At the core of every person, there is who you are trying to be, and who you actually are.
Colloquially, this is known as the Ideal Self and the Self, stemming from Carl Rogers’ theory of humanistic psychology.
The faster you can understand that these are two different you’s and reconcile with the gap between the two, the better off you will be in beginning the journey to reaching that ideal self.
Who you are at this current moment is someone adaptable and able to change. This is true even of those who appear closed-minded. But to grow into this ideal version of you that you find the utmost pride in, you first need to begin the deep dive of self-reflection and the realization that you aren’t who you say you are — yet. You are someone who is marred by your current flaws, shaped by observable patterns, and has unique strengths and weaknesses. It takes some courage to face the truth about yourself and to be realistic about it, but there is nothing more important to your life than to undertake this journey.
A life without facing this difficult truth is one that you eventually come to regret.
But, once you do the hard part of facing the reality of yourself, you can begin the fun part:
Listing out the ideal You.
Imagine a person with all of your chosen strengths and none of the flaws. A person who’s exactly where you’d like to be in life. One with the exact career, home life, and the number of friends and family you’d want to have around. A person with an abundance of blessings in their lap that you’re ready to give out at will. Freedom from a life where you aren’t doing anything you don’t want to do.
Once you reach this point and have a realistic view of both your current self and your ideal self, you can map out the steps and begin the work to close the gap between them. In another newsletter, I will go over this mapping in detail, but for now, I’d like to describe the #1 roadblock to reaching this ideal version of you that you may or may not be aware of:
Lying.
More specifically, lying to yourself.
Whether you call this accountability, living in your truth, or keeping it 100, you have to stay the course of honesty on this path. If not, the awareness of these gaping weaknesses while continuing to fall victim to them may hinder you from enjoying life as you did before. Ignorance may be bliss if you want to avoid shame.
Whether you choose to remain ignorant or begin the journey is up to you. But I would always rather live a life of truth than one of fantasy. Regardless of your awareness of these lies, they are affecting your life in adverse ways if you aren’t avoiding them.
“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.”
Distracting yourself from success with lying can come out in a multitude of ways:
You can escape reality by living in delusion.
You can be dishonest to yourself and those you care about with your actions, losing them in the process.
You can do things you aren’t meant to, or that go against your personal beliefs.
You can “fake it until you make it” while only doing the faking.
What’s important for reaching the ideal self is to figure out where these lies stem from. In all likelihood, it’s insecurity. Possibly a fear of abandonment if anyone knew the real you. We are also living in modern times where it’s possible to completely inundate yourself from any of this shadow work, too, so in another newsletter, I will go over the best methods of avoiding attention traps.
For now, just know you must protect your mind at all costs and avoid many (if not all) of the dopamine traps being presented to us for this process. Once you’ve become sufficiently immune to these attention traps and dopamine holes, you can begin to accurately dissect your reality and start living as authentically you.
And you’ll be a much happier person at that.
This newsletter is as much a message to you, the reader, as it is to me. I’ve spent too much of my life avoiding my true calling and filling in time just beating boredom instead of discovering my authentic self. As a content creator, my goal is to help people better know themselves and live out their vision of who they want to be, all while avoiding the many roadblocks in life preventing them from doing so. If you support this message, sharing will go a long way. Thanks for reading!
