The old character you're playing is the very thing that will prevent you from becoming this new version of you. You can't take the old story into the new identity. ~Ed Mylett
Hunter Powers: You are listening to the One broadcasting live from our nation's capital Washington, DC, DC Proper. I am your host Hunter Powers.
Hunter Powers: Today's One Idea comes from Ed [Millette 00:00:31] who said, "The old character you're playing is the very thing that will prevent you from becoming this new version of you. You can't take the old story into the new identity."
Hunter Powers: Ed is a very successful businessman and now does a little bit of the motivational speaking, yet continues to also do a large amount of business flying around in very large jets making hundreds of millions of dollars, so perhaps we should take a moment to look at his idea and see what is it he's saying, do we agree with it and can we use it?
Hunter Powers: One more time before we dive deep. "The old character you're playing is the very thing that will prevent you from becoming this new version of you. You can't take the old story into the new identity."
Hunter Powers: There is this whole [inaudible 00:01:25], I'll call it a subset of motivation or goal achieving. I think that's a thing, goal achieving. It works. Where there is a goal, there is something that you want to do, there is something that you're trying to get someone else to do, but there is a goal to achieve, but you don't know how to do it, or you can't do it, or you're not doing it and you're trying to ask yourself why, what needs to happen?
Hunter Powers: One approach is to imagine the person for which this goal would be incredibly easy. Maybe they exist and it's a real person. You're going to be like, you know what, for Bill Gates this would be a walk in the park because he would do X, Y, and Z, or for LeBron James this would be a walk in the park because he knows how to do X, Y, and Z. Or maybe it's a fictional person and you're like, you know what, the person who has this background or these experiences, or knows these things, they could do this and it would be really easy for them. And really this is just a hack to identify what are the skills needed to do the thing that you want to do.
Hunter Powers: But it goes a little bit deeper than that in suggesting that it's not just skills but an identity. The identity that has those skills, there are probably other things that are different about them than you. It's not just that skill set. By default, we sort of excuse those, the differences, the delta there when we say well, Lebron has played in this many NBA games and that's the only difference. And if I played in that many NBA games than I would be just as good as LeBron, probably, probably not true. There are probably a lot of other things that LeBron has done and achieved that contribute towards that identity. That identity, which will have a very easy time accomplishing the goal that you want to achieve.
Hunter Powers: This idea of thinking about an identity is part a hack to identify the skills, but also something to suggest that it's more than just the skills, it is an identity. The identity can be a fictional identity as well. Maybe you can't think of the person for which this is easy, but you can imagine a person for which accomplishing this goal would be tremendously easy.
Hunter Powers: A lot of people do this in some form or another. They think about, what are the skills that I'm missing? What's the gap between where I am now and where I want to be? And then they chart a nice gradual path from where they are now to where they need to be. Maybe they set a few milestones along the way. Here is how I'll know that I'm making good progress. Once I have this one missing skill set, or maybe there is two or maybe there is three, these three missing skill sets, I will accomplish the goal and I will find success.
Hunter Powers: But what Ed is suggesting here is that... I want to read this again. "You can't take the old story into the new identity. The old character you're playing is the very thing that will prevent you from becoming this new version of you." There's this idea that your current self, your current identity has a gravity to it. It has a sense of homeostasis. It wants to maintain itself. It wants to preserve. When you go in and start shifting things around and you start trying to change it, it's going to do everything it can to pull you back to its current self because it knows that self works. That's self surviving. That's the innate quality, an innate thing that we seek out is the survival.
Hunter Powers: If you want to change into something new, a new identity that can easily accomplish the things that you want to accomplish, you have to, in the least metaphorically, kill the old identity. Again, back to Ed, "You can't take the old story into the new identity," because your current self can't accomplish the task, so you got to kinda throw it away. We don't like throwing things away, do we? You've got to just embrace the new identity. You'll find that by doing this, that you'll get to accomplishing that goal much, much faster.
Hunter Powers: The hack that you see in this space is, so once you identified this new identity, you start asking yourself at every step, what would this new identity do in the very situation that I'm in? Stop asking, what should I do, ask what would the identity do? What would the identity do here? Remember, for them it's easy. You can probably think what they might do and you start taking on that new identity. As you start taking on that new identity, that closing of the gap becomes easier and easier and easier until eventually you are that new identity.
Hunter Powers: So rather than thinking about transforming your old identity by adding on, you think about becoming the new identity. It's a subtlety and it's a take and there is more than one way to accomplish your goal. You don't necessarily need a brand new identity, but it's an interesting way to think about it. And if you are stuck and you can't figure out how do I get there and you're trying to figure out what's going wrong and you can't put your finger on it, maybe this is one of those things.
Hunter Powers: I don't think that this idea is true all the time, but I do think it's true some of the time. I think it's a useful tool in those moments when you can't figure out why am I incapable of getting to that next step? I see the next step, I see the goal line, but I just can't get there. Stop asking yourself for whom would it be a walk in the park to get there and then just become that. Rip a hole in the universe and take it. I really like this idea. Hopefully you enjoyed it too, or at least enjoyed the discourse. Until next time, I am Hunter Powers.