Surround Yourself With People Who Have Higher Ideals
Growing up, many of us didn’t have good role models to look up to. And we ended up choosing our immediate circle of friends and family as people who needed to be modeled and followed. This, of course, comes with a cost. Humans absorb everything very rapidly when they’re young, so we adopted the behavior and thinking patterns of the society we lived in. If you ever felt the urge to adopt a contrary position, it probably fizzled out because of a natural urge to fit in and please our circle of friends and acquaintances. Pleasing others is an evolutionary trait that’s built inside us so we can all get along with each other without constantly disappointing each other and getting into each other’s way. But the question is, who to please? And with what? A lot of women and men are sucked into this toxic cycle where they feel the need to attract others or please others with their appearance or with their social status. This happens mostly in a person’s teenage phase when they have newly gained some independence and they have to navigate their way into this world that bombards us with the need to be popular to have some worth in this materialistic society. This phase continues in our twenties as well, until a person realizes that they’ve wasted all this time doing something that’s never achievable — pleasing people (especially with your looks or social status).
Look for Higher Ideals
When, instead of focusing completely on superficial things, your ideals are things like art, science, the pursuit of truth, and spiritual goals — your priorities change. And when your priorities change, your ideals and idols both change. You no longer take the most popular celebrities as role models who do not have much to offer. Instead, you start having role models who focus on things that really make life beautiful and worth living.
It’s not just the role models that change. In fact, you will notice that your circle of friends and acquaintances is also going to change. They say that birds of a feather flock together. And that’s very true in this case. As your interests and worldview change, you will find that you will no longer enjoy the company of your old friends and acquaintances the same way you did before — assuming that they still have the same old view on life. Not only that, you will find a shift in the choice of your romantic partners as well. Now that you don’t have materialistic goals for yourself, you will find that you will not be attracted to people who have superficial aims. Instead, you will find yourself being gravitated towards partners who have higher goals, think beyond themselves, and are concerned about the deeper things in life. And these are the kind of people whose company you truly enjoy, and you never get bored of them because they always strive to be a better version of themselves instead of staying the person they’ve always been.
Choosing the Right Circle
If you’re not proud of your ideals, nobody else is going to be. In fact, I gained confidence in my own worldview when I witnessed some people standing up for their beliefs completely unapologetically, without feeling a need to belong and to be accepted. It’s hard to go in one direction when everyone else is taking the opposite route. So having some solid foundation for your beliefs is extremely useful in this case. Something that cannot be shaken easily by every tide we face in life.
Surrounding yourself with such people gives you the strength to stay grounded in your own way of seeing things and not being swept away by this modern culture of rabid consumerism. Jim Rohn said: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I couldn’t stress enough how important it is to surround yourself with people who will help you get closer to your ideal life. The life that your conscience demands you to have.
When you don’t hang around with the wrong crowd, you stop comparing yourself with them or competing against them. When you are around the right kind of people, you start focusing on becoming a better version of yourself and you start celebrating the success of others because you know that every one of you has the same goal — making life better for yourself and for others too.
This is not to say that wealth and pleasure aren’t important in life. It is difficult to think of higher ideals when you have an empty stomach. But we all need to remember that there’s a higher plane of life that exists beyond this empty existence where we are solely focused on outer appearances rather than having a richer inner life. I’ll end this with few verses from my favorite poet:
“You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.”
― Rumi
