Suicide: Nobody Can Live Up To Unrealistic Expecatations
How Comparing Reality to Fantasies Fuels Suffering
The Quest for Meaning and Understanding
At the core of the human experience lies the questioning of life, its meaning, and its purpose. The great odyssey of self-discovery begins with questions like: Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? These inquiries either set individuals on a journey to create a purpose-built life or leave them wrestling with constant mental noise, struggling to overcome unrealistic expectations—those they set for themselves or those imposed by the authorities and influences around them.
Creating a life built on ungrounded fantasies, positivity, and the expectations of others perpetuates mental anguish. No human can thrive authentically while trying to meet unattainable ideals. Living by someone else’s vision or a one-sided notion of how life should be is a recipe for dissatisfaction.
“Envy is ignorance, and imitation is suicide.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wrote this for past, present, and future clients to address one of the greatest challenges they may face. For some, it may also serve as a call to action to transform their lives and a huge wake-up call. At the end of deep inner work lies a profound truth: You cannot love something you judge. To love—whether it’s yourself, someone else, or life itself, means to practice unconditional love (+/-). True love is seeing all parts of yourself and others, not the moral ideals society injects into you.
How Unrealistic Expectations Create Mental Anguish
Many people carry unrealistic expectations about how life should be. These fantasies often include superhero-like ideals, creating a constant comparison with an idealized version of others or themselves. This leads to dissatisfaction with their current reality.
Similarly, people expect others to live by their values, perpetuating the unrealistic demand for one-sided behaviour. How often have you heard: Be kind. Be nice. Be proper. Don’t swear. Always be positive? Yet, every human being has two sides: kind and cruel, happy and sad, positive and negative. Unrealistic, one-sided expectations create unattainable standards, leading to feedback that can sometimes manifest as mental or emotional distress.
“God, to punish me for my contempt for authority, made me one.” – Albert Einstein
Some will understand experiences are designed to give feedback for growth and to stand on the shoulders of giants, not fall at their feet. Both paths will be equally challenging, and that’s what the Einstein quote is meant to reflect upon you. Grieving the way you “should” likely isn’t working and is running down your immune system, aging you, and costing you your health and wealth.
The Impact of Unrealistic Expectations
People with unrealistic views of human behaviour often fail to appreciate their own lives. When life isn’t appreciated, it stagnates, loses value, and succumbs to entropy, just like any asset left untended. Nature’s laws apply equally to the mind, despite what moral authorities may teach.
Life is inherently balanced: it is filled with both pleasure and pain, stress and ease. The choice lies in how we respond to these challenges. Some choose eustress—a purposeful, inspiring stress that drives them toward meaningful goals. Others succumb to distress, the stress of living according to someone else’s expectations or chasing unattainable fantasies. This feedback manifests in their physiology (body), psychology (mind), and environment. There are cues being left behind, as nothing is random—just an inability to see the other side.
Wisdom comes from pursuing what is intrinsically meaningful and gives us energy and vitality. Life will be equally challenging whether you find and do what you love or live by someone else’s plan for you, but a purposeful path will lead to greater fulfillment and independence. By contrast, living for external validation leads to dissatisfaction, boredom, disengagement, and burnout. Eventually, the external motivation to live someone else’s life runs out. An inspired life from within doesn’t need outside motivation or fuel, it’s evoked by natural curiosity and a desire for personal growth and transformation.
We’re designed to pursue our own purpose, and our values are derived from our greatest voids. Some choose to fulfill them, because they are being drawn to fulfill them and find fulfillment in that pursuit, even if others judge it. Some will challenge the status quo and have the whole world against them, rather than going against their own intuition, calling and soul. Individuals are designed to fulfill their purpose, and by fulfilling the things they place the greatest value and worth on, is often the greatest pathway to life mastery. And it often challenges the ideals, morals, dogmas, and beliefs, of the people around them. Because they are not meant to just stand in the shadows of others.
Quality Questions To Get Someone To the Other Side
If someone has attempted this, confront the self-deprecating fantasies by identifying what they are comparing their life to. Explore how they think life is “supposed to be” versus the reality of how it actually is. Uncover their extreme hopes, one-sided illusions, and elated fantasies. This will uncover the unrealistic expectations. When idealism has all upsides with no downsides, guide them in breaking through dissociative fantasies to reconnect with reality so they can see objectively. Highlight the resources they already possess, so they can objectively see that they can achieve what they want even after the fantasy is popped. This emphasizes the perfection of having the perfect tools at this perfect moment to uncover the next step in their unique journey.
Breaking the Cycle: Overcoming Guilt and Self-Blame
When faced with personal challenges, whether as a parent, sibling, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or friend, you may experience guilt and regret. Thoughts like “I should have done more” can weigh heavily on the mind.
