. You have examples also of many different movies. Bruce Wayne always was Batman. Clark Kent, Superman. If you look at people that are out there that are speakers like David Goggins, he has Goggins whenever he needs to go to his dark side when he's in the middle of a 200-mile run and he's sitting there thinking, I don't think I can do this. He clicks into another side of him that he calls Goggins, which is just a straight-up assassin. And he's like, I'm going to get there. If I break all of my bones, I'm still going to figure out a way to do it.

7:15You know, Kobe Bryant had the Black Mamba. And so this isn't like a thing that I'm just making up. This is something that is actually legitimately something you could do. I have a friend who actually wrote a book on alter ego and developing that alter ego. And so when you look at yourself, how do you create your alter ego? How do you create? How do you decide how you want to be? How do you create that alter ego? And really what it comes down to and what I want you to think about is what are the qualities and traits that you wish you had, right? Not that the ones that you have or any of that, what are the ones that you wish that you had?

7:50Oh, you know what? I wish I was more outgoing. I wish I was not so afraid of X, Y, Z. And so it's like, you take a pen and paper and you write down what are the qualities, what are the traits that you wish you had, the traits that would help you succeed? And then what you do is you start creating an alter ego that embodies your best qualities that you have, like the qualities that you want to keep and the ones that you want to create. You're basically creating a Frankenstein version of a human, you, who you want to step into. So if you're like, you know what? I want to be more confident. Okay.

8:26Well, I'm going to develop an alter ego who is just confident as can be. Not cocky, just confident. Okay. I'm going to develop an alter ego that whenever they decide to do something, they do it. They finish what they restart. I'm going to develop an alter ego that no matter what gets in my way, I'm going to plow through it. Normally I give up on things that I'm going to develop an alter ego that just doesn't even know what giving up is. I'm going to develop a alter ego that has a no matter what attitude, no matter what happens, I'm going to do it. You know what also I'm going to do though, as you know, we could think just dark side and could be hardcore, but it could be like, I'm going to develop an alter ego that is kinder.

9:06I'm going to develop an alter ego that is more loving. My VP of operations on my team, her name is Brittany. And Brittany was raised by her father is hardcore military. And so she was really like taught military stuff. And she developed a really, really strong masculine side to her. And it worked decently in business for a while. And then she started to realize she was overly masculine. She was too hardcore. And so she wanted to develop the more loving side of her in business. And so when she came over to our company, we started talking about alter egos and like, who does she want to be now that she's left this company that she was at for nine years and she doesn't want to be as masculine as she was.

9:50She could bring a masculine side. She could bring a feminine side. She could build this version of self of who she wants to be. And she developed what she calls, and it's, you know, we're going to talk about naming your alter ego, the love sergeant, which is like, she comes from a place of love all the time. She's very loving, but she's also very, you know, formal and hardcore, like a Sergeant would be and being on time. And so the love Sergeant is her alter ego that she steps into whenever she's working. And so it doesn't have to be like just a straight up killer, hardcore dark side, but it's more of like, who do you want to be more?

10:22Right? So like you can develop, if you really want to, you could develop multiple alter egos. You could, you could have an alter ego, um, or even just the version of you that you truly want to be when you're at home with your family, with your kids, and you can have the most loving version of being a father or a mother that you've ever had. But then when you get on a sales call at work, you're just a straight up assassin. Whatever it might be, you can have multiple ones. It's like a shirt that you decide to wear. You know, if you're going to the gym, you're not going to wear your suit to the gym.

10:53You're going to wear your workout outfit. And when you go to the office, then you'll be wearing your shirt and tie. And so you can decide to kind of flip through them if you want to. There are no rules to this game. There's no rules to this life thing. Everyone acts like there's rules because, you know, society has quote unquote rules that someone no smarter than you made up a long time before you were ever born, right? So make a list of all of the qualities that you want your alter ego to have. And then, as I said, you must name it. So to help bring it to reality, you have to remember it, right?

11:25And you have to give it some sort of name. So what is the name that you're going to give yourself? That alter ego. Okay. And then what you want to do to help bring it into reality is to have an item that helps you remember it. So my friend who I was talking about who wrote the book, Alter Ego, whenever he wants to step into his alter ego, he has a set of glasses that he puts on, like nice glasses that he wears on stage. And then when he goes home, he takes the glasses off and he's his, you know, version of himself that he wants to be at home with his wife and his children, when he gets on stage, the confident version of himself, the alter ego wears glasses.

12:00So he's got a name for it. He's got a physical thing to help him remember. So, you know, something that he puts on his glasses, but it's something you could see and feel. It could be, you know, like a really amazing ring that you put on. It could be a necklace that you put on. It could be a set of glasses like him that reminds you to step into that and to see it and feel it. And just to remember to have you step into who that version of you is. And it's like, Like, you know, if you dress up sometimes, like if you dress up, you put on a suit and tie. If you're a guy, if you're a woman, you put on a dress.

