How Alter Egos Help Elite Performers: What J.J. McCarthy’s Critics Are Missing

The Power of Consciously Cultivating Identity 

Recently, an NFL panel spent an entire segment tearing into Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy for talking about his alter ego number 9, a game day persona tied to his jersey number.

They were not just critiquing his play. They were mocking his mental hygiene.

The message between the lines was clear:

If you are losing, you do not get to have an alter ego.
You have not "earned" psychological tools yet.

That is not just shallow analysis. It completely misunderstands what an alter ego really is and why identity work is central to performance at the highest levels of sport, business, and creativity.

In this article, we will break down:

• What an alter ego actually is

• Why it is a legitimate performance tool backed by psychology

• Famous examples like Ryan Reynolds, Beyoncé, Kobe Bryant, and others

• How identity level work shows up in Turning Within and the Constructive Thought Process

• Why J.J. McCarthy’s situation is not an argument against alter egos, but a case study in how little we understand them

If you care about sports psychology, elite performance, or your own mental game, this conversation matters.

What Is an Alter Ego, Really?

Let us start by clearing something up.

An alter ego is not cosplay, branding, or a marketing gimmick. It is a deliberate identity shift that leverages a simple truth:

You cannot outperform the identity you unconsciously operate from.
But you can consciously build an identity that performs at a higher level.

In practical terms, an alter ego is a constructed identity that carries specific traits: calm under pressure, aggression, playfulness, ruthlessness, composure, or creativity. When you step into that identity, your nervous system, thoughts, and behavior begin to align with those traits.

This shows up in several well studied mechanisms in psychology:

• Self distancing
  Seeing yourself from the outside or as a different character can reduce anxiety and increase clarity.

• Embodied cognition
  Posture, clothing, and ritual signal different cognitive states to the brain.

• State dependent performance
  The brain links certain identities and emotional states with specific actions and skills.

An alter ego is a tool. It does not replace skill, coaching, or repetition. It shapes the inner stance from which all of that is expressed.

We all have multiple identities in us, most of them are cultivated and oriented from unconsciously. Common identities people take on include social identities like race, gender, and age, as well as personal identities related to their profession, hobbies, and interests. Other key identities include religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and nationality. Mother and father are identities. An alter ego is an identity that we choose to consciously cultivate our experience from... and it can be a game changer.

The J.J. McCarthy Moment: Identity Work Under Fire

In the clip about J.J. McCarthy, the commentators hit a few key points:

• He looks overwhelmed and is having one of the worst seasons a quarterback has had.

• His timing is off, his feet are scattered, and he is pressing.

• He previously talked about his game day persona, his alter ego.

• Now that he is losing, they use that alter ego to ridicule him.

Some of the lines were telling:

• "You have not even earned the right to have an alter ego in the NFL yet."

• "Leave that college alter ego in college."

• "Stop with the branding and the silly stuff, just do the basics."

Here is the problem with that perspective:

• Everyone has an identity framework they are operating from, whether they name it or not.

• The choice is not "alter ego or no alter ego."
  It is "conscious identity or unconscious identity."

The commentators are correct that fundamentals matter. Mechanics, reads, and timing are non-negotiable. But attacking the psychological tools a young quarterback uses to stay in the game mentally does not solve anything. It simply exposes our cultural discomfort with inner work.

When McCarthy meditates under goalposts, talks about mental health, or builds a game day persona, he is not being "soft" or "distracted." He is doing what top performers across domains already do:

He is trying to get his mind into a state that can hold the pressure.

Famous Alter Egos: More Common Than You Think

If the sports world wants to pretend alter egos are silly, it has to ignore a long list of high-level performers who used them intentionally.

Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool

Ryan Reynolds has shared publicly that he has struggled with anxiety for years. When he leans into Deadpool, he is not just acting. He is tapping into a mindset: irreverent, fearless, playful, and bulletproof.

That persona becomes a psychological shield and a performance engine. It helps regulate anxiety and bring his full self online in high pressure situations.

Beyoncé and Sasha Fierce

Beyoncé created "Sasha Fierce" as her on stage persona. In early interviews, she explained that Sasha could do things Beyoncé still felt shy, hesitant, or unsure about.

Over time, she eventually retired Sasha Fierce because she no longer needed the separation. The traits had integrated. That is precisely how alter egos are meant to work:

Temporary scaffolding that becomes embodied identity.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Glasses

Martin Luther King Jr. sometimes wore glasses without a prescription before major speeches. They were not for vision. They were for identity.

The glasses gave him a felt sense of poise, intellect, and authority. In modern language, that is embodied cognition. He used an external cue to invoke an internal construct.

Kobe Bryant and the Black Mamba

Kobe Bryant openly spoke about creating "The Black Mamba" as a way to separate his on court self from the chaos in his personal life. The Mamba persona was precise, lethal, and emotionally contained.

