Idols

Growing up, I idolized Westlife. I was captivated by their songs, their stage presence, and their seemingly untouchable success. Around the same time, I watched Bill Gates build Microsoft. The story of a young man creating a company that changed the world deeply moved me. To my younger self, these figures represented the pinnacle of intelligence, discipline, and ambition.

Then, a colleague asked me a deceptively simple question: “Did you realize that all of our idols—every single one of them—have flaws?”

Until that moment, the concept of a flaw hadn't crossed my mind. In my eyes, idols weren't supposed to be flawed; they were blueprints for excellence. But looking back, I realize the real issue: at that time, I didn't want to face my own flaws, so I couldn't possibly acknowledge them in the people I looked up to.

The Illusion of the Highlight Reel

The human mind behaves strangely when it admires someone. We rarely fall in love with a full human being; instead, we fall for a curated image. We applaud a version of a person that has been edited, branded, and polished for public consumption.

We see the highlight reel:

• The awards and accolades

• The wealth and confidence

• The flawless public interviews

We mistake the fragment for the whole. And at times the fragmentation is just completely made up.

The danger of idolization isn't just that we admire someone’s strengths—it's that we begin to excuse their shortcomings. We rewrite their toxic habits as the necessary price of greatness:

If they are workaholics, we call it dedication. If they are emotionally unavailable, we call it focus. If they step over others, we call it ambition. If they treat people poorly, we say they are under pressure.

This distortion alters how we define success. We simplify complex achievements into neat narratives of "hard work", "genius" or "pure talent." We ignore the hidden variables: luck, timing, capital, support networks, and heavy personal sacrifices. Sometime there is also fraud.

The Cost of Copying the Wrong Blueprint

When we normalize the toxic behaviors of our idols, we risk absorbing them. We copy their imbalance, their emotional absence, and their poor boundaries, wrapping them in the respectability of "ambition."

Even worse, we may start blaming the people closest to us for interrupting our pursuit of greatness. We blame a partner for wanting time, children for needing attention, and family for demanding presence.

But a life stripped of family connection isn't a life. If the price of achievement is permanent exhaustion, constant irritability, and emotional estrangement from the people who love us, we need to question the model we are copying.

What If You Are Also Just As Good

Growth is about realizing that life is a function with errors. Getting from point A to point B is rarely a straightforward equation. The paths people take are often messy, unconventional, and sometimes even involve crossing legal or ethical boundaries.

When we idolize others, we ignore this hidden complexity. We subtly declare that we are less than others—a psychological hangover from a time when idols were literally gods. By placing humans on divine pedestals, we inadvertently diminish our own worth and blind ourselves to the flawed reality of how success is actually built.