wavePod

Todd Herman: How to Become the Hero Inside You - Change Your Brain Every Day | Wave AI Podcast Notes

Todd Herman: How to Become the Hero Inside You

Mon May 12 2025

What if the key to becoming your best self… is already inside you—waiting to be activated? In this inspiring episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen talk with performance coach and bestselling author Todd Herman about the proven mental strategies...

Summary

Podcast Summary: Change Your Brain Every Day Episode: Todd Herman: How to Become the Hero Inside You Release Date: May 12, 2025

In this enlightening episode of "Change Your Brain Every Day," hosts Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen engage in a profound conversation with Todd Herman, the mastermind behind the Alter Ego Effect. Todd shares his journey, insights, and practical strategies for leveraging alter egos to unlock peak performance across various facets of life.

1. Introducing Todd Herman and the Alter Ego Effect

Timestamp [00:00] Todd Herman opens the discussion by referencing Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey model, highlighting its influence on his creation of the Alter Ego Effect. He clarifies a popular misquote from Campbell:

“Follow your blisters because in your blisters you'll find your bliss.”
(Todd Herman, [00:00])
This foundational concept underscores the essence of embracing challenges to discover personal fulfillment and growth.

2. Todd’s Personal Journey and Origin of the Alter Ego

Timestamp [04:36] Todd delves into his upbringing on a farm in Alberta, Canada, and his early involvement in sports as an escape from farm chores. His aspirations in football, despite not achieving the heights he dreamed of, led him to explore the mental aspects of performance:

“Sports was just my great escape to be around other people and not have to go do chores on the farm.”
(Todd Herman, [04:36])

This internal conflict between his ambitions and physical limitations birthed the concept of an alter ego—a composite of his football heroes Walter Payton and Ronnie Lott. This strategic persona allowed him to perform beyond his perceived limitations.

3. Understanding the Alter Ego Effect

Timestamp [13:22] Todd elaborates on the Alter Ego Effect, tracing its roots back to Cicero. He defines an alter ego as:

“The other I, or trusted friend within, to help people who are trying to transform and make change happen in some area of their life.”
(Todd Herman, [13:22])
This concept serves as a bridge between who you are and who you need to become in critical moments, facilitating smoother transitions and enhanced performance.

4. Step-by-Step Process of Creating an Alter Ego

Todd outlines a five-step process for developing an effective alter ego:

Choose a Specific Role or Environment: Define the context in which the alter ego will operate.

“Always choose or develop an alter ego in the context of a very specific role or environment that it lives in.”
(Todd Herman, [17:03])
Identify Barriers: Determine what is hindering your performance in that role.
Define Desired Traits: Specify the characteristics you wish to embody.
Select Sources of Inspiration: Draw inspiration from role models who exhibit these traits.
Integrate Physical Cues: Use totems, uniforms, or rituals to embody the alter ego physically.

5. Practical Applications Across Various Contexts

Timestamp [31:24] Todd shares diverse applications of the Alter Ego Effect, from sports to parenting and professional settings. For instance, he recounts how an NBA player transformed his playoff performance by adopting a "Mamba disciple" persona inspired by Kobe Bryant. Additionally, Todd explains how he reinvented himself as a compassionate and patient father by modeling after his own father and Mr. Rogers, incorporating elements like posture and tone to naturally exhibit desired behaviors.

6. Emotional Management and Identity Transformation

Timestamp [28:16] The conversation highlights the role of emotions in performance. Todd emphasizes that emotions like rage and anger, when harnessed correctly, can be powerful tools rather than detrimental forces:

“The way that I look at the emotions is they all have their place... you can wield it and you can use it.”
(Todd Herman, [28:16])

This perspective aligns with Dr. Amen’s insights on brain health, illustrating the synergy between managing emotions and optimizing cognitive function.

7. Integration with Brain Health and Mental Performance

Todd and Dr. Amen explore the intersection of the Alter Ego Effect with brain health. By adopting specific alter egos, individuals can create mental frameworks that support brain optimization, resilience, and overall well-being. Tana Amen shares her experiences integrating Todd’s strategies with her practices in psychiatry, demonstrating the Alter Ego Effect’s versatility in addressing mental health challenges.

