How To Change Your Identity Using Same Techniques As Advertisers

Big businesses and advertisers are constantly manipulating your beliefs and identity. They do this to change your behavior in a way that generates more profit for them.

But you can actually use these same strategies that advertising agencies use, to change your own behavior for good.

Your behavior is driven by your beliefs and identity. In this article you’re going to learn what exactly your identity is. You will discover a simple exercise to uncover negative beliefs that stop you from achieving what you want in your life.

I will discuss how advertising campaigns use specific psychological techniques to change your beliefs. And how you can use those same techniques to your advantage to create the changes you want in your life.

This information can be applied no matter what goals you’re striving to achieve. It might be losing weight. Finding a new relationship. Or making more money.

What is identity?

Others may have different definitions, but this is how I view identity. It is a set of beliefs about who we are.

We have beliefs about how outgoing we are. How healthy we are. Our physical appearance. And all other areas of our life.

Many of these beliefs are stored subconsciously. We may not be consciously thinking of these beliefs about ourselves. But they still shape our behavior.

Experts on the subconscious mind like Bruce Lipton believe that 95% of our behavior is driven by the subconscious mind. So if we have negative beliefs about our identity stored in the subconscious, you can imagine how this impacts your day to day actions.

Another important concept to understand here is commitment and consistency.

What Is Commitment & Consistency?

Commitment and consistency is a psychological bias. It basically says that people tend to act in a way that is consistent with their past behaviors and inner beliefs.

Our subconscious mind works in the same way. If you have developed an identity as an overweight person, your subconscious mind will push you to take actions in a way that is consistent with your identity as an overweight person.

That’s why it can be so difficult for people to lose weight and keep it off. If your identity doesn’t change, it will be extremely difficult to maintain a lower body weight because you’re fighting against your subconscious mind. Your subconscious wants to keep you consistent with that identity of being an overweight person.

The commitment and consistency bias will often be exploited by advertisers to push people towards certain behaviors.

Marketing professionals will encourage people to take small actions that create small shifts in their identity.

For example, this article from Conversion Buzz talks about how day trading coach Steven Dux uses the commitment and consistency bias to help sell his $7500 course. The article explains how followers are required to complete a series of exercises and watch a series of videos before they have the opportunity to join his course.

As someone completes these exercises, they are building new internal beliefs that they are an action taker. That they are serious about their education, etc..

After this small shift in identity occurs, the person is then offered a position in the $7500 course. Because the person has developed these new internal beliefs, it will be harder for them to not register for the course.

Not registering would be inconsistent with their new internal beliefs and identity.

If marketing professionals can plant new internal beliefs inside of you that shape your behavior, you can too. In this article, we’ll look at other techniques used in marketing to manipulate your identity, beliefs and behavior.

How Advertisers Use Repetition to Control Your Beliefs

Repetition is another key tool used in marketing to change your beliefs. Once you understand how repetition is used by advertisers to control your beliefs, you can apply it to change the negative beliefs that make up your identity.

You will see why repetition is the main key to changing your identity and getting what you want.

There is a concept in psychology known as the illusory truth effect. It says that the more you hear something, the more you believe it to be true.

For example, someone might tell you that drinking cold water raises your metabolism and helps you lose weight.

You might have some doubts about this when you first hear it. Perhaps you don’t believe it at all.

But then you hear it again. Then you read it in a magazine. Then you hear it on a YouTube video.

As you hear it more often, your mind begins to accept it as truth. Even if it’s not true.

How The Mind Processes New and Repeated Information

When you are first exposed to new information (such as cold water raising your metabolism), that information is likely to be processed in your conscious mind.

Your conscious mind is more logical and sceptical than your subconscious. The conscious mind will weigh up the merits of a claim like cold water raising your metabolism. And it may just dismiss that information as BS.

New information can potentially be a threat to your survival. So the conscious mind kicks into action to analyze it before passing it onto your subconscious mind.

If the information is dismissed by your conscious mind, it’s unlikely to make it into your subconscious and be ingrained as a belief.

But as you hear the same information over and over, it’s seen as more familiar to your brain. Because it’s familiar, the brain no longer sees it as such a threat and less energy is spent by the conscious brain trying to filter it.

That means it can more easily bypass the conscious mind and slip into the subconscious where it will be accepted as truth.

So by the tenth time you hear that cold water helps you lose weight, the claim is much more familiar to you. The conscious mind lets its guard down and the claim slips into your subconscious where it can become a belief.

Advertising Examples of Repetition

This is why advertisers will repeat the same ads and the same slogans repeatedly. Your conscious mind will be more sceptical towards the claims at first but then you will be more likely to accept them after repeated exposure.

Research also shows that we naturally develop a preference towards things that we are familiar with. This is known as the mere exposure effect.

This article discusses how Diabetes Freedom uses repetition to quickly create a belief that their diabetes program is extremely simple. They continue to push that message onto the viewer until it passes into the subconscious mind as is accepted as truth.

Marketing professionals will regularly try to plant new beliefs in their viewers that lead the viewers to purchasing their products.

For example, a business coach will want their audience to believe that coaching is required for success. They will make claims like ‘every billionaire has a mentor.’

This article talks about how business coach JT Foxx primes his audience to believe that coaching is needed for success. JT Foxx and others then use repetition to ensure this message becomes engrained in the subconscious as a belief.

