Picture in your mind who you are when you are performing best at work. What does that man look like? How does he walk and talk to others? How does he manage his time? This is an avatar.
Now imagine who you are when you are performing your best in the gym. How does your training look when you are exactly the person you want to be, the mental picture you have of yourself being the hero of the day? How intense is the training session and how focused is your mind?
Lastly, picture yourself in your various interpersonal relationships. It could be with your parents, significant other or friends. How do you behave in those moments when you are exactly the person you want to be? How do you interact with others and what do you say? How easily does the conversation flow?
Now answer this question: for each of the three example environments listed above, is the ideal version of yourself the same for all of them? The answer should be “No!” If you are the same person in every facet of your life you will be constantly underperforming.
In each of the above scenarios, you have different avatars. Think of an avatar as a different flavor of your personality. In each situation, one part of you is better suited for generating maximum performance. For example, you need to use the violent side of your nature when engaging in physical training. But you also need to be soft and kind when dealing with your relationships.
If you are the same person with your wife as you are in the gym, both your marriage and your physique will be disasters. The violence of the gym does not translate well to relationships, and the softness of relationships does not translate well to the gym. Therefore, you must build separate avatars for each life scenario you will encounter to maximize your efficiency. Each avatar has an ideal environment where it can live. We will examine a few common scenarios and how you can build and use various avatars to maximize performance.
The Way of The Avatar if to Use Yourself as the Role Model
The fastest road to success is to model others who are already successful and do what they do. We have been doing this since we were very young. We first copy our parent’s behaviors and we pick up their habits unconsciously. Later we begin to model our friends if we are unwise. As we get older we notice people we want to imitate. This is the root of “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” The answer to that question is based on the models we have seen and how they influence our thinking. What if I told you that you could imagine role models and copy them for maximum performance? It is actually simple to do this and you are likely doing it already.
We all have fantasies where we visualize ourselves performing at the top level. We can see ourselves delivering a masterful speech fearlessly and effortlessly. We can picture ourselves playing professional sports or mastering a musical instrument. We envision ourselves gaining a skill or running a business or performing some incredible feat of strength in the gym. If you have experienced a daydream, you already know what it is like to generate avatars of yourself in your mind. Each one of those fantasies represents the type of person you believe you have the capacity to be. Sometimes you may be so motivated by this image that you sprint to the gym to train or pick up your guitar and run drills. What exactly is happening in those moments?
We are visualizing ourselves performing at our best, and then working to imitate that mental image. We are literally imitating the idea of what we think we can be. If we are unconsciously doing this on a regular basis, why not learn to manipulate this power to our advantage? What this skill involves is the ability to create characters of who we want to be in each situation of life and then working to imitate them. Here we will work through a few examples and then do a case study on the Biblical Character David.
The Work Avatar
When it comes to your work, what does the ideal man do? I visualize the type of man who is at work ten minutes before he needs to be and leaves ten minutes after the work day is done. He knows himself and how he best performs. With this knowledge, he schedules the day so that he is in the best possible mental state for each task.
He knows at what parts of the day he has high energy so he schedules any heavy, focused work for those moments. He knows when the midday lull hits so he schedules low-focus, busywork that needs to be done but requires less mental effort. At all times he is optimizing his work output and giving his maximum effort. Every hour is spent well, not a second is wasted. This man cannot be accused of stealing one dime from his work either in time spent or in supplies stolen.
This man has a massive work output, always finishes tasks ahead of schedule unless unexpected scenarios throw him off. He is an exemplary worker and a role model. He can generate 80 work hours per week if necessary and never complains about it once. Due to his dedication, he is compensated heavily and is always looking for ways to increase his value, his ability to serve, and as a result, his salary.
The Training Avatar
When the ideal man enters the gym, he becomes another person. I envision a man who morphs from kind and loving to a savage barbarian, a machine, a Berserker of olden times. In the moments to follow he knows no pain and listens to nothing in his head; not the voice telling him that his current level of effort is “good enough”, nor the voice reminding him of the accolades of old. He is forever hungry.
He trains to the maximum of his capacity, ignoring every screaming sensation in his body. Not only is he training the body, but he is training his mind. He is training himself to not give in to difficulty and adversity in the workplace by practicing it in training. He is learning to hold on a few moments longer when enduring physical pain so he can hold on for a few extra moments when enduring mental pain. He knows life is a game of inches, it’s the little bits that count. And in training, he gathers those little victories.
The way he trains reflects the way he thinks, works, and does every other task in his life – to the best of his ability every set, every rep, every project, every goal.
The Social Avatar
I envision the socially competent man as a master of observation. He knows that it is only through observation that social cues are noticed, body language is analyzed and the words of others are dissected. If he is aloof and far off, living in his own head, or worried about what others think of him he will miss all of those details. Social events are to be treated as intelligence-gathering operations. He is learning about his enemies as well as his allies. Just as a leader wants to know the chink in the armor of his foe, he needs to be aware of where his ally is most likely to lose his footing in a strategic scenario.
The socially competent man listens to how others speak and attempts to view the meaning behind the words they use. There is always more to a person than the mere words they say. Every phrase is couched in nuance, deception, self-righteousness, or personality clues. The only way these clues can be discovered is if a man gets out of his own head and into the social scenario.
