Setting ideals
By Jean Ricot Dormeus
I grasped the value of ideals early in life through my mom’s fabric business. Whether she was buying or selling, the yardstick offered an accurate reference about the length of the fabric. One day, after restocking, she decided to check the length of a roll and found that it was short. From that time on, she stopped from doing business with the store she had shopped with. That store did not meet her expectations and fell short of the measurement integrity ideal.
I came to understand that ideals work as the North Star giving direction and meaning to our lives, as they motivate us to stretch our minds and bodies towards particular targets. Ideals provide us a precious tool to evaluate ourselves, see how far we are from the target line, and improve on important areas of our lives. Without such a tool, we develop no appetite for effort and end up in a state of perpetual stagnation.
We may attain our goals, but ideals are somewhat elusive, always challenging us. It may be easy to identify external or objective ideals. However, the most important ones help us to picture and pursue our ideal self. Thus we commit ourselves to becoming a better version of ourselves through learning and growth.
Based on 2008 Porter Novelli HealthStyles data only 9.8% of adults strongly agree that their life is close to their ideal. This finding means that most people feel wanting in terms of getting closer to their ideals. Hence the importance of taking our personal journey seriously and setting sail toward our ideals.
Carl Schurz said, “Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them.”
In engineering a hairbreadth gap becomes feet wide down the line. Extending strings of ideals will keep us on the right track, enable us to fix our mistakes, and draw closer to the version of ourselves we dream of. Start setting your ideals today and plan to live accordingly.
Jean Ricot Dormeus
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