8. Notable Quotes

Todd Herman [00:00]:
“Follow your blisters because in your blisters you'll find your bliss.”
Tana Amen [00:33]:
“Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse.”
Todd Herman [13:22]:
“The best of the best that I know. They have a lot of really powerful tools around their tool belt and alter ego because it uses identity as a method of transforming and changing with a lot less friction.”
Todd Herman [25:30]:
“This is an actual tool. ... sometimes it's just like the reframe for someone.”
Todd Herman [53:20]:
“Follow your blisters because in Your blisters you will find your bliss. Pick up hard things.”

9. Conclusion and Resources

In wrapping up, Todd Herman encourages listeners to explore his book, "The Alter Ego Effect," and visit alteregoeffect.com for additional resources, including guides and multimedia courses. He shares personal anecdotes, such as meeting Layla Ali at the airport, underscoring the profound impact his work has on high achievers across various fields.

Additional Resources:

Book: The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman
Website: alteregoeffect.com
Course: Available on Alter Ego Effect website

This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to harness the power of alter egos to overcome limitations, enhance performance, and achieve personal transformation. Whether you're an athlete, a parent, a professional, or someone striving for personal growth, Todd Herman's insights offer practical tools to become the hero inside you.

Loading summary...

Transcript

Todd Herman (0:00)

Joseph Campbell, who wrote Power of Myth and he created the Hero's Journey model. He was my source for my second alter ego when I started my business. He has a very famous quote that most people repost about follow your bliss. Follow your bliss is not the full quote. The actual quote is follow your blisters because in your blisters you'll find your bliss.

Dr. Daniel Amen (0:23)

Oh, I like that.

Todd Herman (0:24)

Wow. So follow your pain because in your pain you'll find your recover.

Tana Amen (0:33)

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Are you excited to optimize your brain and help the brains of those you love? Do you want to prevent or treat memory problems, anxiety or depression? Do you want to be happier? That's why I created Amen University to take what I've learned over the last 45 years and help you have a better brain, a better mind and a better body. You can take courses like our 30 day happiness challenge, which was shown in research to increase happiness by 32% in just 30 days, or memory Rescue, or overcoming Anxiety, depression, trauma and grief, or healing Add at home in 30 days and much more. We also have professional courses and courses for kids, including brain thrive by 25, which was found in independent research to decrease depression and improve self esteem. And as a special offer just for our listeners, you can save 20% on your next course. Visit amenuniversity.com and use the code PODCAST20 today we have someone on the show whose work has changed the lives of Olympic athletes, Super bowl champions, and top CEOs. And mine. And it can change yours too. Todd Herman is the brilliant mind behind the Alter Ego Effect, a powerful framework built on decades of performance, performance psychology. He teaches us how to tap into the highest versions of ourselves by borrowing a strategy used by elite performers throughout history, from Beyonce's Sasha Fierce to Kobe Bryant's Black Mamba. At its core, the Alter Ego Effect is about building a bridge from who you are to who you need to be when it matters most. And 10 and I were watching CNN's documentary on Kobe Bryant.

Todd Herman (3:11)

Yeah.

Tana Amen (3:11)

And he. So I had season tickets to the Lakers for 20 years and loved Kobe Bryant. Like every year. Kobe was there, I was there. And when I heard in the documentary about the Black Mamba and then they mentioned you and they mentioned your book, I'm like, okay, I have to read this book. And so I downloaded it, ordered it, and I'm like, this be so helpful to my patients because I'VE been blessed to see some of the world's greatest people, from Miley Cyrus to Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and they often want me to help them with their mental game. Yeah. And I'm like, I need a framework. And this framework that we're going to talk about works. And so when I. I'm like, I rarely, like, go. I have to have somebody on the podcast. And I told Tana about it and.