When he stepped into it, his actions followed.

Eminem and Slim Shady

Slim Shady was not just a theatrical character. It was a container big enough to hold rage, grief, and raw creative expression that Marshall Mathers did not feel safe owning in his day to day life.

The alter ego allowed him to access power that his conditioned self could not yet embody.

Different fields, same mechanism:

• Construct a persona.

• Load it with specific traits.

• Step into it in the arena.

• Repeat it until it becomes you.

The Science: Why Alter Egos Work

Alter egos are not magic. They are built on established principles in psychology and neuroscience.

Self Distancing

Research on self distancing shows that talking to yourself in the third person or imagining yourself as a different character can:

• Reduce emotional reactivity

• Enhance problem-solving

• Increase willpower under stress

An alter ego is a structured self-distancing. You are still you, but you are standing in a slightly different place inside your own awareness.

Embodied Cognition

Studies on embodied cognition show that:

• What you wear impacts your cognitive performance

• Posture affects confidence and decision making

• Small rituals can switch the brain into specific modes

MLK’s glasses, Kobe’s pregame routines, Beyoncé’s stage outfits, and McCarthy’s meditation under the goalpost all live here. The body is a switchboard for states of consciousness.

Narrative and Identity

Neuroscience and narrative psychology both point to this:

The stories you tell yourself about who you are change the neural pathways your brain recruits in real time.

If your default story is "I am fragile under pressure," you will act like it.
If your constructed story is "On the field, I am steady, accurate, and ruthless with my reads," your brain will begin to search for behaviors that match.

Identity is not just belief. It is a full construct that shapes emotion, attention, and action.

Turning Within, Constructive Thought Process, and Conscious Identity Design

This is where deeper work enters the conversation.

The book Turning Within: Reclaiming Your Soul from Shadow explores how meaning, identity, and projection shape everything we experience. It argues that reality is not just made of matter, but of meaning, and that most of that meaning lives in constructs running our lives outside conscious view.

If you accept that, then an alter ego is no longer a gimmick. It becomes a crude, early attempt at construct design.

The Constructive Thought Process (CTP) is a 7-week online program built to do this intentionally. Instead of creating an alter ego and hoping it sticks, CTP walks you through the seven facets of a construct that shape how you show up:

1. Identity – Who you believe you are in the arena.

2. Narrative – The ongoing story your mind tells about what is happening.

3. Story – The larger myth you live inside: the hero, the victim, the lost cause, the rising force.

4. Beliefs and Blueprints – The rules your mind uses to filter reality.

5. Emotions and Feelings – The emotional signatures that keep you looping old patterns.

6. Decisions – How you choose when pressure is high.

7. Actions – The visible behaviors that flow from all of the above.

Where a traditional alter ego focuses mostly on identity and behavior, Constructive Thought Process works across the entire stack. You are not just naming a character. You are rewiring the architecture that character operates from.

Instead of unconsciously orienting from old constructs like:

• "I always choke in big moments."

• "I am the one who gets overlooked."

• "I have to be perfect or I am nothing."

You learn to consciously author new constructs, then test them in real life "in theater," where life is actually happening.

This is Turning Within applied to performance.
Not as abstraction, but as a practical, repeatable mental hygiene practice.

So, What About J.J. McCarthy?

Here is the uncomfortable truth for the critics:

J.J. McCarthy is not struggling because he has an alter ego.
He is struggling because he is a young quarterback in one of the most complex positions in professional sports, navigating a steep learning curve, a losing record, and a tidal wave of external noise.

His alter ego, his meditation, his mental health work, and his commercials were praised when he was winning at Michigan. They were framed as innovative, mature, and "new age quarterback" energy.

Now that he is losing, the same traits are being used as ammunition.

That says more about us than it does about him.

Identity tools are not the enemy.
Unconscious identity is.

If McCarthy leans deeper into grounded identity work, the right coaching, and a long enough timeline, the very things he is being mocked for today may be the tools that keep his career from collapsing under pressure.

The Real Lesson For The Rest Of Us

You do not have to be an NFL quarterback to see yourself in this.

• You have an identity you default to under stress.

• You have a story you tell about who you are in conflict, in leadership, in love, in money.

• You already have "alter egos" that show up in different rooms. Most of them just are not conscious.

The choice is simple:

• Continue to live from constructs you did not choose, then wonder why the same patterns repeat.

• Or engage in work like Turning Within and the Constructive Thought Process, and start designing the identity you want to bring into the arena.

An alter ego, done well, is not an escape from who you are.
It is a bridge to who you are becoming.
It's constructing a reality with conscious intent instead of unconscious orientation to a survival-rooted system that no longer serves you.

The commentators can mock it. The scoreboard can lag behind it. The slump can temporarily obscure it.

But the inner architecture will always win in the long run.

Identity first.
Execution second.
Always.