What will you do in order to achieve your ideal self someday?
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Answer:
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I'm stuck on this idea that making and achieving goals helps you become your ideal self. It seems to me that selfdom has more to do with identity than what you do. It has to do with how you feel about yourself than with what you achieve. I believe that if your identity is based on achievement, you can never achieve your ideal self. You will always have more goals, and never be satisfied.
Becoming your ideal self, I believe, has more to do with acceptance of yourself as you are. This means it is not about achieving more. It's not about goals. It's about acceptance and appreciation of yourself.
Self acceptance and appreciation frees you from having to do anything. It sets you up to choose what you want to do without respect to anyone else's standards. You do what you do because you enjoy it. That's the way to become your ideal self. As long as you are being moved by goal-oriented thinking, you can never become your ideal self. Once you give up goals, you can start the journey of becoming the self you truly want to be.
I suppose this might sound a bit crazy and sort of zen-like, and if you don't appreciate Buddhist philosophy, it won't make sense. I'm not sure how to explain it any better, but I feel like I need to. Being your ideal self can't be done with a plan. Plans misdirect you. They confuse you into thinking the goal is where you want to be, when you can never be at a goal. You can only be on a journey, and if you don't accept yourself as being on a journey, you will never find your ideal self.
Your ideal self is the person you are when you are not goal directed. It is the person you are when you are just being and doing without any concern for getting anywhere. It is the self you are when you are completely absorbed in what you are doing, and you would be absorbed in it no matter what you get back from it. You would be doing this because doing it actually is being yourself -- your ideal self.
Goals and plans get in the way of being yourself, unless you are all about making goals and plans. But if you were all about that, you wouldn't ask this question. You would just set goals and make plans without thought to whether you can enact your plans and arrive at your goals. If you seek a means to an end, you will never be happy if and when you get to the end. If you just do what you love, you will be being your ideal self.
Hope it helps :)