Role Models: Why You Should Make a List of People You Admire

Since the day we were born, we’ve all had different “role models” in our lives who have shaped who we’ve become.

The most common type of “role models” include your parents, teachers, friends, celebrities, and countless others who have left an impression on us over the course of our lives.

This is how we first learned about our world and how to interact in it. This is how we created our first beliefs and “map of reality.”

You see, although we often like to think of ourselves as completely independent and autonomous individuals, the truth is who we are is greatly influenced by the people we choose to look up to.

As a social species, “monkey see, monkey do” is how most of us learn to navigate our worlds. But which monkeys have you been watching? Who are your role models?

One thing I recommend is to write a list of “role models.” Make a list of the people you admire the most in your life – and why they admire them.

This is a very useful exercise for determining what it is we really like about others, and how we can model these characteristics in our own lives.

A few years ago I created a list of some of the influential figures in my life. I go back to this list at least once every month to reflect and add new people.

Are you ready to create your own list of role models?

Role Models: Make a List of People You Admire

Here are simple instructions for creating a “role models” list of your own:

• Open up a Word document on your computer (or get a paper and pen).
• Set a timer for 2 minutes.
• Start the timer and write down everyone who pops up as having an influence on your life.
  

• Keep in mind, “role models” can be people from your real life, but also other people you admire, including both fictional and non-fictional characters!
• Once the timer ends, stop writing.
• Reflect on your list. Who pops out as the most important?
• Try to write at least 2-3 traits you admire for each role model.
• Save your list somewhere. Remember you can always go back and add to it later.

One thing I also recommend is to categorize your list based on specific characteristics.

For example, in my “Role Models” list I have things broken down by a variety of traits: 1) Intelligence, 2) Humor, 3) Creativity, 4) Hard Work/Passion, and 5) Kindness. But you can break things down however you’d like.

Here’s a small sample of my “Role Models” list and how I break it down: (don’t judge me!)

• Intelligence: Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Charles Darwin, William James, E.O. Wilson, Claude Shannon, Friedrich Hayek, Carl Jung, Albert Einstein, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Raymond Kurzweil, Daniel Dennet, Marvin Minsky, Douglas Hofstadter, Steven Pinker, Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sacks, Alan Watts
• Humor: Robin Williams, Dave Chapelle, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Hicks, Jim Carrey, Norm MacDonald, Zack Galifianakis, Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Aziz Ansari, Bo Burnham, Craig Ferguson, Joan Rivers
• Creativity: Salvador Dali, Stanley Kubrick, Walt Disney, Frank Zappa, Alex Grey, Mike Patton, David Lynch, Charlie Kaufman, Quentin Tarantino, Coen Brothers, Pixar, Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, John Cage, David Byrne, Terry Gilliam, Philip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury
• Hard Work/Passion: David Wright, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt, Gary Vaynerchuk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Elon Musk, Henry Rollins, Ernst Junger, Mike Patton, Hayao Miyazaki, Lee Kuan Yew, Kobe Bryant, Joe Rogan, Jiro Ono, Timothy Treadwell, Steve Irwin
• Kindness: Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, Carl Rogers, Chuck Feeney, Mr. Rogers, Oliver Sacks, Robert Thurman, Hatidze Muratova, Ric O’Barry, Thich Nhat Hanh

Of course, this list is personal to me and your list should include “role models” that work for you.

You can also breakdown your “Role Models” list in a way that suits your own values and goals. Maybe you want to focus on “Health,” then you should make a list of people who embody being healthy and fit.

It’s also important to include role models who are family, friends, or real world acquaintances – I omitted these from my sample because they wouldn’t mean anything to you.

Identifying people we admire is a key component to self improvement. It provides us with powerful resources to learn from and be motivated by.

As Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”

When we focus on people who have achieved values and goals that we care about, we can use their example to achieve similar values and goals in our own lives.

And as I outline in 5 Attitudes Wired in Happy and Successful Brains, those who are happy and successful are often individuals who were willing to first learn from other happy and successful people.

Creating a list of the people you admire is a great first step in doing this.

Keep in mind, learning from other individuals is not about trying to copy or mimic their every move. In the end, you have to be yourself. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a thing or two from someone else along the way.

Having people you admire doesn’t mean you worship everything about those individuals or think they are perfect. Model them only based on what they are good at.

If you want to learn how to be a great boxer, watch videos of Mike Tyson, but that doesn’t mean you should take relationship advice from him too.

There’s something in psychology called the halo effect that we need to be careful of. The “halo effect” is our tendency to judge a person as completely good because they are good at one specific thing.

This is a big reason advertisers put celebrities in commercials. We falsely believe that if a person is good at one particular trait then that means they are also trustworthy in something else that is completely unrelated.

For example, why is Dr. Dre telling me to drink Dr. Pepper? Sure, he is a great rapper and producer, but does that have anything to do with knowing good soda? Probably not. But that’s what our brains respond to.

Keep in mind…

People are often a mixed bag of “positive” and “negative” characteristics. So whenever you are choosing a role model, you’re focusing on what you admire about them, even if there is plenty about them you don’t necessarily like or approve of.

Don’t forget that the people you look up to are human at the end of the day, just like you.

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