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I used to live vicariously through fictional characters.
During my bouts of deep depression, I escaped in entertainment, playing games like Guild Wars and binge-watching my favorite shows.
I spent more time invested in fictional characters' growth than my own.
If you asked me about the lore of the game, I could give you a detailed breakdown of my character's backstory and goals.
But if you asked me about my own personal goals?
Non-existent.
Many of us have experienced similar: feeling like a background character in your own life.
Sometimes, we feel like we are living someone else's script: our parents' expectations, society's template, or past conditioning that keeps us from who we truly are.
Because of this, we escape into stories where we get to play the protagonist, going from zero to hero.
We never realize that we have a similar potential sitting dormant within us.
Here's the thing: becoming a hero of your own story isn't about talent, luck, or circumstance.
In fact, every admirable public figure in history was once a "zero" who decided to stop living someone else's story and start writing their own.
The good news is that it's possible to achieve this in real life.
In fact, there's a science-backed blueprint for this transformation.
It combines three powerful psychological principles that successful people use to go from zero to hero:
By the end of this post, you'll have the exact blueprint to stop being a spectator in your own life and start being the hero.
Let's get after it!
The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that we're "working on it."
We say we're building toward our goals while scrolling social media 4 hours a night.
We claim we want to get fit while avoiding the gym.
We talk about wanting more confidence while staying in our comfort zones.
If you're like me, we've done this more times than we'd like to admit.
Most of us try to change our behaviors without committing to a change in our identities or our lifestyles first.
We focus on what they want to DO instead of who we want to BE.
Let me share with you a story I hadn't shared with others before.
Before I succeeded in using exercise as a way to manage my depression, I failed the first time.
If you know my story, you know that I started my fitness journey overweight, depressed, sleep-deprived, and non-existent self-esteem.
I saw myself as someone who would be overweight and depressed forever.
Someone who would never achieve anything special in life.
The negative experiences in my personal life became negativity in my head that said I would never amount to anything.
Whenever I would try to work out, my behavior would try to snap me back to match my current identity.
Because of this, I didn't believe I could achieve my goals because my identity wasn't capable of changing.
My identity didn't connect to my goals.
Others have experienced similar, which is why I can see that New Year's resolutions fail over 90% of the time.
People try to force new behaviors onto old identities.
With the first part of my journey, I gave up for months.
I felt powerless, and went back to my regular routine... at least for a bit.
And then I came across bodybuilding on YouTube: hearing about people's journeys and transformations.
These guys didn't struggle with motivation or confidence because they built themselves up.
They seemed to have a clear identity and purpose.
This is where I realized that to level up, you must first trust in some sort of goal or purpose, and then take action to reach that goal.
You might not believe it is possible just yet, but you can visualize it.
I then decided to do something counterintuitive with my fitness journey: become an entirely different person.
I visualized becoming like Arnold or Frank Zane and that's who I was at the gym.
When you change who you ARE, what you DO follows naturally and permanently.
You stop fighting against yourself and start working with your psychology.
"Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it life.” - Robin Sharma
Most people treat their life like a rough draft.
Heroes treat their life like a masterpiece in progress.
The blueprint I'm about to share combines three psychological principles into a systematic approach for going from background character to main character.
Your future self already exists in your mind to some extent.
You just need to make them as real as possible to you.
When most of us create goals, we create vague ones like "lose 20lbs", "pay off my debts" or "make $10k/month in sales".
This isn't enough.
You need to have a crystal-clear vision of your goals.
You need to think of exactly who you want to be and the path you have to take to get there.
With our blueprint, here's what you're going to do:
Gamify your life with strategic identity design.
When you have a clear vision of who you're becoming, every decision becomes simple: "What would Level 100 me do?"
This allows you to break down the goals they've achieved into skills they've acquired.
From those skills, you can break down the processes they used to get there.
From those processes, you can create the daily actions that helped them build the processes that created the skills necessary to reach their goals.
The power of this approach is that it creates "future self-continuity".
Future self-continuity is a strong connection between who you are now and who you want to become.
Research shows that people with high future self-continuity make better long-term decisions and stick to their goals longer.
They also can find meaning in their lives through the process.
Here's where it gets fun.
Your Level 100 self might feel too far away to become right now.
This is where creating an alter ego comes in.
Think of your alter ego as a bridge identity between current you and future you.
Think of them as a character you can step into immediately to start acting like the person you want to become.
Hell, give them a name that resonates with you.
It could be based on a fictional character, historical figure, or completely original creation.
Create some sort of trigger object:something physical you can use to "activate" this identity. It could be something as simple as a piece of jewelry or a hat.
Define their strengths:What are they exceptionally good at? How do they handle situations that challenge current you?
Write their backstory:What experiences shaped them? What do they believe about themselves and the world?
The beauty of an alter ego is that it bypasses your limiting beliefs because you're not being "you".
You're being someone who doesn't have those limitations.
Kobe Bryant had Black Mamba.
Bruce Wayne had Batman.
This might sound a little woo-woo, but studies have shown the benefits of using this not only for peak performance, but for perseverance as well.
One study famously named The "Batman Effect" had children work on a task and then had the option to take a 10 minute break to play a video game.
The children who viewed impersonated a character like Batman were able to persevere longer without breaks compared to the children who didn't impersonate characters.
You can have your own performance-enhancing identity.
When you need to do something that scares current you, step into your alter ego and let them handle it.
Artists and athletes constantly use this to their advantage, and some of them are the GOATs.
This is where everything comes together.
Instead of treating your life like a series of random events, treat it like an adventure you're actively creating.
Turn your goals into quests.
Log your workouts like they would be experience points in a video game.
Take those 3 priorities you need to accomplish today and treat them as daily time-based quests.
Beyond this, identify your trials and hardships.
Instead of seeing obstacles as problems, see them as trials that are building your character.
Track your progress like a video game: if you need to, create visual progress bars, level-up milestones, and more.
At the end of the day, celebrate your victories.
Every battle or every win matters, no matter how small.
When you reframe your life as an epic story instead of a series of problems, you naturally start acting with more courage, confidence, and heroism.
Background characters wait for things to happen.
Main characters make things happen.
Background characters react to their circumstances.
Main characters create their circumstances.
Start making decisions based on your story, not others' expectations.
Take initiative instead of waiting for permission.
Create opportunities instead of waiting for them to appear.
Consider getting outside your comfort zone slightly every day.
This allows you to build self-confidence and personal agency: the belief that you have the ability to influence your outcomes.
Adopt the Main Character Mindset.
Your environment shapes your identity more than you realize.
Surround yourself with people who see and treat you like the person you're becoming, not who you used to be.
Modify your physical space to reflect your new identity.
If your alter ego is disciplined, create organized spaces.
If they're creative, surround yourself with inspiration.
Consume content that reinforces your hero identity.
Follow people who carry the traits you want to develop.
Remove or minimize exposure to anything that reinforces your old, limited identity.
Remove doom-scrolling junk content from your feed if you can.
Environment is the invisible hand that guides behavior.
Whether it is your physical environment or the mental environment you immerse yourself in, design it intentionally.
The Zero to Hero transformation isn't about becoming someone else.
It's about becoming who you already are beneath the conditioning, fears, and limitations.
Every hero's journey starts with a choice: continue living someone else's story, or start writing your own.
Your alter ego is waiting.
Your future self is calling.
Are you ready to pick up the pen?
Until next time!
Many of us are attached to other people's opinions, and it's keeping you trapped in a life you hate.
You change your personality to accommodate someone in the room with you.
You sit in silence when you should be speaking up for yourself or someone else… all because you're terrified of judgment.
And for what?
