Being Unrealisitc Means Being Unhappy

An Example of An Unrealistic Life Goal

The less emotionally stable individual believes fantasies as a child, and then never fully grows out of this behaviour. In the section on the website headed 'Depression', there is an article titled 'Setting Realistic Life Goals'. In this article, I presented an example showing how some people set unrealistic life goals. I will draw on this example again now.

I work as a music producer (amongst other things) and in such a capacity have spent time with many Rock/Pop musicians. Being a musician, and even being trained as a Rock musician, often entails living with somewhat unsure expectations concerning the stability of one's future earning potential. Many who are training to be Rock musicians will probably never make an income from music and this is a somewhat difficult reality to deal with. In order to feel comfortable in such an unpredictable environment, I have noticed that most Rock musicians (those I have met at least) who are members of bands, have developed an unrealistic belief that they may be a famous or highly successful musician one day. You might think that these people don’t really believe this, and that they are just hoping. But in my experience, however, most band members actually believe they will be famous, and this is what drives them to keep going. It is clear that almost all bands will not become famous, so this serves as a good example of how some people begin to genuinely believe their unrealistic fantasies. As I mentioned in the aforementioned section found in the 'Depression' section of this website, it comes as no surprise to me that so many celebrities and Rock musicians end up in rehabilitation centres and having broken relationships and marriages. It takes a highly driven personality type, who endlessly pushes herself to end up being that successful. And I think these types are usually driven by a genuine belief that they will be famous one day. However, those who make it are very ‘lucky’. The odds of becoming this successful are tiny. Many celebrities probably began with very unrealistic expectations and yet were 'lucky' enough to end up being one of a tiny number who became successful. However, the underlying personality type of many such celebrities may well still be one that tends to live life unrealistically and is therefore very emotionally unstable.

Alongside exercising and increasing our impulse control (or applying the ‘Ego Mechanism’ as I have called it), it is also important that we are realistic about our life goals. At the top of this page I outlined that I believe:

‘How far we are away from achieving our goals or fantasies and whether or not we feel that we are steadily moving towards these goals will determine how happy we are and how much life satisfaction we have.’

If this statement is true, and we set unrealistic goals, this will clearly jeopardise our potential for life satisfaction since we will are unlikely to achieve our goals, and we will also not have an inner sense that we are steadily moving towards them.

"If we have a tendency to be unrealistic in our aims, altering this mindset will involve a daily re-appraisal of, and ‘checking’ that, our life aims are realistic. As we begin to set more realistic goals, our brains will begin to experience the positive benefits obtained from achieving these goals. The more we adopt more realistic goals, the more we will condition our brains to operate in a more realistic manner."

Training Ourselves to Think Realistically

In order to maximise our potential for life satisfaction, it is essential that we learn to set realistic life goals. If we have a tendency to be unrealistic in our aims, altering this mindset will involve a daily re-appraisal of and ‘checking’ that our life aims are realistic. In the same way as is the case in relation to developing impulse control (discussed earlier in this section of this website), if our ‘reality testing’ (which basically means checking that we are thinking realistically, or testing out our beliefs to find out if they are realistic) or ability to think realistically is weak, and if this behavious is part of a lifelong pattern that has endured since we were children, then it may take years of ‘re-conditioning’ and reassessing our unrealistic beliefs and expectations in order for us to become more realistic and stable individuals.

I have addressed reconditioning of brain mechanisms in the previous section under 'Developing the Ego Mechanism for Life Satisfaction'. If you are interested in the process of reconditioning thinking patterns from unrealistic to more realistic thinking patterns, then I strongly recommend you read that article. The summery of that article (in this case applied to learning to set more realistic goals) is as follows: as we begin to set more realistic goals, our brains will begin to experience the positive benefits obtained from achieving these goals and the more times we adopt more realistic goals, the more we will condition our brains to operate in a more realistic manner, especially if we take time to contemplate the increased rewards we are experiencing as a result of our change of behaviour. The initial steps will always be very difficult, but as momentum increases and our brain is conditioned to adopt increasingly realistic ways of operating and we experience the resulting life rewards, adopting each new realistic goal (in place of an existing unrealistic goal) will become progressively easier. And if we repeat the new way of thinking enough times, we will eventually re-condition ourselves so that this new way of thinking becomes an automatic response.