We are who we are and this is not always helpful. Imagine a difficult task, like a job interview. There are 35 other candidates. You are nervous. You are not sure how to prepare
this time, what to say, what to do. You must be better than the other 35. You must be better
than yourself.
In this talk, I present a tool how to become someone different by role playing in order to
achieve your goal, be it a job interview, a project or your next book.
I’m Rafael Bienia, Ph.D. In my dissertation I wrote about role playing in live action role
playing (larp). Beyond larp, role playing is a universal tool of humans, as I have shown in my
publications. People role play every day, around the globe and at any age. However, we as
adults have forgotten to use it consciously for our personal purposes, because we usually
role play reflexively, at home or at work, with our parents or with our friends.
In this talk, you will rediscover role playing as a tool in your hands. Even if it seems difficult,
my study of larp shows that it is easier for adults to immerse in a fresh role, when they
depend on a network of various elements (costume, rules, and narratives). Then you can
play another self and use it to achieve fresh goals. Rafael Bienia (Ph.D., Maastricht University) is an independent researcher on role playing
and network cooperation. He wrote Role Playing Materials (2016), chapters for the Role-
Playing Game Studies handbook (2018) and is co-editor of the annual essay collection
MittelPunkt from the German speaking larp studies collective. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at
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