Back To Reality
Over the years, my role models have kept on changing with the seasons of life, with only a few remaining at the core while the rest are dropped when I've come to terms with the reality that perfection is merely a performance.
I think it's a bit of a rite of passage to pick off the shelf the movie stars that play characters we aspire to be like in one shape or form. I remember watching one of the first Mission Impossible movies and getting wowed by Tom Cruise's unshakable confidence under pressure.
At the time, I didn't fully understand these people were actors performing carefully choreographed scenes, even though I was aware that there's an unrealistic angle with how some of the stunts were defying the laws of physics.
After watching such a movie, the aspiration gained from it stays with me sometimes for a week and modifies my behaviour to mimic that main-character energy.
It's really funny recalling it now as reality was much more imaginative back then compared to now where I'm boxed more into what's actually achievable/sustainable.
Another episode I could recall is Will Smith's relentless hustle in The Pursuit of Happiness. This one sums up much of what I thought success boils down to, at least the Hollywood-packaged version of it.
But alas, the more my knowledge base of how the entertainment industry works was built, the less I could look past the now obvious image curation.
The same procedure more or less happened for musicians and athletes I looked up to back then too. Their character blips from their real self eventually broke the spell.
Shift to tangible heroes
Nowadays, my role models have more of a tangible and accessible flavor in that they're basically normal, everyday people who are on the same path as me but a bit further along the way on the journey.
I think when realizing that hero worship doesn't serve me anymore, there also came the realization that the best role model is the person standing right in front of me who just figured out how to solve the problem I'm currently facing.
When I was younger, I wanted to be those movie stars, the end product of their carefully crafted public personas. It took a lot of trial and error to transition towards wanting to learn how to do specific things as opposed to emulating an entire personality wholesale. I can take the discipline from an athlete and creativity from an artist and stitch these traits together to build my own bespoke identity.
Diffusion of role models
Something I didn't expect much but came as a byproduct of being more critical of the media I consume is that my role models are now diffused across different individuals.
There are clear pros to this approach:
- I can cherry-pick the best qualities from multiple people.
- I avoid the disappointment that comes when one person inevitably fails to live up to every expectation.
The drawback, however, is it requires more active curation and self-awareness. Without a single north star to follow, I have to constantly evaluate which traits align with my values and which don't. It's more work than simply asking "What would Tom Cruise do?", for example.
There's also something to be said for the motivational power of having one person who embodies multiple qualities you admire, which is that it can make things more cohesive, a proven blueprint to follow.
But I'll take the complexity.
Learning visual thinking from some of the designers I follow online and financial discipline from a few pragmatic writers who have a good background on financial psychology gives me permission to be multidimensional.
A hidden benefit of sorts to this shift is a pre-existing knowing that my heroes are flawed. If they are just regular people making mistakes and trying their best, then it's okay if I am, too. Reduces much of the unnecessary pressure to be exceptional at everything all at once.
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