Identity Transformation - The Secret Key to Achieving Your Goals

Most career goals will never come true. Do you want to know why?

Part of the reason is that they fall into the category of "important but not urgent" and many of us are too distracted by burning urgent fires at work. So we take our eye off the ball.

But recently, I've noticed something else. One of our community members recently shared with me in frustration that she doesn't think she can get to the Director level, which is her next goal. When I dug further, it came out that she had all the ingredients - a 12-month career plan, a supportive manager, and the goal of getting the promotion to Director. Yet, she was experiencing incredible resistance to taking action toward securing that promotion.

She was procrastinating but she didn't know why.

I see this all the time. It's happened to me before in my career and in my experience as an entrepreneur.

In?this past newsletter article , I talk about my own experience stepping up to my goals as an entrepreneur and the key that unlocked success for me. Which is the same key that unlocks success for any other goal.

Here's the problem. Most of us rely on our initial enthusiasm and willpower to start implementing behavior changes that will get us to our big goals - getting in shape, achieving a promotion or raise, or funding our startup.

But enthusiasm is short-lived and willpower - a limited resource.

It's just like your arm muscles - if you try to carry a heavy box with your arm muscles under the box, instead of leaning it against your hips or using a dolly, you won't go far before you have to put it down. That's the reason most New Year's resolutions fail even before the end of the first quarter.

So what is the equivalent of using the leverage of our hips or a dolly instead of muscling our way with willpower?

Before we get to that, we need to understand?one important principle.

It's a principle that most recent psychologists, scientists, and behavior change specialists agree on. It was articulated in the 1960s by plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz who noticed that some patients, whose real or perceived physical flaws had been corrected with surgery, did not experience a corresponding change in lifestyle and outlook. They continued to live as if they still had their former physical issues. Some even complained that the surgeon had not fixed them at all, since their lives had not changed.

One big challenge these patients experienced is that their present self-image didn't match their new identity. And that's the same problem that you and I experience when we have goals but we can't really?"see"?ourselves having those goals since they would be inconsistent with our present identity. This is true even if we consciously think that we can achieve those goals, but our subconscious sees the desired change as inconsistent with our self-image.

Unless your identity matches the behavior change you're looking to implement, you won't achieve your goals.

Transforming your self-image by stepping into the new identity is therefore the missing key to success. It's the leverage to the muscles of our willpower.

In recent years, a lot of books build on that idea - including "The Alter Ego" by Todd Herman, as well as "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal . I discussed this idea with Nir and he was emphatic about the need to change your identity in order to successfully change your behavior. You can check out our conversation in the 99th episode of the Female Tech Exec podcast?here . We covered lots of examples of how people successfully change by becoming a person whose beliefs and values are consistent with the new behavior - from people quitting smoking by adopting the identity of an athlete to people writing books by starting to identify as authors.

Ok, so how do you actually do this? How does one BECOME the new identity?

You need to start thinking and making decisions AS IF you're already that identity.

This is not "faking it till you make it" or pretending.

When I was training to climb Denali, I couldn't pretend to be an expedition mountaineer and race up the mountain the same day I decided to climb it. I would have failed because my transformation process - mental and physical - was not yet complete.

I was not ready.

I had to start thinking and making decisions?LIKE an expedition mountaineer would.

For example, at breakfast I would ask myself - what would a mountaineer eat before a big day of exertion? Would a mountaineer stay in bed or get up in the cold morning to do their workout on the icy slope before the ski lifts start turning? Would a mountaineer do a thorough gear check before their outing or just wing it? I had to always ask - What would a mountaineer DO? What would a mountaineer think?

It is helpful to also have someone in mind that embodies this identity that you can use as a mental image.

In my case, I used Steve House , one of the best climbers and mountain guides in the US, who also happened to be my mountaineering coach at the company he founded Uphill Athlete .

I would ask - How would Steve approach this? What would he do? How would he think about this problem or challenge? And I would immediately KNOW the answer.

As a side note, lots of fitness buffs and sprint runners have trouble training for mountaineering since the slow paced workouts clash with their identity as a "fast runner". So they need to consciously work on transforming that identity if they want to avoid overtraining and injury that comes from doing too much too fast.

So if you're having trouble imagining yourself as a Director,?you need to?start THINKING and BEHAVING like a Director would?before you officially get the title.

This means asking yourself:

1) Would a Director do this tactical task herself or think of who would be the right person to own it and get trained on it?

2) Would a Director spend her time triaging bugs in the new release or analyzing the data on the dashboard and form hypotheses about what's working and what's not working and why?

3) Would a Director wait for her manager to tell her what to do next or would she go to her manager with a carefully thought out plan and get feedback?

If you have someone you admire in that position, ask:

"What would (name) do in this situation?"

You'll know the answer very quickly.

A word of caution: Before you start "wearing" your new identity confidently, you must first try it on a few times. That's especially important if the gap between your present identity and desired goals feels big.

That means using your imagination and spending time consciously FEELING what it feels like to be in the body of someone who already has your desired identity.

What does it feel to be this person? How does it feel to walk like them? To stand like them? How does it feel to talk like them? Enter the room like them? The power of the imagination is key for this to work.

To support you with trying on your new goal identity, I've recorded?a 10 minute guided visualization ?which you can find in the 120th episode of?the Female Tech Exec podcast .

So, why try to muscle-change individual goals and behaviors? And why not adopt a whole new identity that will come with those goals and behaviors already "pre-packaged"? That would be a much better way to make sure you reach your goals.