Unless you address the underlying guilt, you risk setting the very unrealistic expectations that created the scenario upon yourself, perpetuating a cycle of grief and trauma. It’s essential to understand that pride and shame are intertwined; you cannot have one without the other simultaneously in every moment (+/-), just as you cannot separate the poles of a magnet. And your judgments are only allowing you to see and experience one side of the equation. Recognizing this dynamic allows you to do the work and break free from guilt and embrace a more balanced perspective toward unconditional love.
The Root of Unrealistic Expectations
Society often teaches that support is good and challenge is bad. This limited view restricts our ability to embrace the full spectrum of love, light, and life. Support and challenge are neither inherently good nor bad, they are just labels, and it’s what we make of them. Looking back, some of the greatest challenges forged your paths in life.
Over-supporting someone, you may think you’re doing them a favour, but you’re robbing them of accountability and responsibility. Without those challenges, their executive center brain functions of long-term strategic thinking and planning don’t develop, they remain stuck in a state of immediate gratification, which perpetuates amygdala-driven activities of extreme highs and lows. On the other hand, individuals who face challenges early on often grow into resilient, independent thinkers, capable of synthesizing and balancing life’s complexities. Often, entrepreneurs perceive their lives as more challenging, and it’s driven them to be independent. Over-support often keeps individuals juvenile and dependent, and it’s human nature to desire to make a difference in people's lives. When someone can’t see that, they create the narrative they are making things worse.
The Dual Nature of Grief
Grief, like all emotions, has two sides. Just as all humans have all traits. You cannot experience grief without relief; they coexist. True, unconditional love requires embracing both sides of a person, situation, or life event. Some people cling to grief out of guilt, believing it keeps a loved one close in their memory when in reality, it runs down the immune system. Others perceive relief as immoral, so the dual nature isn’t discussed because it’s not politically correct. Both perspectives reflect societal morals rather than universal truths. You can’t separate the two sides of a magnet.
The most profound way to honour someone, or yourself, is through unconditional love (+/-) and gratitude. This means loving all parts of someone, not just the idealized version. Put them in your heart by loving them for who they actually were, and give yourself the opportunity to love them unconditionally.
Letting Go of Fantasies: Embrace Reality for True Freedom
Freedom comes from dissolving fantasies and embracing the realities of life. By addressing self-deprecating ideals, you can learn to appreciate and love your life for what it is: a series of positive and negative events, at all scales, so you can understand and discover the magnificence and magnitude of what really is. This fosters resilience, gratitude, and the clarity to pursue meaningful objectives that give greater understanding and meaning to life.
I often say, “The mind keeps the score (+/-), and the body tells the story (-).” If the mind is not brought into a state of balance and appreciation for what truly is, it remains vulnerable to delusions, dissociations, and despair. And the outside world will give feedback to the inner world, as what’s above is below. And each individual is getting the feedback; what’s happening to the body isn’t random.
Settling the Mind by Escaping the Trap of Comparison
Comparing your life to an unrealistic ideal creates chaos in the mind. Fantasies of always being kind, happy, sweet, nice, lead to betrayal, resentment, and a desire to escape reality. A true balanced state of mind, that is open and objective, lies in unconditional love, where both positive and negative aspects of life are equally embraced.
Your authenticity is your authority. Most people are trying to appease others and overinflate themselves, and then later beat themselves up because they can’t do or be like someone else. Identify what truly matters and design a life based on personal values and priorities and encourage those around you to do the same.
Understand that people aren’t loyal to people; they’re loyal to their own priorities. Care enough to understand yours and that of the people still around you and even the ones you loved in passing. Comparing life to idealism, fantasies, and unrealistic expectations will further create the opposite, more nightmares, anxieties, sleepless nights, and depression. Because your mind and body are working as designed, they’re giving the feedback to show you the whole picture of life. There’s just a pandemic around lack of purpose or shall I say interpreting what the feedback means.
Summary: Grief and Building a Purpose-Built Life
Opening your heart to unconditional love (+/-) and gratitude begins with understanding what’s happening around you. Life will challenge you regardless of whether you live by design or duty. Choosing a purpose-built life transforms how you view these challenges. Life is designed to evolve, and the universe invests in order and structure. No energy or resources are wasted; they are recycled back into the universe.
A Final Message from Amar:
When you love someone for who they are, they have an opportunity to show up as someone you love. You get to love a part of yourself, and them for how they really are, happy and sad, kind and cruel. Don’t rob yourself of growth and unconditionally loving some you care for. Put them in your heart rather than in your mind, and expand your conscious growth and evolution by integrating the the universal feedback in their death. If someone has attempted this, get them aligned to their values and start them where they are. Taking baby steps and understanding the perfection of nature of life and death. If you experienced grief and loss, don’t buy into an antiquated model where you grieve for years, decades or til the end of your life, there is a more profound way in accordance to universal principles of thermodynamics. Just as energy cannot be created nor destroyed, human traits are conserved, they just change form, and that’s a path to experiencing a deep and profound love.
