How To Live Your Ideal Life In 3 Steps

How To Live Your Ideal Life In 3 Steps

How To Live Your Ideal Life In 3 Steps | Add A Little Self-Love with Jarlin Sung

If you did the exercise from last week’s blog post and realized that your list is heavily social-self-driven, and that you have no idea who your essential self is or what she or he wants, this post is for you.

The MIA Essential Self

When I first looked my list of goals, none of them were from my essential self.

In fact, when I asked myself, “What is it that you truly want?” I drew a complete blank. I sat for a long time thinking about the question, and I came up with NOTHING.

That was a scary moment for me. I realized just how disconnected I was with my essential self.

I shouldn’t have been surprised though. After all, my social self had been trying to silence my essential self for years, dismissing her ideas and dreams as “childish, unrealistic, and unachievable.”

Take what I studied in college. I majored in chemistry and minored in biology, despite the fact that the classes that excited me were in psychology and humanities.

Why?

Because when I was picking a major, my social self stepped in and said, “What are you going to do with a psychology major? People are going to pay you to talk to them? Pick something challenging, something that’ll impress people!” So I picked chemistry, with the intention of getting a PhD, even though I had no clue what I wanted to do with the advanced degree.

If your social self consistently dismisses ideas and dreams coming from your essential self, your essential self will eventually learn to keep quiet altogether, because it knows speaking up is useless. Pretty soon, your essential self becomes a stranger who is living inside you, someone you don’t know anything about.

The good news is, your essential self never leaves you. It’s an inherent part of you, even if it’s buried deep down. And there’s a way to get re-acquainted and start moving toward the life you are meant to live.

Here’s the three-step process that I used to re-discover my essential self’s true desires.

Step 1: Identify What You Truly Desire In Your Ideal Life

First, you have to discover again what you naturally prefer. See if you can identify one or more of the following:

  • What activities did you love as a child?
  • What activities do you still love to participate in?
  • What activities make you forget time, and put you into a state of flow?
  • What do you find yourself talking to people about, on and on and on?
  • What are you incredibly good?

Next, do a little dreaming. If you never had to worry about money again, what would you spend your time doing?

If you answered, “I would lay on the beach all day and drink margaritas,” I invite you to dig a little deeper, because that answer is probably coming from the part of you that is completely and utterly exhausted from constantly doing and getting and striving. I’ll bet that you can spend only so much time on the beach, before you start itching for something to do.

Finally, look over your lists and see if you can detect a pattern. What are the common threads and characteristics? Are there any overlaps between what you love to do and what you’re good at and what you dream about?

Write down everything your essential self desires. They don’t have to be big!

Step 2: Identify The Way

Now, pick a desire from your list, and figure out how to achieve it. To do that, we consult your social self.

Yes, you read that right.

While your social self isn’t great at setting goals that’ll lead you to a happy and fulfilling life – it’s way too concerned with all the external judgment and expectations – it plays a vital role in enabling you to achieve your goals. That’s because your essential self has no idea how to navigate the society you live in, nor does it have the desire to. It is fun loving and spontaneous, so it will always choose to play.

For example, if you love video games, your essential self will want to play all day long. Your social self on the other hand, who is fantastic at planning ahead, working hard, and networking with the right people, can figure out what you need to do to become a developer, so you can make a living developing and testing video games! Your social self is the one who’ll get you through the studying, the exams, the resume preparation, the networking events, and the interviews, to get you a job that you’ll absolutely love.

One ground rule while you consult your social self: no idea is too crazy. Tell your social self this is just a brainstorming exercise if it gets skittish about other people’s judgments or opinions.

How can you move toward that particular desire? Come up with at least ten ways. Be creative.

Step 3: Take Consistent Action

Once you figure out the way to your goal, break it down to small, manageable steps. Take one step every single day.

For example, if you loved painting as a child, and want to become a painter, what is one small manageable step you can take today? Buy paint? Buy an easel? Do research on how to show your artwork? Call one gallery a day?

Take one step that brings you closer to your goal, every single day.

That’s it. 3 steps.

  1. Identify a desire aligned with your ideal life.
  2. Figure out how to get there.
  3. Take action daily.

If you consistently allow your essential self to set the destination and your social self to figure out how you get there, you’ll be living your ideal life before you know it!

What is something your essential self desires? How can you get/achieve it? Share in the comments below.

Know someone that might find this article helpful? Share it!

WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on this website.

Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.