Although, they may benefit from the concept too. Have you ever known of someone who was very successful in their field and noticed a person or multiple people trying to mimic the way the successful person did everything? Perhaps you even happen to be one of those people or have even been before, emulating a boss or someone else you knew who was successful because you wanted to achieve that level of success for yourself.
A person doing this might echo the walking, talking, smiling, conversational styles, fashion sense, and even negative traits such as anger and frustration of the person who’s a success are enviable. This is called modeling. The mimic, or person doing the copying, is modeling himself or herself after the successful person – the model.
It’s usually not a good idea to try to be like somebody else. People around you can often tell when you’re trying to be like another person instead of just being yourself. You should always want to be yourself. However, when you apply the concept of modeling more broadly, it can be very effective. Think of it as a recipe. Modeling is a process of replicating a path which has already proven to be successful, in order to duplicate those results in your own life.
Let’s say that you have a treasure map. As usual, X marks the spot where the treasure is, and there’s a path marked on the map that shows you how to get to X. You happen to know the area well enough to know that the path marked on the map has been eroded very badly, and as a result, it would be very difficult to travel. However, you know of an area nearby where you can carve a new path of your own, just like the other path, that will lead you to the treasure marked on your map.
An even more simplified example of this would be to think about fitness videos and tv shows. An out of shape person who wants to get fit might watch – and follow along with – fitness videos and/or shows. The person mimics the movements they see the instructor doing in hopes of achieving the results that the instructor has already achieved. The concept is simple, but it still requires putting in the effort to achieve the desired results. Obviously, many people don’t want to put in the necessary time or effort. Of course, as with virtually anything, people experience a variety of different results when modeling, depending on how much time and effort each individual puts into it.
This is even something that I am doing with this blog so that it will be successful. I know of several authors who maintain very successful blogs with themes of self-help, personal development, and related topics. I am mimicking certain elements of their blogs, such as writing lots of content and trying to write in such a way that it also appeals to people who ordinarily may not be interested in such topics. However, I write all of this in my own style and my own voice, with my own opinions and convictions blended in, as I have to stay true to myself. If I didn’t, I would lose interest very quickly, and readers would see through it and lose interest very quickly as well. The aim of modeling is not to use someone else’s set of tools. Instead, the idea is to look at someone else’s set of tools, craft your own set of tools based on their set, then use your newly crafted toolset to achieve success.
To put it another way, you want to model the approach and not copy the behavior or content exactly. Here is an example. If you’re going to give a speech, and you notice that another speaker successfully uses a variety of hand gestures and vocal intonations (changes in voice pitch) in an effort to keep the attention his or her audience, don’t go about trying to model that speaker by copying their exact hand motions and vocal intonations. The audience would certainly notice, and you would appear quite foolish. Come up with your own hand gestures, use your own vocal intonations, and use your own style. This way, you’re using your own customized version of the other speaker’s tools. You’re using the ideas of hand gesturing and varying the pitch of your voice – ideas that he successfully implemented, but you’re using them in your own different way, with your style applied to those ideas.
The key to modeling someone is to stay true to yourself. If you don’t, you’re just a copycat, and no one likes a copycat.
