Perfect life checklist: real desire or a really good commercial?

You know the list. It starts early. Be nice. Get good grades. Get into a good college. Land a great job. Find the one. Buy a house. Have kids. Stay fit. Meditate. Eat clean. Start a side hustle. Make six figures. Build passive income. Post vacation pics. Age well. Retire early. Die fulfilled.

It reads like the script of a life worth living. But whose life is it, really? And who wrote this checklist?

Let me guess: you didn’t.

We inherit the Perfect Life Checklist like we inherit the color of our eyes or the religion of our grandparents. It gets whispered into our ears by teachers, parents, influencers, and lifestyle bloggers. It’s not an inner compass. It’s a marketing brochure.

This list is not desire. It is design. And the architects? The ever-evolving machinery of social programming—religion, capitalism, education, even spirituality. It’s not some shadowy cabal with cigars and monocles. It’s subtler than that. More seductive. More sacred. The checklist became holy. And questioning it? Heresy.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the checklist has nothing to do with your essence. It may not even align with your actual desires. Worse, it might be keeping you from discovering what they are.

Desire or default?

There’s a huge difference between real desire and what I call “default desire.” Real desire bubbles up from the deep. It’s raw, messy, sometimes inconvenient. It makes no sense and every kind of sense at once. It doesn’t ask permission. It’s a fire that whispers, “This is what I’m here for.”

Default desire is a costume stitched from expectations. It’s how a kid who wanted to be an astronaut ends up an insurance executive with a Peloton and a 401k. Not that there’s anything wrong with Pelotons or 401ks—unless they’re disguises.

Default desire is what happens when you don’t interrogate the list. When you don’t pause to ask: “Do I even want this?” Instead, you just keep checking boxes.

That box-checking is praised. Society smiles at it. Family applauds it. Instagram double-taps it. So you keep going, not realizing you’re getting further from your center with every click of the pen.

Let me tell you a story. At one point in my life, I had done almost everything “right.” I had a respected career, a long-term relationship, a home that looked like it belonged in a yoga catalog. But one afternoon, I found myself staring blankly at the ceiling fan, utterly hollow. No drama. No crisis. Just a void. My soul had clocked out. It wasn’t burnout. It was betrayal—of myself.

That moment was the beginning of my unraveling—and thank the gods for it.

Where did this checklist come from anyway?

This script we call a life plan didn’t just fall from the sky. It was forged in the fires of history—churches, factories, and boardrooms.

In the industrial age, your value was in your productivity. Religion added moral pressure to behave, obey, and strive. Capitalism told you that buying stuff meant you were winning. Education trained you to sit still, follow orders, and absorb approved knowledge. Add social media, and you’ve got a 24/7 digital scoreboard of how well you’re performing as a human.

And don’t think spirituality escaped this programming. It just rebranded. Now you need to be enlightened too—while juggling kids, debt, climate doom, and your inner child.

This checklist is a patchwork of these forces. A Frankenstein stitched together from the old gods of order and the new gods of optimization.

When the checklist becomes a cage

Let me tell you what happens when you live someone else’s idea of perfection: your soul gets bored. Not tired. Not overwhelmed. Bored.

You start feeling dead even though you’re technically “doing great.” You find yourself crying in a rental car for no reason. You start fantasizing about escaping—a road trip, an affair, a sabbatical, a breakdown. Anything to feel alive again.

These are not malfunctions. They are messages.

They say: Wake up. The checklist is not your path. It is your prison.

I met a woman once, brilliant and deeply intuitive, who had spent ten years building her dream photography business. She was successful. Featured in magazines. Booked months in advance. But her passion had become a production line. She confided that every morning she woke up and wanted to throw her camera into a river. Her dream had been hijacked by someone else’s version of success.

She took a sabbatical, stopped posting, stopped pleasing. When she came back, she no longer called herself a photographer. She said, “I’m someone who sees beauty. Sometimes I use a camera.”

That shift changed everything.

The real cost of the commercial life

Let’s be honest. The Perfect Life Checklist is really just a cleverly disguised ad campaign. It sells you on the idea that happiness is a series of upgrades. You start with “starter goals,” then move to luxury aspirations. First love, then soulmate. First job, then dream job. Starter home, then villa with a view.

But this kind of life is never done. It’s always “next.” Always hungry. Always almost.

And it keeps you shopping.

This is why the commercial version of life works so well for those selling products, policies, or belief systems. If you’re never whole, you’re always a customer. If you’re never “there,” you’re always traveling. If you’re never enough, you’re always buying more.

I once met a guy who had everything on the list: startup exit, designer house, trophy partner, a podcast, a six-pack. But he confessed that none of it landed. He said, “Every time I hit a goal, I feel like a salesman who just closed a deal—and then starts dialing for the next one.” His dopamine was fed. His soul was starving.

The new holy war: productivity as piety

In this new religion, being busy is virtuous. Hustling is holy. Your worth is measured in output, not insight.

Even spirituality got swallowed by the checklist. Now you have to meditate, be mindful, burn sage, go vegan, be poly, be monogamous, read Rumi, and still somehow get your taxes done.

We replaced priests with coaches. Scriptures with newsletters. Confession booths with Instagram captions. Instead of guilt for sins, we feel shame for not manifesting hard enough.

And the worst part? We blame ourselves when it doesn’t work.

But maybe the problem isn’t you. Maybe the problem is the checklist.

Burn it down (lovingly)

This isn’t a call to abandon structure. It’s a call to reclaim authorship. To stop living by commercial blueprints and start drawing your own sacred maps.

Burn the checklist, but do it lovingly. Thank it for what it tried to offer. Then toss it into the ceremonial fire and ask your real self:

• What makes me feel alive?
• What kind of success doesn’t need applause?
• What if my desire doesn’t make sense to anyone but me?

Then sit with the silence. Let the answers come like thunder or like a whisper. They’ll come. And when they do, write your list. Maybe it looks like “Grow strange flowers. Learn to make fire. Eat mangoes in the bath. Love fully. Forgive sloppily. Leave beauty behind.”

Maybe your list changes every season. Maybe it has no boxes to check at all.

I once coached a man who, after years in finance, sold everything and opened a repair shop for old typewriters. He didn’t get rich. He didn’t go viral. But he told me he felt more at peace oiling keys than he ever did earning commissions.

Perfect lives are a lie. But real lives? They’re messy, luminous, and entirely yours.

And that, my friend, is a life worth living.

P.S. I just posted a Reel that digs even deeper into this topic. Check it out on my Instagram and drop a comment with your thoughts. Let’s burn the script together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Rudá Iandé (@rudaiande)