12:29You present, first off, you feel and you present differently based off of just the clothes that you're wearing. It happens for most people. So why can't you do the same thing here? You know, this isn't just for famous people and for athletes and all of that. I know an executive coach and her alter ego is to overcome her fear of public speaking. and what it was, she developed an alter ego to help her overcome her fear in her public speaking. She named it and she's become an incredibly successful keynote speaker, but she started off being terrified of public speaking. She's like, the version of me that I want to be, the alter ego needs to be somebody who walks on stage and they're confident.

13:12Now she's a super successful keynote speaker. She gets paid like$75 ,000 a talk. Now, I just want you to start thinking about this because and be aware like your your old self is not going to die easily it'll continue to pop up over and over again and you'll notice yourself slipping into old fears and old limiting beliefs and old thoughts that no longer serve you and i'm not good enough and i'm smart enough and i'm not pretty and i didn't come from a great family and all of these things and it's like you've got to be able to notice it and click back into who you were and you need to really kind of develop a really keen sense of awareness.

13:48And so the first thing is your awareness. You need to be aware of when you need to change your personality into your alter ego, but also when you slip back into old versions of yourself that you're trying to change. So you need to have the awareness. Second thing that you need to have is the practice, which is the naming, stepping into that, putting on, like I said, a piece of jewelry or glasses or something physical that makes you think, a watch that makes you think of stepping into that person. And then it needs to be repetitive. It needs to be something that you do to start to do often. You do it over and over and over and over and over again.

14:20Like, mind you, FYI, it's not going to, you're not going to be a different person completely in a week of doing this, but do this for a year. You're going to see massive changes in yourself. You know, Kobe Bryant, his alter ego, the black mamba, he named after he saw Kill Bill in 2003. And his on-court personality was this fierce, relentless competitor who was really willing to strike at any moment, just like a Black Mamba would. And the way to motivate himself to get in the right mindset before games is he would tell himself he was stepping into the Black Mamba, right? And he believed that by really deciding to adopt this personality of Black Mamba, he was able to tap into his full potential as a basketball player.

15:02And he was known for having these really hardcore, intense training that he did that nobody else would do. And his ability to maintain focus and mental toughness when he was practicing and he was on the court, he credited actually to his alter ego, helping him to achieve those qualities. So how can you understand that for yourself? Like, how can I tap into this alter ego to help me get past my perceived limiting beliefs and fears so that I can tap into a new version of myself. There's an interview that Cubby Bryant did with GQ magazine where he explained the Black Mamba personality helped him separate his personal life from his basketball life because he loved his wife and his daughters.

15:46And he was like, I love that version of me, but that version of me can't exist on the court. There can't be a loving version of me on the court. And so it allowed him to focus really solely on the task at hand of just being an assassin on the court. He also said that the difference between Kobe Bryant and the Black Mamba was that the Black Mamba was really calm and focused under pressure, where he said himself he wasn't when he was off the court. And so it was really like a key factor that he was able to develop within himself when he was in really, really high pressure situations. And so what it comes down to is the idea of acting as if.

16:26And I hear people being like, oh, act as if it's stupid. Okay, it's not actually, in my opinion, it's not. I've coached many people who have had this really, really helped them. To decide, to just act as if you're somebody else different today. Like decide who you want to be. And just like you wear a t-shirt and you wear it for a day, like just try it on and see if you like it. You know, if you're very shy and you want to be more confident and you want to be more outgoing and you want to walk into a room differently, when you go to Starbucks today, try that shirt on. Walk differently. See if your body responds differently to your mind deciding to be someone different.

17:05When you go out there, normally you just be very quiet whenever you're checking out and you're at Starbucks. Why don't you have a conversation with a person that's behind the counter? If somebody else is waiting with you, go ahead and have a conversation with them. Just see what it's like to try to be somebody that you're not. If you don't like it, you can always go back to the old version of yourself. But why don't you just kind of test the boundaries of who you are? Because as you really start to test the boundaries of, quote unquote, who you are, who you think you are, you'll realize there are no boundaries.

17:35They're just this straight jacket that you've put yourself in and said, this is who I am and this are my beliefs and this is how I act. You can change it at any moment if you truly decide that that's something that you want. And one of the ways to do that is through your alter ego. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. go ahead and share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it rob dial jr r-o-b-d-i-a-l-j-r the only way this podcast goes is from you guys sharing it so I greatly greatly appreciate it when you like an episode enough to share it to other people who follow you and allow more awareness of this podcast and for us to help more people and so if you do that I greatly greatly appreciate it and with that I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode make it your mission to make someone else's day better I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day