REBELS: Create a Power-Identity with The Use of Mental Models and If-Then Planning

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In this post, I will give you powerful tools and tips for engineering an identity that will work FOR you and further your goals. This post is filled with insights that will help us look deeper into our personality and identity makeup and learn how to start reverse-engineering ourselves, our habits, and our mindset.

Today’s world has shifted towards the recognition of self-evident authority. Multiple new outlets for talent development provide unique opportunities for organic, rather than censored growth, allowing one to be “anything” or a new “thing” altogether. In the age of influencers – self-made (for the most part), world verified – these people are pretty much saying: “excuse me, but your label doesn’t really stick on me, I’m going to just go be me and create my own label.”

“Don’t tell me who I am not” - is a pretty big stand to take and a very rewarding one indeed! But, now that we won’t let old processes limit the development of our identities, how do we go about defining ourselves, without setting limits? After all, with freedom comes responsibility.

While seldom seen in this way - “defining” something sets limits on it – it is ascertaining borders, distinguishing where one thing ends and another thing begins, what one thing is and what it isn’t. It takes a while to become a defined “thing,” – an expert in the field, an identity behind the title or a badge, whether the path leading there is conventional or organic, and whether the outside world sees it from A to Z or it appears to just have popped up out of nowhere. The upside? Certainly, a sense of satisfaction of achieving a goal, gaining recognition one way or another, “mattering!” The downside? Let’s look at the “TBD Spectrum.”

The “TBD Spectrum”

Going From Being a “To Be Determined” to Being “The Big Deal”

"To Be Determined"

The far right end of this spectrum is being a thing “to be determined” - having nothing to one’s name, the point of nothing to lose, and everything to gain. This is where big moves are made; massive action = massive result (as Tony Robbins likes to say).

Here, the things that can stop you, are typically relatively negotiable – “what will people think”- being the main one, but, if you’re relatively ambitious, you can easily overcome that social factor and take your chances. At this point, people tend to be pretty-open minded too, and, if a sudden opportunity lures them into a whole new direction, they gladly follow and may discover a completely new profession, niche of business, identity, etc.

The middle of the spectrum is – being comfortable with your achievements, with how you define yourself, with the recognition of your talents and contribution, and maybe even enjoying some of those extra letters next to your name (MD, JD, PhD, CEO, etc.).

This is the part where most would probably take smaller steps towards advancement, watchfully guarding the conquered territory and carefully pushing its borders, as if trying to win new territory on the dance floor. You established yourself as a good dancer, and with a calculated aggressive move on the dance floor, you naturally cause others to make a little more room for you to “shine” and do your spins. With time, “your” dance floor expands little by little, and others know to steer clear, lest they can challenge you on your level.

"The Big Deal"

The other far end of the spectrum is – “I am the king!” Having proven yourself to be The Big Deal.

Now, this is the part where the borders can become a prison - the territory of the kingdom is so vast, that guarding its borders becomes the priority.

In many cases (not as rare as you’d think!), it becomes a paralyzing agent not only for “the king,” but for the entire “kingdom.” Teamwork and performance coaches can attest to the extent “status management” becomes the priority over open corroboration in high-level teams, and the damaging effect this tendency has on team performance.

This is also how scientists, especially in the medical field, who “invest” their lives into one theory, often simply refuse to accept an alternate view, and the simpler the alternate view is, the more defensively it is received and quickly discarded. There are plenty of real-life examples where innovators didn’t exactly win popularity awards.

Suffice it to say, we can get protective of what we attribute to ourselves – many times that includes the limiting beliefs that often serve as parts of what we think defines us - “This is just who I am” type of attitude.