Steps To Change Your Own Identity

You can now see that marketing professionals can manipulate our beliefs and identity to create an outcome they want. The key message to take away from this is that it is possible to change your beliefs and identity.

We can use the same techniques used in marketing to create a new identity that moves us closer to our goals.

Step 1: Identify Your Goals and What You Want To Change

To figure out what new beliefs and identity you need to adopt, you first need to be clear on what the end goal is.

I highly recommend reading the book Psycho-Cybernetics which is all about identity change. It talks about how the brain is a goal striving machine. But it needs to be given a clear goal to move towards.

Write down the goals you have in your life and what you want to change.

As an example, we’ll say your goal is to speak on stage in front of 100 people. You want to change your public speaking confidence and the beliefs you have around speaking on stage.

Step 2: Identify The Limiting Beliefs That Are Holding You Back From These Goals

If you’re struggling to achieve your goals and make change in your life, you likely have limiting beliefs creating resistance.

These limiting beliefs are a part of your identity.

We often aren’t even consciously aware of our own limiting beliefs. To bring them to the surface, I recommend trying this exercise…

Firstly, write down a list of ten scenarios where you didn’t act the way you wanted to — you acted in a way that was not consistent with your goals and your ideal self.

For example, you might write…

“The time I didn’t make that sales call to speak to my top prospect”

“The time I said no to a public speaking opportunity”

“When I stayed in bed instead of getting up and going to the gym”

“When I didn’t talk to the cute girl at supermarket”

The next step is to go through each of these scenarios and keep asking ‘why?’ Doing so will help uncover the core beliefs that are driving your behavior and stopping you from taking the action to achieve your goals.

So if the scenario is saying no to the public speaking opportunity, the exercise might look something like this..

Why did you say no to the public speaking opportunity?

Because I was afraid.

Why were you afraid?

Because I don’t like public speaking.

Why don’t you like public speaking?

Because I’m not a confident speaker.

And you have your first limiting belief! The limiting belief is ‘I’m not a confident speaker.’ That belief is part of your identity. It will continue to drive your behavior until you change it and create a new one.

For example, “I am a confident speaker.”

Many times you will need to go much deeper than this and ask more questions to reveal all of the limiting beliefs. In the example above there may well be several other limiting beliefs driving the person’s behavior.

Step 3: Create New Empowering Beliefs

After you have gone through this process for each of the scenarios, you should have a list of core limiting beliefs that are driving your behavior and stopping you from achieving your goals.

Go through each one and replace it with a more empowering belief that you want to become part of your identity.

Step 4: Create Visualisations

Next, you want to create at least four visualizations. If you’re not already familiar with visualization, I recommend reading this article from Jack Canfield.

The four visualizations will be imagined scenarios where you are acting in a way that is consistent with the beliefs from step 3.

Let’s say in step 2, you identified you have a limiting belief that you are not a confident speaker. In step 3, you decided you will replace that with the belief ‘I am a confident speaker.’

You’re now going to imagine a scenario where you are speaking on stage with complete confidence. That’s your visualization.

Perhaps you also identified that you have the limiting belief “people are not interested in what I say.” In step 3, you replaced that with “People want to listen to me and are interested in what I’m saying.”

So as part of your visualization, you will imagine the audience listening intently to every word you say as you speak confidently.

Step 5: Use Repetition

Now you’re going to start using those same techniques that advertisers use to manipulate your mind. But you’re going to use them to manipulate your own subconscious.

Remember that the more you hear something, the more you will believe it to be true.

Take the list of your new empowering beliefs and commit to repeating each belief out loud at least 10 times every night for 21 days. The author of Psycho-Cybernetics says that it takes 21 days for a new belief to be lodged in your subconscious. I think it probably varies person to person. But 21 days is a good starting point.

For such a shift in beliefs to occur, your mind will want some proof that these new beliefs are true. This is where your visualizations come in.

The visualization will signal to your mind that these new beliefs are indeed true because you’re acting in a way that is consistent with them. It doesn’t matter that you’re only imagining them. Your subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between real and imagined experience.

Commit to 21 days of spending at least 3 minutes on each of your four visualizations. I recommend doing this soon before going to bed, around the same time your repeat your new beliefs.

The power of repetition will help push your new identity into your subconscious.

Step 6: Leverage Commitment and Consistency in Your Favor

Just as advertisers use the concept of commitment and consistency, you can too. If you can’t remember how this psychological bias works, go back and read the example I provided earlier in the article.

Consider the new beliefs and identity you’re trying to create. Now think about the small actions that someone who already has that identity would do every day.

The best public speakers in the world would probably rehearse their content every day. Just like a professional golfer practices their golf swing every day.

Identify at least a few new daily actions in line with your new beliefs and identity that you will commit to doing every day.

By doing those actions everyday, you will be reinforcing your new identity. Then to later act in a way that is inconsistent with that new identity, would create a lot of friction.

Summary

You now know the secrets used by marketing to change beliefs and identity. And you can use them same strategies to your advantage.

Remember that repetition is the key to changing your beliefs. So you will need to do the exercises I have recommended in this article and you will need to do them repeatedly for change to occur.

Do you want to change your limiting beliefs faster? Read my article on how to program your Reticular Activation System to adopt new beliefs.