Todd Herman (4:36)

Yeah. I mean, it's not going to be the same origin story as, say, Kobe Bryant. So let's just couch that right away. Yeah. No, I was. I grew up on a big farm and ranch in Alberta, Canada, and long. A long way away from where we're sitting right now, like Los Angeles or where I ended up moving to New York City. But sports was just my great escape to be around other people and not have to go do chores on the farm. And I had a knack for a few different things. And I managed to get a couple of college football scholarships, not because I'm a physical specimen, but because I had some speed and quickness, mostly because I was always running away from my two older brothers and. But it's actually where the alter ego concept was, was born as well. I had a lot of ambitions. I wanted to be the first Canadian to win the Heisman Trophy. I wanted to be someone who had a profile on NFL Films one day because of my amazing career in the National Football League. And neither of those two things happened. But there's a. There's a kind of a lesson. And what I found in this concept of the alter ego that started to reveal itself as I got into the work that I did on doing mental game and peak performance, coaching and training with athletes and teams, which is. Even though I was put in a smaller capsule, like I'm not 6 foot 4 and 245 pounds, my ambitions were big. And that in. In that kind of conflict internally is where there's an opportunity for amazing creation. I found, because the ambition of the human is there, but there might be some sort of limitation. And point is, I built an alter ego for myself, and it was the composite of two of my football heroes at the time. Walter Payton and Ronnie Lott were both hall of Famers and a tribe of five Native American warriors. And I borrowed a big part of each of them to step into a certain character when I went onto that field so that it wasn't Just me that you were coming up against. It was me and seven of my buddies and, you know, and. And we can walk through my whole visualization process. And, you know, that what I did to get into that, which I've, you know, taught tens of thousands of times to other athletes. But, yeah, so, yeah, I played sports at a pretty good level, but nowhere near as.

Todd Herman (20:48)

And even the language of that you just said. And so we killed that. Yeah, there's this great line and have you ever seen the, the movie on Elton John called Rocket Man? The whole thing is just a great advertisement for alter egos. For me it's, it's so good. But there's a scene where it was, he was still, I think calling himself Reggie John at the time and he was sitting in this back room with this, you know, veteran musician, this black guy was kind of giving him some wisdom who was over traveling through the UK at the time. And he said, sometimes you got to kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be. And I say that language like it's so powerful because for me, kill is also rooted in the word decision. And decision in Latin comes from deciduous, which means to cut, to cut away. And that's the power of using this methodology with people is no, this alter ego is built just for that field. And then it can create all these other things that we know are powerful for human beings. You can commit to that, then you can be intentional with it. And then we use in the process totems, artifacts, a uniform, something that you can build a ritual around that allows you to now more fully step into that thing and allow it to come alive. So just going back, I can give people the, the, the steps from the book. Step one is, like I said, pick the role or the environment that you want this identity to live inside of. Step two is if you're already trying to make change happen, whether it's fitness wise or whether it's being a better parent, then what are the things that are getting in the way? Like, what's getting in the way of you showing up there? Is it some of your behaviors? Is it avoidance? Is it that I'm too meek? You know, I don't speak up. Like, depending on what your alter ego or this identity is going to be built for, then the flip of that is, okay, well then what do you want? How do you want to show up? And then who or what already has the traits, the attributes, the characteristics that you would, you would love to bring into that identity. And that's where all of a sudden your source of inspiration starts to come in, right? And, and your kind of alter ego starts to be born. Now it's like rising up out of the, you know, the gobbledygoo of our own creative imagination. And, and then we start to try to now bring it into, for me, bring it into the physical world so much. What I think people get wrong with the mental game is like the practitioners out there is they try to just get you to sort it all out between the six inches of your ears. No, I am a big fan of using the environment and the physical world as triggers for you, as reminders. So whether it's having a ring and you put it on and you're now imbuing yourself with the characteristics and traits of your of your grandmother who was always so sweet with you. And you're going to bring that energy when you walk into the home at the end of a long business day so that you can be, you know, the type of mom or dad that you really want to be for your kids. And. And then this step five of the process is now we got to practice it. We got it. We got to make it happen. Like, this isn't just, you know, some magic potion. It's, you know, pixie dust that we sprinkle on people. I've seen people transform in the moment. Like, they get the idea. And some of them just needed almost like someone else to come along and put the sword on each shoulder and go, no, you could, like, use this. This isn't being weird. It's my favorite thing that I've done with this book is the thousands of people that have reached out and said, like, on my Instagram, DMs Hip Hop Superstars, or gangster, like, gangster rap type. Like, guys who don't actually. There's a genre of music that I am not always not privy to, but I am 100% privy to it now because the book has gone viral in a few different spaces, one of them being rap and gangster rap and the number of gangster rappers that have reached out to my DMs and saying, I've never put my face in my music videos because it was this protective shield that I used in order to get this creative energy out of me because of this extremely horrific place that I came from as a kid. And. But I made myself. I judged myself because I thought, this is, you know, I'm playing make believe and this is the wrong thing to do. I'm gonna have a psychosis or something like that. And your book has given me 15 years of therapy because you've normalized it. And I'm like, yeah, because we played with this stuff as kids, you know, when we're jumping off the sofa as Batman or Wonder Woman.