An antidote is developing a habit of assessing our level of commitment to the borders we set for ourselves, and the labels that we aspire towards, being aware of the risk of becoming chained to them or by them. I’ll share a personal example. For years, my business partner and I operated an online business. It allowed me to benefit from the freedom of working in any part of the world where I could negotiate some odd working hours. Then, we ventured into an additional business in real estate in South Florida, which naturally required physical presence. Sometime after “chaining myself” to South Florida, I got into a long-distance relationship. During one of the “negotiating” rounds with my boyfriend pertaining to the amount of time spent in our respective home states and the corresponding “costs” to our respective careers, I realized that, while, thinking I was fighting for my career, I, in fact, was defending the limitation I imposed on myself. I discovered that with every round of negotiation I won, I felt worse (my legal background liked the winning part of it, but my free spirit rebelled against a tightening of the cage). In an experimental train of thought, I told myself, “okay, now instead of naming all the reasons why my business will suffer if I am away from a certain location, let me use my creativity to think of all the ways I can make things happen distantly, how much of my daily presence is really non-negotiable, whether it can be condensed into small, planned fragments (trips), and what’s truly at stake with my own physical presence being the only variable in question.” Each italicized word in this paragraph represents the piece of "fact" I had to question, twist, bend and test for biases and other rational-lies my loss-aversive self was utilizing in driving me to leave things the way they were over taking chances and challenging status quo.

After all the critical thinking and questioning, I was able to change my paradigm from “these are the borders and I will defend my right to stay within them. Now, give me back my shackles!” to “How do I expand and create new opportunities?”

Tools for Engineering an Identity and When It Is Useful to Create Your “Custom Label”

Despite the fact that our identities can limit us, there are plenty of ways to use identity as a tool.

In a wonderful and immensely practical book, “Atomic Habits,” James Clear talks about the significance of aspiring towards an identity of who we want to become, in fueling a behavioral change. I couldn’t agree more – identifying yourself with the “label” that’s consistent with the change you are trying to affect, makes a huge difference because it affects our very belief system. I see a belief system as somewhat of an operating system that censors algorithms (our default thinking and decision-making patterns). The more defined the belief system is, the better it can do its job in censoring.

Thus, adopting a belief system of a certain “identity,” makes it easier to adopt habits consistent with, and override habits inconsistent with that identity. James Clear distinguishes, for example, between two people resisting a cigarette – one saying: “no thanks, I’m trying to quit,” (a person who still believes himself to be a smoker, who is trying to be something else), while another person replying: “no thanks, I don’t smoke”- a person who no longer identifies as someone who smokes.

So yes, striving towards a “better me,” sometimes involves setting the bar high and growing towards it, because it helps you draw inspiration from that identity model. In fact, this brings me to the concept of “mental models” discussed in another amazing book - “Smarter, Faster, Better” by Charles Duhigg.

The Hidden Treasure of Mental Models

The concept of mental models, in correlation with the habit change fueled by aspiring to grow into a favorable “identity,” as discussed previously, provides a pretty good roadmap for shaping that inspiring identity in our mind, making it live and thus easier to be guided by. It is like following the lead of your ideal future you.

So, what are mental models exactly? (This here will be a very small mentioning of the concept, but anything short of reading the entire chapter Duhigg devoted to this subject, and his entire book, for that matter, robs you of invaluable knowledge, so I highly suggest reading it. Same goes for James Clear’s “Atomic Habits!”)

We all have beliefs in what things should be, what things should look like, should feel like, should taste like – these are the simplest examples of mental models – you take a bite of something and understand that something is wrong with it because you have a pretty clear mental model of how it should taste. When you take that up a notch, things become a bit more complex. Multiple studies went on a quest to find out what makes some professionals see early or subtle warning signs that their, seemingly equally or even better trained and more experienced colleagues, may not notice. This is especially important with professionals, whose momentary judgments can make a difference between life and death – medical and rescue professionals are the most obvious example. In short, the answer is – the quality of their mental models - meaning how detailed, live, and dynamic that mental model is (think of a pixelated image that you can’t zoom into vs a crisp high-resolution image that can zoom in to the slightest little detail).

The second question is, of course, – whether the skill of creating high-quality mental models can be acquired and if so, how. So, just like with the number of pixels in the image that we consider high quality, the amount and quality of detail in the mental model is responsible for the quality of the entire model. Thus, there are two components to building these models: being able to spot tiny details and piecing them into the whole picture. Now, please mind, that a high-quality mental model, just like life itself, is rarely a still image - it is essentially a dynamic and live story – basically, an entire movie of high-resolution high-quality detailed images pieced together frame by frame. Its quality depends on our ability to pay close attention, “spot” details, and learn to tell ourselves stories about how things ought to be.

