We all want to be better people. Science and sports show us how using a simple tool: imagination

It’s October, and we’re ramping up for the annual promotion—the grandest of all product launches of the year: Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM), the premier event for marketing our new product and acquiring early-paying customers.

We’re in the final days of the countdown moments before our final pre-launch meeting. It’s scheduled for 11.00 AM, and everyone is present. Except Freddie, our lead front-end developer. It’s 11.10, and we decide to start without him. At 11.30, he joins the call, his mic on mute, as if trying to avoid detection.

“Freddie, thanks for joining,” I say, “We’re doing final pre-launch check. Is the front-end ready to go?”

“Well…” Freddie replies, “It’s a… you know, the old user management system… Parts of its code base had to be updated…”

“Hold on,” Mike, our platform engineer, jumps in. “What part of the code base are you talking about? We updated it just a few weeks ago.”

“Oh,” says Freddie, adjusting his glasses, “I mean… umm... well, because of the shift from SQL to Mongo… There were certain issues with populating data fields in the dashboard. Then there are parts of the legacy code in the new code base…”

“Wait, wait, wait...” Mike jumps in again. “What legacy code? We reworked the legacy code back in February.”

“Right… well… yeah… I’ll continue with the webpages then. 

“Continue?!” I blurt out. Freddie’s word stirs a hidden fear that something is wrong with the front-end. I take a deep breath before continuing and try to sound calm: “What do you mean by ‘continue,’ Freddie? How much is left?”

“It’s that… I mean… there are issues fetching data from the payment provider; the requests are taking too long, so it’s got to be debugged, and I might try adding a pre-build library, but… And… Well, maybe there’s a version mismatch? And…”

As we strain to follow what Freddie is saying, we can see beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. I start growing impatient. “Freddie,” I interject, “when will it be done?”

“Well… you know… it’s complicated… There are some JS components that need fixing, and…”

I feel my impatience turning to frustration. I stop him in mid-sentence: “Freddie,” I say struggling to control my tone of voice, “please answer the question: when will it be done?”

“Oh… Not too long,” he says, flashing a smile which slowly dies as he scans our faces: no one is satisfied with this answer. “Maybe… a week?”

“A week!?! Freddie, we’re only 72 hours from launch!!!”

Cacophony erupts as everyone starts speaking at once. The dissonance feeds the growing feeling of panic sweeping the meeting—panic turning to anger as we piece together Freddie’s excuse through the noise: “Cancún…” “bachelor party…” “terrible wifi…”

“Fr-,” “did...” “ma...” I’m stammering, trying to formulate words but finding myself sputtering incoherent babble. Unexpectedly, as if from my chest, there erupts a voice so different in tone and timbre from my usual voice that I barely recognize it: “GET IT DOOOOONE!!!” My hands shake as I kick Freddie off the call.

In the end, Freddie completed the job with some help from other team members, and the launch was a success. But amidst the celebration, I was troubled.

In the meeting, I didn’t act the way I had wanted. The person shouting on the conference call was not the person I wanted myself to be. I wanted to be calm, cool, and in control of what I said even in the face of adversity. Instead I’d given in to a sudden influx of emotion. What had happened, and how could I do better in the future?

My response to Freddie was not a conscious train of thought but an impulsive and unintentional response to what felt like a survival threat.

Unlike the survival threats experienced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the ones we face today are typically not physical (predators, violent enemies, starvation); they are instead mental: predictions of loss or harm. Our natural response to survival threats nevertheless remains the same: fear.

In my case, fear was fueled by a sense—however irrational—that if the launch were postponed, everything would be a failure, that the company would go bankrupt, that my team and I would be out of work, and that we would end up utterly destitute.

When I think of it now, none of it seems plausible: if the launch were postponed, we might fall short of expectations, but the business wouldn’t fail as a result, and with some ingenuity, my team would likely mitigate the losses over the long term. But at that moment, when my brain was in threat-response mode, my ability to think became so bleak and so narrow that the world seemed to be coming to an end.

If we could all control our thoughts and prevent the onset of fear, we could all perform better—not just at work, but in our personal lives as well. But evidently, it’s not that easy. We fall prey to our emotions all the time.

There is nevertheless a simple exercise that can help. It focuses on the notion of a Second Self.

The term ‘Second Self’ is not my own creation but was coined by Cicero who said that a friend is like a second self. I am nevertheless using the term to refer not to another person, but to one’s own self: it’s a way that you imagine yourself to be.

To imagine a Second Self, start by thinking of an episode in which you wish you had acted differently or done better. Imagine the episode in great detail: the people, the surroundings, the actions and attitudes. Consider which of your traits led to the undesirable results, and how you could have done better. Next, consider what traits would have enabled you to think, and feel, and act in that better way. Finally, imagine an idealized version of yourself which has those traits, and imagine how that ideal version of yourself would think, and feel, and act not just in the original episode, but in other episodes—especially ones that you are likely to encounter in the future.

Imaginative exercises like this can have a powerful impact on what we do and ultimately who we are.

Professional athletes have long understood the power of imagination to enhance performance. The former UFC boxing champion Connor Mcgregor used imaginative exercises to prepare for his bouts. Imagining the moves his opponents would make in the ring effectively prepared him for what his opponents actually did.

Likewise, the swimmer Michael Phelps, who holds the record for most Olympic medals (28), regularly imagined himself swimming in an ideal way: “When I would visualize, it would be what you want it to be, what you don’t want it to be, what it could be. You are always ready for whatever comes your way.”

The same technique works not just in professional sports, but in other areas as well. The astronaut Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space, regularly conducted what he called ‘mental rehearsal’ to anticipate all the things that could go wrong and prepare responses to them in advance.

There’s a neuroscientific reason that imaginative exercises work: the same neural subsystems that operate when we actually perceive and act also operate when we merely imagine ourselves perceiving and acting. The neuroscientist Stephen Kosslyn, who has studied mental imagery and its implications for over 40 years, says that, “Mental images are a way to move the world into the head, and then to run models to observe possible implications for the actual world.” Running mental emulations can prepare us for real-world action. Imagined performance can enhance actual performance.

Imagining a Second Self applies this principle to self-improvement. Mentally rehearsing better ways of thinking, feeling, and acting can prepare you for thinking, feeling, and acting better in real-world situations.

In thinking about my disappointing performance during the conference call, I imagine myself, Mike, Freddie, and the rest of my team in the conference call. I imagine my thoughts and feelings, and think about how I wish they’d been different. I imagine what traits I’d rather have—which traits will make me perform in the way I want. Finally, I imagine myself having those traits, and imagine how I would perform in a variety of situations with those traits—not just in the meeting room, but driving my car, walking to the store, talking with my irritating neighbor, and so on.

Imagining a Second Self takes the desire that we all have of being better people, and helps make it a reality. Like the imaginative exercises used by professional athletes, imagining a Second Self is a powerful tool for enhancing performance. It should be an integral part of any self-improvement project. 

Post image by Gerd Altmann