Every morning I wake up, lie in bed, and scroll through all the tweets I missed while asleep. Every day I see more and more of this:
It makes me sick to my stomach, seeing how much emphasis our culture puts on meaningless unattainable things. We never seem to be happy with what we have anymore. We're constantly looking to get the next new iPhone, Macbook or trending outfit. We are never 100 percent satisfied with what we have and what we've accomplished. The trending #Goals phrase is not helping this problem; it's begun digging us deeper into this materialistic unhappiness. We drool over the success and beauty of other people whose lives we really know nothing about.
We live in a world that promotes the unrealistic, and yet we're dying to change that. The unrealistic nature of our society causes body shaming, self-hate and a number of mental and physical health problems that have a ripple effect. We've demanded models to have realistic attainable bodies, yet we promote the unrealistic every day. We idolize people like Beyoncé and relationships like Chuck and Blair from "Gossip Girl." All of these things are pictures, fictional and unattainable. Honestly, I want something real. Yes, I want the American dream: a husband, a family, a nice house and my dream job. But I want all of it to be real and to come naturally. I want the struggles and the challenges. I want to fight to get to every new stage of my life.
By idolizing these meaningless things, we are beginning to undermine our own accomplishments and our personal unique aspirations that we each want out of life. We all have the ability to accomplish whatever we want, and we do not need to aspire to have other people's lives and possessions.
Instead of focusing on the accomplishments and material possessions of others, it's time we refocus ourselves and begin to set goals and work towards achieving them. It's time we work together to create a realistic world that we're all proud to live in. We all deserve to make a bigger impact on the world around us and idolizing unattainable lifestyles with #Goals isn't going to get us there. Happiness surrounds each of us in our daily lives. Looking at other people's happiness and success with envy isn't going to create happiness for us individually.
Celebrities and picture perfect lives will always exist to be admired, but that doesn't mean we need to aspire to that. There is so much about celebrities lives we don't know anything about. For all we know, they could be looking at us and our modest living be saying that our lives are #Goals. We're all real people with challenges set in front of us whether or not our lives are talked about on TV or plastered on the cover of People. To idolize their lives and belongings is to undermine our own value.
Meghan Hughes, a lifestyle video blogger on YouTube, says it all in her tweet posted this past June:
It's time we stop promoting the unrealistic and live in the real world where we all can thrive. Join me in the challenge of letting #Goals die and setting our own unique attainable goals. I challenge everyone to write down one thing you want to accomplish; it can be as small as eating healthfully or as big as saving up for your dream car. Set a goal, strive for it, and aspire to be you, and the world will be a better place for generations to come.
