Do you believe that you are destined to be the person you are? full of guilt and self-hatred because you aren’t who you want to be? or do you believe that you can mold yourself into becoming the person you are looking up to or envisioning in your mind? I believe it’s possible to achieve the latter with hard work, discipline and a clear vision! You might be thinking: ‘That’s not possible’. Let me show you the cold hard truth!
Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in the Batman Trilogy
Fantasy World
In the past I was guilty of only thinking about the person I wanted to become, instead of acting on it. Because of genetics, I am more prone to doze off and live in my imagination for most of the day. In my mind I created my own fantasy world.
In this fantasy world I was the person I always wanted to be. I was:
- Mentally tough
- Physically strong
- Socially accepted
- Communicably skilled
- Assertive
- Courageous
- Confident (with women)
After I came back to my senses and I became conscious of the real world again, it was clear that I wasn’t happy because of who I was. The person I was imagining I was in my mind, was the opposite of who I was in real life. I was constantly thinking about why I wasn’t the guy I wanted to be. 'Why am I not like my created fantasy of who I want to be? Why?’ Then it hit me. Why didn’t I just try to be like him?
Since I have lived more in my imagination then in real life, it was easy to think of the characteristics I needed to make my own. By now I’ve imagined scenario’s where these characteristics are shown more then a thousand times in my mind. I sat down in a dark room, turned off the lights and went into my imaginary world to focus on the characteristics of the person I wanted to be.
Dark Room Principle
Looking back at the last paragraph, I did physically sit in a dark room. You are probably thinking: ‘Why would you do that…?’ In this state you are fully focused and can’t distract yourself.
I recommend you using this principle, if you are wanting to become the person you are imagining in your fantasy world. If you want to become like a specific movie actor, then read the next heading: ’Example: Bruce Wayne’
The Dark room principle goes as follows:
Enter a room and close the doors. Afterwards turn-off the lights and sit down. Now that you filtered out all distractions, its time to meditate on the person you want to become. Take your time to concentrate on the characteristics of the person, and take mental notes of it. When you have taken all characteristics into account, stand up, turn on the lights and leave the room.
Take your notebook and write down what the characteristics are that you want to make your own. This part might be hard for some individuals, so let me give you an example.
Example: Bruce Wayne
Everyone knows the billionaire industrialist and notorious playboy called Bruce Wayne. However, not many people know that he is actually suffering mentally from different illnesses. When Bruce was a kid his parents got killed. After that moment, Bruce suffered from many mental problems. Some of these are as follows:
- Post Traumatic stress disorder - Bruce continuously experiences the rewinding of the death of his parents.
- Depression - The moment the parents of Bruce died, he went into a severe depression
- Anxiety - Bruce is terrified of bats since his childhood accident.
Now, when you watch the Batman movies, staring Christian Bale, you don’t actually see those mental problems in his character. You do see a character that is charismatic, self-confident, assertive, courageous, dominant and able to communicate with beautiful women.
I will give you an example on how Bruce Wayne achieved one of his characteristics. Bruce tackled this goal by chopping it up into smaller goals. The smaller goals that Bruce achieved, for the characteristic: courageous, are as follows:
- Create an alter-ego (Batman)
- Pick fights with street thugs
- Pick fights with stronger enemies (for example, prison fights)
- Get trained by Raʼs al Ghul to become fearless
- Achieved: Courageousness
Just like Bruce Wayne, you can only achieve your end goal by chopping it up into smaller goals. Now, defining smaller tasks with the purpose to achieve the end goal can be a hard process, but with time and effort its doable.