Todd Herman (37:09)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's. It's so fun with it. So then going to miss going back to, like, the whole Persona of being a parent, like a mom or a dad. Then I did, because this just walks people through the process then. So I. I chose my role being a dad. It was new. What don't I want? Well, I don't want to be the challenger with my kids. Now, does that mean that I'm going to be perfect all the time? Sophie will tell you, not a chance. But if it makes me 15 to 20% better, absolutely. Then that's going to be really valuable for my kids. Right. And so then I go, okay, well, now I have my. I know who it is. I want to try to model my. My own father and Mr. Rogers. I grew up watching him. So in preparation for this new role, I rewatched a bunch of episodes of Mr. Rogers. And, you know, when you watch him, you know, we're all like, there's the. The Superwoman pose or the Superman pose. You know, chest out, shoulders back and all that for. To display confidence. Well, the last thing you want to do for kids is to make yourself bigger. Everything around them is already big. So Mr. Rogers, anytime he was talking to someone, would always get down on his knee and he. And he'd put his, you know, elbows on his one knee. Why? Because it rolled his shoulders forward and made himself smaller so he's less intimidating. Got down to their level. These are all behavioral things that you can practice in this, you know, identity that you have. And at first it might seem strange for you, but there's a real reason why you're doing it. Because you want to bring new qualities out of you that are there. That's the beautiful part about the human experiences. They are there. You just don't leverage them every single day in the current ways that you show up in the world. So then there's the manner of speaking, dropping his tone. Right. And so the qualities that I wanted to be with my kids as a dad would be patient, kind, playful, fun, warm. Right. And now I have this model, and there's certain totems that I would wear around my kids in the very beginning to start to keep that reminder and ritual going. And. And I imagine Mr. Rogers and my own dad being there, like, just watching. And then anytime I would dishonor the way that they would show up, that totem would come off. It's a switch for me. And then after a while, it becomes just so much more natural for you.

Todd Herman (41:44)

It's. One of the stories in my book is a general, so a colonel at, at Fort Bragg, he came up to me. So he asked me to come around outside the building that I just did the presentation inside of. And he broke down and he said, my. My wife has been sleeping in a different room for over a year and my kids want nothing to do with me. They were like 9 and maybe 11 at the time. Want nothing to do with me when I come home. And. And he said, because I. I don't know any. I don't know any. I don't know any way else to beat other than this thing. And I said, well, you're making it very difficult on yourself because. Let me guess, you go home with your fatigues on with your uniform on, right? And he said, yeah, I remember. I said, remember what I talked about in there about uniforms and totems and artifacts? What if we had a different uniform that you would. You. You can you. That uniform, the army, you can't wear it in the house. And if you do, then you've got to go immediately up to the bedroom and get changed into this new uniform. And. And so we built out this uniform and it was cargo shorts and not Abercrombie and Fitch, but a golf shirt from one of the major brands. I was just sort of his style. And he went out about five and five of them. And then we talked about like, look at how much work the military does, as in at encoding morals and ethics and code of conduct into what it means to put on this uniform. And look at all the legends that came before you. What are they building? Story, narrative. And I'm like, we can do the exact same thing for this other Part of you, your other sources of inspiration for who you can be as a dad with those kids. So that you can. When you're putting on that shirt, put pants first, shirt second. And as it comes over, as the V neck of it comes over your head, like, that's when. Like that's when the new. That's when dad's gonna be there. And what does he look like and what does he do? What are his behaviors? Like, so we built all that out and he sent me a lovely email about two months, maybe six weeks later saying, I can't tell you how transformative it's been. He. When I walk through the door, my kids run to me and greet me and my wife and I are sleeping in the same bedroom.