Role Models

Recently, I have been reflecting a lot on the importance of role models in our lives.

One of the most subtle influences in human life is the people we admire. Long before we consciously decide who we want to become, we are already observing, absorbing, and imitating the behaviours, beliefs, and emotional patterns of others.

Our first role models are usually our parents. As children, we love them unconditionally, regardless of whether they are perfect or not. Naturally, we inherit many of their values, fears, communication styles, and beliefs about life.

Later, teachers, friends, colleagues, clients, mentors, and leaders continue shaping us. They influence not only our professional development, but often our understanding of success, relationships, ambition, self-worth, and even happiness.

For most of our lives, we rarely question these influences. We simply absorb them.

But at some point, many of us enter a phase of deeper self-reflection. We begin asking:

Who am I beneath all these expectations?

What do I truly want?

Which parts of my life genuinely belong to me, and which parts were inherited unconsciously from people I admired?

This is where my own reflection around role models truly began. I started noticing that when we admire someone, we often admire selectively. We see the qualities we aspire to — confidence, success, intelligence, discipline, charisma, talent — but we do not always see the whole person.

Sometimes we adopt behaviours simply because they were normalised by people we respected. A leader’s relentless ambition. A parent’s emotional patterns. A colleague's way of handling pressure. A friend's dynamic in a relationship. We absorb far more than we realise.

And then comes an important shift: we stop seeing our role models as ideals, and start seeing them as human beings. Human beings who carry both light and shadow. Wisdom and limitations. Strengths and wounds. Ironically, I also began realising that some people I once dismissed or struggled to appreciate had important lessons to teach me as well.

Over time, I came to understand that role models are vitally important. They inspire us, expand our perspective, and show us what may be possible in life. But maturity also requires discernment. We do not need to internalise every behaviour, belief, or lifestyle of the people we admire.

We can learn selectively. Consciously. Thoughtfully.

Perhaps that is part of becoming fully ourselves: not rejecting our role models, but learning to admire without unconsciously becoming a copy of someone else.

And perhaps every person who crosses our path — whether through admiration, conflict, inspiration, or pain — carries a lesson that helps us understand ourselves more deeply.

I'm curious, which role model shaped your life the most — and what did you later realise you needed to unlearn from them?