What’s My Alter Ego? (find your alter ego in 5 steps)
We play different roles and wear different personas, all for different situations. And sometimes, who we wish we were (or who we know we are deep down) doesn’t match our current character. The weight of society, expectations and the cultural ego are heavy (to name just a few factors).
Your ego is not bad. It’s a representation of your experiences, personality, beliefs, passions, creativity and self-expression. But it’s malleable.
So learning how to create an alter ego is an awesome way to close the gap and embrace whoever it is you want to become. Because that person does exist — you just need to get clear about who they are and introduce yourself.
So let’s get to it!
Table of Contents Show
What Is An Alter Ego?
An alter ego is an alternate version of yourself, who embodies a unique set of characteristics, quirks or even goals. It’s the Batman effect — a suit you can throw on during difficult, new or stressful situations.
For me, it’s a positive life hack and a way to “try out” different traits, which may be better suited for pursuing different goals and projects.
Having an alter ego is like playing a different role in your own movie.
Life is a movie and you’re not only the main character. You’re also the director, the producer, the writing team, the composer, etcetera. So create the life you’d want to live (a movie you’d want to watch). Use alter egos to get there.
Is It Normal to Create An Alter Ego?
Definitely. Let’s look at some examples.
While subtle, my site here is an alter ego. It’s slight tweak on my real name, Jeff Quinn. I just dropped the extra “f” and “n” (they felt redundant lol). It’s not much, but this small change puts me in a different mindset.
I also use other (slightly) different alter egos for my other creative projects.
For my musician/artist persona, I go by quin jef — again, not the biggest change, but it’s enough for me to embody my musical identity. And I have another entrepreneurial sub-brand, under quin creativ.
This is a multibranding approach I’m using.
I struggled to fit all of these different niches into one site and under one brand identity. So I split things off into separate sub-brands with slightly different personas. But together, they organize and create my personal brand.
There are plenty more examples besides me though.
Raphael’s real name is Raffaello Sanzio, Salvador Dalí’s name is actually Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí I Domènech and plenty of musicians (like Beyoncé or Halsey), authors (like Mark Twain), bloggers and artists have all used this strategy.
So trust me, it’s not that strange.
Who Uses Alter Egos?
Artists
Musicians
Writers and bloggers
Creatives in general
Athletes
Travelers needing confidence
Entrepreneurs and business leaders
Teachers
Students (for example, to boost confidence with presentations)
Anyone interested in personal development
Reasons to Create An Alter Ego
Feel a strong sense of personal empowerment
Embrace your awesome weirdness with more confidence
Create an artist identity
It’s a form of mental rehearsal and visualization
Improve your objectivity and external self awareness
Adopt more desirable personality traits
It helps with imposter syndrome
It’s fun
How to Create An Alter Ego (5 steps)
1. Define Your Goals
Knowing what you want and why is a solid starting point. So that’s where we’ll begin.
Defining your goals comes down to asking the right questions. For example:
Why do you want an alter ego?
What are your core values?
Is this a personal or a professional endeavor?
Will your creativity be different with an alter ego?
What are your expectations for creating an alter ego?
How effective do you believe it will be?
These are all solid things to consider. They add clarity and can reveal deeper motivations for why you want to create an alternate persona.
2. Identify Your Current Persona
To get where you want to go, it helps to know where you’re starting from.
So what’s your current persona? What are your characteristics and which ones do you want to keep or lose?
It’s hard to be totally honest with ourselves, but more self awareness will help you create a stronger, clearer alter ego.
So who are you, right now?
List out your traits, habits, personality quirks and goals. Craft your current persona as a starting point.
3. List Out Ideal Characteristics
Once you know why you’re creating an alter ego and where you’re starting from, it’s time to get creative.
So this next step is to brainstorm ideal traits and characteristics that you want your alter ego to embody. It can help to organize your traits into categories. For example, one bucket for emotional traits, one for style and one for habits.
There’s no right or wrong answers, but here are some tips for finding clarity:
Meditate on it
Test a few ideas (like test driving a car)
Stay patient — let things marinate
Use visualization
Research people embodying the traits you want
Once you’ve got a list of characteristics and ego nuances, pick the top ones that best embody your alter ego goals.
4. Create Your Alter Ego’s Profile
After dialing in on character traits, it’s time to expand things further by creating a full persona profile.
At this point, we’re bringing your alter ego into full vision. It’s like we’re writing a character into existence based on our imagination.
Your alter ego persona can have:
A separate backstory
Unique motivations
Personal values
Specific personalities traits
Different fashion and style
A different lifestyle
New friends or network
Different hobbies and passions
Unique goals
5. Embody Your Alter Ego
Getting into character is like method acting. It takes your alter ego off the proverbial paper and puts it into practice.
You’re bringing it to life.
It’s time to get into character and use your alter ego in your life or creative pursuits. Here are some tips:
Start small — take baby steps
Meet new people
Change your spaces to reflect your alter ego
Consume different content
Stay aware
Go easy on yourself (setbacks are part of the process)
Have fun with it
Not every part of your life will require your alter ego. You may only need it for specific things (like a musician needing confidence to perform live shows). So awareness and intention are helpful.
You may also discover that some things are working and some things are not. So don’t feel bad if you need to go back and make some tweaks. It’s all fun and creative, after all.
Whatever the case, just remember to be excited.
Because adopting a new persona is an epic segue to reaching your goals.
Later ✌️
Creating an alter ego starts with the intention to do so and clarifying your motivations.
Then, it’s as simple as understanding your current self, where you want to go and then practicing those ideal alter ego traits.
Well, it’s always easier said than done. But that’s the basic formula I follow.
The most important part is to have fun with this. Life is a movie — a great creative act — and you can play any role you want. Explore, test, imagine. Change often, find yourself anew or rediscover your inner child.
Over time, alter egos can become ‘normal’ egos. This is normal, we’re constantly changing.
So I say, may as well sit in the driver’s seat.
Want More? Nice. Here’s More.
