What To Do With Your Fantasy Self

Ahhhhhh your fantasy self. What a awesome, well rounded and interesting person they are! For me, my fantasy self wakes up at 5:00, gets a work out in, does yoga everyday, grows food in her backyard, goes to the beach every weekend and diffuses essential oils. Oh and she plans all sorts of amazing outings for her kiddo with lots of educational aspects, endless fun and no meltdowns. Doesn’t she sound awesome? Not that I’m not awesome but I definitely don’t do all those things.

Before we dive into what to do with your fantasy self (and their stuff), let’s talk about what your fantasy self even is. Your fantasy self is an idealized version of yourself or who you want to be. It can also be paired with who you want others to perceive you to be.

Now, I’m not trying to kill your dreams. That’s not what I’m here to do. I want you to dream about your life. I want you to want things and create good habits. What I DO want you to look at is the stuff- physical and emotional- that we acquire before this idealized self is realized.

Let’s look at a scenario. Let’s say that you want to grow your own food in your backyard. You dream of homesteading and are ready to plant that veggie garden, go out there and pick your own food and make it fresh that evening. So, you head to the garden section of Home Depot and pick up a bunch of pots, potting soil, gardening tools, seeds etc. All the accoutrement that one would need to grow a fabulous victory garden. You put all that stuff in your garage and tell yourself you’re going to get started on your garden that weekend. When the weekend rolls around, you make other plans and life keeps happening and you push off the project. Now it’s 3 years later and that stuff is still in a pile in your garage. ALSO, every time you walk into the garage you see the pile and it makes you feel like trash because of your unfulfilled potential and wasted money.

Sound familiar? You buy the thing and have every intention of using it and then it sits and gathers dust. Maybe it’s just the yoga mat you bought because you were “going to do yoga everyday” and after about 2 weeks you got sick and skipped some days and didn’t pick it back up (#guilty). Or during quarantine you took a few online cake decorating classes and bought a bunch of icing tips that are now just in a baggie in your drawer (#guiltyagain! Geez, Jess, get off my back!). At this point you have 2 options. First, the most obvious, is declutter the item. Easy to say when it’s a bag of icing tips that if, I realllllly needed them in the future, would cost me about $10 to replace. Harder if you’ve dumped hundreds of dollars into an abandoned hobby. Consider selling or gifting to a friend (who would actually use it). IF you’re thinking, “But I still want to do yoga!”, now you need commit to the hobby and make it happen captain. If this is the path you choose, I recommend setting a timeline for yourself. If you don’t use the item in the timeline of your choice, it’s time to let it go.

Now… let’s say you realllllly want to start stand -up paddle boarding. Awesome! Good on you! Before you go out and buy a $400+ paddle board, I recommend putting your purchases on hold and build the hobby first. Can you rent a board? Can you buy a cheaper one second hand? Give it a test run. Build the habit. Prove to yourself that this is something you actually want to do. Once you’ve proven it, then you get the awesome reward of purchasing the paddle board.