This is something that has been on my mind quite a bit recently and I mentioned it once in my previous post Choosing the Best Path to Achieving Your Dreams but now I would like to delve into the concept of the Ideal State a bit further.
What’s an Ideal State?
The Ideal State is a state in which one is free from almost all external and internal influences and pressures that may influence one’s thoughts or actions. The reason I say almost all instead of all is because it is almost impossible to be completely free from all influences. While you won’t be able to eliminate the impact of gravity or other natural forces from affecting you, it is possible to eliminate both the internal and external barriers that may be keeping you from living life to the fullest.
Perhaps the best way to describe what the Ideal State feels like is the feeling you get when you know you’re right about something. Whether it’s hitting a shot that you know, without a doubt, is going to go in, or making a wager that you are sure will be right, it is a feeling marked by unparalleled confidence, power and certainty.
Finding your Ideal State is akin to finding the sweet spot on a tennis racket; if you’re not familiar with tennis, the sweet spot is the area on the racket that would give you the most powerful shot. When you hit a ball with the sweet spot of the racket, it will fly off the racket with a beautiful sound that indicates that you’ve hit the ball with the best part of your racket. Much like the sweet spot, when you reach your ideal state everything you do will feel more effective and powerful; your decisions will be clearer and your resolve stronger. Achieving your ideal state will give you the focus most often characterized with successful people.
If you’ve ever watched an interview of a successful person you may be surprised, or perhaps turned off, by the individual’s confidence. Successful people tend to come off as intense and perhaps overbearing at times. The reason why is that most successful people have achieved their Ideal State and have learned to forge their own path despite the fears and negative influences that they may have received and continue to receive.
I’ve identified three steps that I followed and continue to follow in my daily life in order to achieve this Ideal State. Reaching this state is a daily discipline and requires continued practice and training. But once achieved, each successive attempt will become easier. Like most things, if practiced enough, it will become a habit.
Step #1 - Eliminate Distracting and Negative Influences
The number one barrier to reaching your Ideal State are the distracting and negative voices from those around you. Co-workers, peers, and family members often try, whether directly or indirectly, to influence you in a way that suits their needs and desires. Many times this involves placing limiting beliefs or fears upon you that your peers or family members have placed upon themselves. They want you to adopt their worldview because it reinforces their way of thinking. Such relationships may be based on “preventing” rather than “encouraging.”
A good example of this type of relationship is the relationship between Asian parents and their children. While this may hold true for other cultures, I will limit my example to Asian parents, because I have had the most experience with them.
The majority of Asian parents see their children as investments, one that will bear fruit as they mature; children are considered by Asian parents to be a living, versatile and constantly growing 401K or IRA account–the more you put in the more you should get out. It’s no wonder why there are so many high achieving Asian American children, their parents groom them towards this path. They sacrifice their own immediate happiness and pleasure in order to give their children more opportunities, a better education and ultimately, what they believe, to be a better life.
Sound great? Well generally it is, except that this all comes with a catch. The actions of most Asian parents are motivated by their own desires to be protected and nurtured by their children when they are no longer able to do that themselves. Children are retirement insurance; they are also a means of achieving respectable social status. In Asian society, if your children are doctors then you are praised as having raised “good” kids; however, woe onto the parent who raises a child that strives to become a painter–he or she will become the laugh of the dinner party.
It used to be expected that children would take care of their parents after they reached a certain age. Though this version of filial piety is still practiced in many Asian countries, it is becoming increasingly common for children to go off and live their own lives and leave their parents to take care of themselves.
When I was living in China, most of the students I met said they had a similar type of relationship with their parents. Those that were hard working and smart enough to go to a good university were expected to be wealthy and famous, the version of success most Chinese parents value. With the One Child Policy, most parents put all their eggs in one basket leaving the child often exceedingly pampered and groomed to becoming the next greatest thing on earth.
Asian parents usually tell their children that they are advising them what to do for their own good. “Be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer etc, you will thank me later.” For those that readily and willingly comply, the rewards are great; but for those that don’t, the path leading away from your parents’ wishes can be a long, lonely and painful one.
Ever since I was little, my parents pushed me towards certain paths and tried to convince me to adopt their opinions and beliefs about the world. I was taught to accept that certain types of work were acceptable while other types were not. The typical stereotype is that there are only three viable professions for the budding Asian youth: medicine, law, and engineering. The vast majority of Asian Americans can be placed in one of those three categories or in the closely related category of business. Something like art or nonprofit work would usually be looked down upon as pointless, overly risky and ultimately a “stupid” choice.
If the majority of Asian Americans are either doctors, lawyers, engineers or business people does that mean that most Asian Americans just happen to like only one of the four choices?
Nope, not a chance.
