How to Be Your Own Secret Agent

When I was much younger, I desperately wanted to be an agent. I would watch James Bond movies and the likes and act out almost everything I see. I loved the thrill, excitement and I admired them, simply because of their smooth intelligence and gadgets. But the question that I didn’t seem to have an answer to was, ‘How could they live two extremely different lives and yet still have one right frame of mind.’ Was it that they were master deceivers or they had this behavioral disorder or some dual personality disease? It wasn’t until recently that the answer came to me.

Most of us film lovers already know the profile of a typical secret agent. He enrolls into a military school where he gets trained and bruised till he’s ready to fight for his country. He gets awarded lots of medals for bravery and skill and if he’s good enough, he’s abducted. Smooth and easy. Most of the time before the guy is abducted, he has a family, and he can’t dump one for the other. So what does he do?

It is possible for one man to be seen as a businessman who will stop at nothing to see his business make money for him, a loving father and husband who’ll be awarded for just killing a housefly and a master Casanova carrying in his suit jacket a revolver and a laser pen. How? He simply creates and dishes out different impressions of himself to different people and he definitely knows how to keep his professional and private life separate and secret, breaking all links or bridges.

Now how does all this apply to you? If you run your own business, the way you manage it wouldn’t be exactly the same way you hold your family together. For a ruthless businessman, it’ll be good to create another impression of kindness and humility that others outside your corporate world would have of you. Why? Let’s take this example; due to your business tyranny, you happen to step on a few shoes. In order to get you out of the way, you get framed and thrown into jail. Being that you’ve got friends in high places who know you to be a kind and jovial twit (your other impression), you end up spending just one night in the cell. The next morning, you’re back at your desk, planning how to best deal with your backstabbing associates (you’re back to your other self and your influential friends know nothing about this). What have you to lose?

This technique is not just for businessmen only. You may define this as being deceptive, but hey, it’s up to you to use it. Create secret impressions that you want different people to have of you but a word of caution here; they don’t have to be the opposite sides of the coin. The impressions could be similar, yet different. You never know, they could come in handy when the time comes.