To quote Charles Duhigg:

“Anyone can learn to habitually construct mental models. By developing a habit of telling ourselves stories about what’s going on around us, we learn to sharpen where our attention goes.”

The more detailed your stories are, the better-quality models you build.

So, let’s say you want to build a "healthy person" habit or an entire identity –the better you are able to create the mental model of that type of identity, the better you can adhere to it.

One simple example is that sometimes people, who aspire to be like those with strong willpower, “imagine” disciplined people to be immune to temptation, when in fact, if you watched closely enough, you’d know that they have automated their response to the temptation to the extent it appears seamless (“discipline is freedom,” to quote Jocko Willink)

Try to create a mental model of how a “healthy person” goes through the grocery store – do they go through the cookie aisle and ignore the cookies or do they ignore the aisle itself, what their trajectory is for moving about the store, etc. Want to learn to be an attentive listener? Pay attention to how an attentive listener listens – notice whether there are moments in which most would object or interrupt, and what this person does instead. Imagine yourself having a conversation with someone you’d like to listen to more intently- create a mental model of the moment where you’d be tempted to interrupt and “see” yourself refocusing, that is - reframing your focus to listening more intently instead of interrupting, reminding yourself that the goal is only to listen and understand.

If You Want to Truly Understand Something, Understand the Motivation Behind it

The Power of “Why” Questions

Another great trick that can help build a vivid mental model is the question “why.” In the same “Smarter, Faster, Better,” Charles Duhigg shares an interesting insight into motivation - that the “why” behind making a decision, fuels our strength to make the right decision. He demonstrates the value of the link between self-motivation and making choices – the more doing something is seen by us as a choice we make, the more motivation we can harvest.

Moreover, he shares what he has learned from his analysis and studies of the Marine Corps training process - that when things get toughest, recruits are encouraged to ask each other questions that start with “why.” Q: “Why are you doing this?” A: “To become a Marine and build a better life for my family.”

"If you can link something hard to a choice you care about, it makes the task easier… Make a chore into a meaningful decision, and self-motivation will emerge… [Asking each other] ‘Why’ shows them how to link small tasks to larger aspirations.”

These “why” questions provide a great way to build better quality, more vivid mental models for particular identities (and, naturally, their strengths and behavioral patterns)– by allowing us to delve into deeper levels of motivation values of "models" we aspire toward.

If you are working on building a mental model of a health-conscious person that you would like to be “guided by” and “grow into” – “interview” that person in your mind. Ask a lot of “why” questions to reveal and connect with what motivates that identity, and ask a lot of “how” questions to learn how they go about resisting temptations, building better habits, get "their" tips and tricks – you’d be surprised what you can discover. In fact, going off on tangents once again, let me share with you another interesting trick from yet another great book “The Marshmallow Test, Mastering Self Control” by Daniel, which I also highly recommend reading in its entirety.

“If-Then Plans” (Temptation-Inhibiting Planning) and Surprising Ways to Use them

In the early 1970s, Walter Mischel, along with other researchers, conducted an experimental study to see whether advanced temptation-inhibiting planning would help preschoolers resist temptation.

Meet Mr. Clown Box- a large wooden box with a brightly colored clown face, that lights up, showing off multiple slowly rotating toys and tricks within its windowed compartments. Hidden within his head are a microphone and a tape recorder, and he sure knows how to strike up a friendly conversation and steer up a preschooler’s curiosity! Mr. Clown Box was programmed to turn on every minute and tempt the child to come to take a look at something he wants to show, to play with him, touch his nose, etc.

Mr. Clown Box also makes a distinctive ‘bzzt’ sound which indicated that he was about to do something fun that you’d want to watch.

The researchers wanted to stimulate the situation that we all face in our daily lives –fighting off irresistible temptations for the sake of a more important, but not immediate reward.

A researcher played briefly with a child (a 4-year-old boy in their example) in the corner of the surprise room, that contained both broken and good, attractive toys. Then, the researcher introduced the preschooler to Mr. Clown Box, who, using this opportunity, in a cheerful conversation, has demonstrated just how much fun he can be to play with, showing off the toys and treats – in other words, being an irresistible temptation to a preschooler!