This man gains power by gaining intelligence about those around him whether at work, church, or recreation. Every situation is a chance to engage in strategic maneuvers and build rapport. The social man can see every cue and every clue, every hidden phrase, and every off-hand remark thrown out (which tend to have the most meaning built into them).
The Student Avatar
When learning new skills, the ideal man can focus for extended periods of time without becoming fatigued. He can work for hours but prefers to work with intensity and finish tasks quickly by virtue of this Herculean effort.
The ideal man breaks down every concept into its component parts and masters each one in a systematic method. Leaving no stone unturned, he pursues ultimate mastery of every minor detail. This is what makes him a master of his craft and allows him to learn at an accelerated pace. He then takes his new knowledge and shares it with others, compressing it into a form that is easy to understand.
Notes
As you may have noticed, these are high bars to set for yourself, but it is incredibly important to set them anyways. Think of your heroes in life. From professional athletes to inventors to entrepreneurs, they are all living standards. To try to imitate them is to acknowledge that they set the bar very high and still attempt to achieve. In fact, the fact that the bar is so high should be inspiring to us,. It should drive us to want to work more and harder after knowing what is possible for men to achieve in a lifetime if they are willing to trade a bit of work.
But there is not always an ideal role model for every single skill or character trait that we want to develop. Because of this, we build the avatars, and they pick up the slack. Imitate the ideal man in your own mind.
You also may notice that it would be almost impossible to maintain this standard of behavior every day. That is correct, no standard of perfection can be met in every endeavor of life in every instant of every day. There will always be failure and mistakes. If there are no failures or mistakes, your standards are not high enough. Raise the standards until they are inspiring yet simultaneously daunting. There is no honor in accomplishment without difficulty.
These are just a few basic avatars that serve as examples. You should build your own avatars for every skill and character trait that you want.
With all of that said, let us examine a Biblical Character with his own avatars in life.
Avatar I – A Man After God’s Own Heart
Many people wonder how David can commit all the various sins he does yet still be considered a man after God’s own heart. It is because he is instantly willing to take ownership of his actions and repent. It is as simple as that. He does not deny his behavior or make excuses, rather he feels instant regret and changes his behaviors, as was the case when confronted about his sin by Nathan the prophet. King David’s first and most famous avatar is that of the penitent man.
Avatar II – Wise Man
In his youth and throughout his life, David was recognized as a man of wisdom. The Bible notes on multiple occasions that David behaved wisely wherever he went (I Samuel 18:5,14), and his wisdom was apparent to King Saul (1 Samuel 18:15). It is easy to point out the fact that David did not always make wise decisions, as David has become a lesson of how not to behave in many sermons, sermons which assume that men have the same access to women as David did, which is an utter lie. David could not permanently live in the wisdom avatar, this is because he was human.
Avatar III – Savage Warrior
My personal favorite avatar of King David is that of the savage warrior. It is not a component of his character that is concentrated on in religion, but it is nonetheless important. It is important to see that the man after God’s own heart was a fierce and vicious warrior who would destroy towns and kill every man, woman, and child (1 Samuel 27). Imagine if Gengis Khan had a moral compass and that is close to the mentality of David, though his conquests were quite different.
Perhaps there was some hyperbole involved, but even the women of Israel sang about the body count of David the warrior (1 Samuel 18). Ask yourself what kind of man you have to be to behave wisely, have a penitent heart after God’s own, yet still have the will to stack thousands of bodies in combat.
And remember that this is not modern-day combat where the enemies are separated by space and fire at one another with long-range weapons. David killed thousands of men in hand to hand combat. He slaughtered his enemies by hand, with sword and spear. He killed them while looking them in the face. He drained their blood and brains into the earth – that takes a toll on a man’s mind. David had no choice but to put this part of himself in a box and keep it as an avatar. No man walks around as a berserker, but this element of him displays itself on the battlefield, as it undoubtedly did for David.
Avatar IV – Man of Rationality & Mercy
Despite having multiple chances to kill king Saul and having plenty of reason to do so, David spared him time and time again (1 Samuel 24, 26). It takes a man of great wisdom and forgiveness to set aside his emotion and spare his enemy for the sake of the Lord. Perhaps that is another component of his character that made him the man after God’s own heart. You can not go from savage to merciful without fully functional avatars.
Avatar V – Vengeful (A Negative Avatar)
On the negative side, David had a vengeful component to his personality. Perhaps it was his nature, it could have been human nature, or possibly it was a byproduct of repressing his violent urge against Saul and his enemies for too many years. Near the end of his life, David charged Solomon his son with exacting vengeance on Zeruiah for his actions against him in prior years. Zeruiah had cursed David and kicked stones at him but David chose to be merciful. Apparently, he did not forget this insult and paid it back through Solomon. David held his rage in for years and it came out on his deathbed. Instead of being proud of his mercy, he ended his life with an act of vengeance. Not exemplary behavior, but it is very much human.
Conclusion
You could spend more time and continue to dissect the character of David to find more avatars, but this is a decent start. The analysis allows you to see a few examples of avatars, how they work in people and how you can create, understand and develop your own in order to be more powerful in the various avenues of your life.
