The Misconception of an Ideal Life

Akshay Mahajan
Nov 5 · 2 min read
Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Most people don’t know what an ideal life looks like, but they’re pretty sure they are not living one. Some people think an ideal life is where they are making an “impact”, but they don’t have a definition of that either.

How do people know they are not loving their job? How do people know what their life goal is? How do people know what’s good for them?

We live in echo chambers. We are surrounded by the same thinking. We follow people, we compete with them, we try to defeat them at tasks which didn’t even interest us in the first place.

The misconception is that we think that an ideal life is like a staircase, where you just climb to the top. One step down, and you fail. We think that reaching the zenith of our career (voluntary decision or chosen by our parents) and earning a lot of money (to spend on things we don’t even want) is the image of an ideal life.

The truth is we don’t know what we love, or what passion we want to follow. In this daily hassle and chatter of life, we haven’t introspected enough to find our true self. Most of us are unaware of our hidden talents because we never dared to experiment. We were busy trying to be accepted by our peers. Surely many people are following others’ dreams or at the least working on the schedule set by other people at work.

Our identity is a false reflection of us in the mind of the other person.

The people of this generation are chasing instant gratification, either knowingly or unknowingly. Unknowingly because it is the way of living that has been shaped by the ease of access to technology. We want quick results, and when we don’t achieve them, we think ‘Oh, probably that’s not for me’ or ‘Maybe I am not good enough for this job’.

Things like relationships, maintaining fitness, learning and developing new skills take time.

Finding yourself is the key to finding an ideal life. And the key to finding yourself is patience and introspection.


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