Are you working towards what you really want?
We all want to present ourselves as being someone who is worthwhile, respectable and attractive in one way or another. And why wouldn't we, right? The signals that we get from our social environment are so important and so primordial, that they are regulated by parts of our brains that are more ancient than we can possible imagine.
If you draw two dots with a line below them, your mind will immediately construct a face out of these three little scribbles. That's how primed our brains are to make sense of the behaviours and emotions of the people (and animals for that matter) around us.
It's clear that who we are to other people and what they think of us plays a huge role in how we view ourselves. It's innevitable, it's hard-wired into us. So it's only natural that we try to portray ourselves as being someone that others will find valuable, based on what we believe other people consider to be valuable.
And here is the trap: before you know it, you are constructing a self and a life whose framework is based almost entirely on who others want you to be.
"I've lost touch of who I am" is something that I frequently hear people say during sessions when reflecting back on their marriage, their family life, their work, and even their pass-times.
So how do we counter this? Well, it's obvious that having an ideal as a point of reference helps (it got us all this far after all) direct our actions towards a specific outcome, so perhaps that's not the part that's causing all the difficulties.
Perhaps the real difficulty is as simple as not having an ideal and an outcome that we actually believe in, that we feel that we really own. The kind of ideal that will give your efforts meaning, even if you are having a terribly hard and thankless time in the meantime.
But it's hard to discover what this ideal is in the first place. It's a very personal matter after all, so only a very real and honest conversation with ourselves can possibly even scratch the surface of what is ideal and meaningful to each of us individually.
But the moment you start to direct your daily efforts towards being true to your own ideals, your own goals, essentially your own SELF, you will feel a massive weight being lifted off your shoulders. And maybe, just maybe, things will look exciting, bright and new again.
It's fine to strive for an ideal, as long as it's your own.
