Seek the IDEAL, not IDEALISM
Whenever I start working with someone new, or reconnect with a current client, I begin a conversation with them. I’m listening for two very specific things.
I call them the two “-rations”, and they both reveal something very important.
The first “-ration” is FRUSTration. This often comes from clients who have been building something for a while. When we start executing in the real world, very little goes as planned. We meet resistance on many levels. It’s what the world does, and it’s frustrating. That’s a fact and we need to own it.
The second “-ration” is ASPIration. This often comes from clients who have not yet begun to build. But it can also come from clients who have been building and see a new and bigger vision.
I call them the two “-rations” because they both do the same thing: they reveal a misalignment with the ideal.
If it’s an aspiration, it means we WANT IT BUT DON’T HAVE IT, and so we’re misaligned.
If it’s a frustration (or multiple), we HAVE IT BUT DON’T WANT IT, and so we’re misaligned.
And the tragic truth is we’ll ALWAYS have both, because the ideal can’t ever be realized, which is why we have perpetual work to do. We always aspire to what is not yet here, and we are always frustrated by what is.
It’s tragic from a certain point of view, but I teach my clients to bask in the sweet, sweet paradox and be grateful that our work is never done!
Have you ever met an idealist? I bet you have. Idealists are deluded. They think they can reach the aspiration and eliminate all frustrations. But that’s impossible. And undesirable. If you want to see TRUE despair, solve all the world’s problems and give everyone what they want. Utopia is dystopian. Paradoxically. Ironically. Tragicomically. Your ideal comes from finding a problem to solve, which means we can’t EVER perfect the world. It will never add up. Laugh at the cosmic joke, and get back to work solving the problem to which your purpose has guided you. It’s still the best time to be alive, and anyone who tells you otherwise simply doesn’t know history.
Your creative/entrepreneurial/leadership purpose will always involve fighting for a cause, solving a problem, or creating beauty, goodness, and pleasure where it didn’t already exist. We can only be entrepreneurial because the world falls short of the ideal we envision, so we must keep striving.
Realists know we need the ideal to keep us aspiring, and that we’ll always experience frustration. But that’s okay, because we get up each morning and become inspired again to keep trying. That’s the human condition. And it’s beautiful.
So don’t be an idealist. Don’t be a realist. Be an ideal realist. At all moments remember to intentionally go toward what you want but don’t have, and away from what you have but don’t want. Rejoice that the ideal inspires us to keep moving, and remember to keep it real!