We’re instructed to “put yourself on a pedestal”, aspire higher because the sky is the limit — only to be rejected for falling short by it by three inches. Allegedly due to ‘bad posture’ — as if years of shrinking yourself curved your spine just to reach that version of you, at the top.

Your ‘ideal’ self isn’t only objectified on billboards — they’re also ‘idols’ trapped on the high rises of the pedestals you build for them. When you can’t meet yourself at eye level, that’s how you turn yourself into eye candy — and not the tasteful kind.

Chasing your “higher self” can be just as dehumanizing as hating her. In fact, it mimics the logic of worship more than growth.

For most, every inch closer to her — your idealized, vertical fantasy self — feels like progress.

But when your ‘higher self’ keeps moving the goalpost, you’re not growing — you’re chasing a mirage.

In exploring new heights and elevations you became out of reach. This isn’t a warning about vanity leading you astray — the bottom line is how idolizing your ‘ideal self’ doesn’t just objectify her — it robs her of humanity.

Healing doesn’t come by severing yourself from who you are, now. That’s not self-empowerment — it’s dismemberment.

Self-idolization, here, becomes its own kind of violence — where you are now split into two forms of existence. You divide into worshipper and worshipped, unworthy and imagined perfect, now and not-yet.

Idolization robs you of the human experience by putting you into a state of self-alienation — trading your aliveness for the illusion of a self that was never meant to be lived in.

This is how you create an existential crisis.

You start measuring proximity to your humanity by how much you resemble a figment of your imagination — or worse, by how much control you think its performance will give you.

Instead of meeting yourself at eye level, your internal view strips away the messy, imperfect, breathing reality beneath the surface — the one only your eyes were ever meant to see — had you met her not with a gaze, but with grace.

You’ve now turned living flesh into a still image — your vibrant complexity into a frozen icon.

But ideas are not people. And you are not a body of their work — especially when your only purpose is not just to be looked at.

Becoming your “best self” won’t matter if you have to abandon yourself to get there.

You can’t become your dream self by keeping her zipped in a garment bag — untouched but tailored, waiting to be worn when you finally feel chosen by her on a special day. You don’t marry your ‘best self’ by climbing enough steps to finally meet her at the altar. The altar is not a shrine to prove separation, but to hold up a mirror. It’s a space to honour that you were not just conjoined twins, but a singular soul.

To worship in itself implies distance — a devotion to a deity perfected, polished, and practically divorced from you. But it’s this mindset that ensures you cannot be a believer in your own being.

When you worship the ego, you don’t embody the self.

You’re striving to be “holy” — when all you need to be is whole.

So if your ‘ideal self’ is the love of your life, stop chasing her. She’s not waiting at the finish line — she’s just trying to meet you here.