The real reason is that most Asian American kids are so influenced and controlled by their parents’ thoughts, opinions and fears that they are unable to discover their own interests and pursue them. Such people never achieve their Ideal State because they are too mired in the distracting and negative voices that surround them.
The first step to achieving your ideal state is to eliminate all the distracting and negative voices that are affecting your ability to make independent decisions. If that requires you to tell people honestly how you feel about their influence on your life, then that’s what you need to do; it may require that you distance yourself from certain people but it will be worth it in the end.
By eliminating the distractions and negative influences in your life you will begin to hear your own voice and develop a taste for the freedom that comes with being in your Ideal State.
Like the example with Asian Americans show, the path is not easy and many may not support you, but successful living is about taking responsibility for your own thoughts and actions. If you live everyday according to the dictates and suggestions of those around you, how will you ever know what it feels like to be successful? Even if you do happen to achieve some kind of success, whether financial or goal oriented, can you still consider it a success if you weren’t the motivating force behind it?
Achieving your Ideal State involves pushing away all the voices that are telling you what you should do or who you should be and instead insisting on yourself.
Step #2 - Identify Your Internal Thoughts and Fears
The second step to achieving your Ideal State is identifying your internal thoughts and fears. Aside from the external influences that threaten to distract and derail you from finding your own independent voice, there is also the possibility that you may be harboring negative internal thoughts that are limiting the development of independent thoughts and actions.
Many people carry the fears they developed during their childhood into adulthood. As a child I was afraid of being rejected by people; I made it a habit never to ask for something that there was a good chance I would be refused. This became a problem as I grew older and realized how important it is to seek the help and assistance of others, even if that means having to ask them and risk the possibility of rejection.
When we cannot control our thoughts, we become enslaved by them. External influences have the power to threaten and affect our way of thinking only insofar as they connect with an internal thought or fear that we respond to. As children we are told not to touch the hot stove because we will get burned and it will hurt; we are also encouraged not to take risks because risks could result in unnecessary pain and why would anyone want pain?
After hearing these fears and admonitions enough times, they begin to seep into our own subconscious and we begin to act based upon them. The fear of feeling pain and getting rejected, while perhaps useful during childhood to prevent unnecessary pain, can be limiting in adulthood. If we are unable to experience challenges and overcome them, we will never grow.
Take for example the fear of getting rejected. Initially children are quite open about their desires; that’s why babies apparently cry so much, it is there way of getting what they want. However, as we mature mentally and emotionally, we begin to learn that sometimes asking for the things we want results in an unfavorable reaction like a parent scolding their child.
Once we become conditioned to avoid asking for things in order to avoid incurring the wrath or displeasure of others, we become unable to act when we really need to. Paralysis sits in and the palms grow sweaty as the girl or boy of your dreams is sitting right next to you waiting for you to ask them out. But we can’t because our own thoughts and fears such as the fear of being rejected, not liked or even worse, laughed at, are so strong that we become paralyzed.
Assessing your internal thoughts involves deeply examining your thought processes and trying to discover which are limiting and then striving to overcome them. Examine any conditioned thought that begins with “I can’t,” “This is crazy” or “I should not do this because…” and write them down along with what you think these thoughts might be preventing you from doing.
For example, right now, my fear of failure and uncertainty are the two thoughts that I have identified which preventing me pursuing my dream of becoming a professional film maker.
Step #3 - Take Action
The final step in achieving your ideal state is taking action. After you’ve identified the external and internal influences, the next step is to take action and eliminate those influences. Getting through the first two steps is challenging and quite an accomplishment, however devoid of action, the first two steps will not result in any change of behavior.
One of the reasons I decided to quit my most recent job as a reporter was because I felt that I needed to take action after realizing that the environment was very unhealthy for me and ultimately leading down a path unrelated to my goals and dreams. I was being influenced by my parents’ wishes and my own fears of insecurity with work and money. Now that the decision has been made I feel a sense of freedom that I’ve never felt before. It is the freedom of knowing that my decisions will not be motivated by my own fears or the fears of those around me; instead, they will be motivated primarily by my free will.
Achieving your Ideal State is vital to becoming a successful person. It means that you must strip away all the fears that you have placed before yourself and the fears of others that have been bearing down upon you. The road to achieving your Ideal State is a difficult one, but in the end I believe it is one that will yield lasting dividends.
The limiting thoughts that are ingrained in us throughout our childhood are like training wheels, they serve their purpose up to a certain point but after that it is up to us to remove them. Only when you learn how to live by our own decisions and thoughts, can you truly be free and successful. Success, is not just about the end goal; it is also about the path and the journey that leads to our desired end goal. We can only begin to embark on that journey when we’ve stripped away the thoughts and fears that have been placed upon us by others and we begin to challenge ourselves and overcome those barriers to reach our Ideal State.
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