The biggest obstacle to making wiser decisions that actually drive lasting success is ourselves. Being fully immersed in our own limited point of view biases our decisions toward defending our previous actions. We need to exit our me-here-and-now self and get an outside perspective that sees us and the situation we are in objectively. We need a coach.

Featuring compelling scientific research, business cases and exercises, Distancing shows us how to how to make better decisions by becoming your own coach through a mental technique called psychological distancing. We do this in three ways:

1. Self-distancing: we can be someone else, inhabiting another’s perspective. This activates the neutral observer’s outside point of view.
2. Spatial distancing: we can be somewhere else, zooming out and seeing ourselves from afar, as just another person who is part of a larger context.
3. Temporal distancing: we can be sometime else, imagining that we are our future selves who are thinking back to what we wish we had done today.

The result is a powerful and immediate reframe of how we see ourselves, our situation and what we should do.