The researcher told the child that she had to leave him alone for some time, and he was to perform some assigned work (a particularly boring one) the entire time she was gone, and, if he was to do that – he would then get to play with all the toys, including Mr. Clown Box, upon the researcher’s return.

If he got distracted and didn’t get his work done, he would only get to play with the broken toys. She emphasized that he had to work the entire time without interruptions if he was to complete the work, and warned him that Mr. Clown Box “might try hard to play with him.”

She stressed that “looking at, talking to, or playing with him would make it impossible for him to finish his job.” The child solemnly swore to perform the work without interruptions.

The children partaking in this study were divided into two groups, one of which received no additional instructions, and another one was suggested a plan for dealing with the temptation. The researcher suggested that when Mr. Clown Box makes the ‘bzzzt’ sound and asks to look at him and play with him, the child can just look at his work and not Mr. Clown Box and say “No, I can’t; I am working.” Instructions went on: “And when you say it - do it. He says: ‘look!’ – you say: ‘No I can’t! I’m working!’

In Walter Mischel’s own words:

“…to effectively resist the hot temptation…, the inhibitory No! response had to replace the hot Go! response - and it had to do this quickly and automatically, like a reflex; … an automated link between the needed No! response and the hot stimulus (which normally triggered Go!) …This type of If-Then plan specifies the tempting hot stimulus – “When/If Mr. Clown Box says to look at him and play with him” - and links it to the desired temptation-resisting response: “then, you can just not look at him and say, “I am not going to look at Mr. Clown Box.”

Pre-schoolers armed with that plan reduced their distraction time and kept working, and even when the clown succeeded, the interruption was on average of less than 5 seconds in contrast with average 24 seconds for preschoolers without the “If-Then” plan.

With practice, the desired action of the implementation plan becomes initiated automatically when the relevant situational cues occur – whether external (when I get home from work, when the dessert menu is served) or internal (when I feel anxious, when I crave chocolate, etc.)

So, when, in the process of creating a live mental model of the identity that you aspire to grow into, or be inspired by, don’t forget to ask during your imaginary “interview” for some If-Then tips.

The If-Then Plans for Enhancing EQ

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” – Victor E. Frankl

This is probably the most used and known quote by Viktor E. Frankl. No surprise - it captures the essence of EQ in the perfect pairing of brevity and eloquence.

That space, that Frankl is talking about – learning to recognize it, along with developing an ability to choose the response, is exactly where the “If-Then” plan can be immensely helpful. After all – a reactive response is as much a temptation as a cake.

We know ourselves well enough to predict a large percentage of situations that can benefit from advanced response-inhibiting planning. For example, maybe you feel that you just can’t say “no” to someone, but you really need to; or you have a hard time figuring out the difference between sharing your stresses with your significant other vs. taking the stresses out on him/her. In these scenarios the “If” part should reflect an emotion “If I feel overwhelmed (upset, guilty, stressed, lonely, etc.)" and the “Then” part should be also emotional – not only the external action, but how you reframe the situation in your mind. For example “If I am asked by a colleague to help with his work, and I feel uneasy (used, overwhelmed, etc.),– Then I will say: “I need to check and see whether it is realistic for me to take on more work at this time because I do not want to overpromise and underdeliver,” and then I will take time to analyze my workload, take a close look at my priorities and take a realistic look at self-imposed guilt in light of objective data. Come up with a few scenarios and consider “interviewing” your mental model of the identity you aspire towards, on their “If-Then” scenarios.

Final Words of Advice

I hope this will all serve as valuable tools for you in building, defining, reshaping, transforming, or inventing your identity. One last word of caution I’d like to offer is - be watchful that the identity you strive towards doesn’t make you feel that you’re not good enough for it anytime you fall short of acting in accordance with it! Remember, it is supposed to inspire, not make you feel like that identity is up there and you are just trying to be “worthy” of it. I will once again refer to James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” and a great insightful perspective he shares:

"Everything you do simply casts a vote for or against the person you want to become – the vote doesn’t need to be unanimous, just needs to be a majority."

You have the power and the tools to be the masterpiece that no label will be capable of defining! I hope these tools will enrich your journey there and make it more fun!

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