Feeling stuck often creates a peculiar kind of tunnel vision. You know something needs to shift, but every possible direction feels abstract. Sometimes it helps to stop asking, “What should I do with my life?” and notice a smaller signal: Who makes me curious about living differently?
A role model cannot hand you a blueprint. Nor should they. What they can offer is evidence that another way of working, creating, responding to failure or defining success exists. The useful part isn’t becoming more like them. It’s discovering what your admiration says about you.
Why Role Models Still Matter in Adulthood
We tend to associate role models with childhood heroes, athletes and early career ambitions. Yet examples matter long after we supposedly know who we are.
Psychologist Albert Bandura’s influential work on social learning theory helped establish the importance of observing other people in how humans learn. In everyday life, that idea extends well beyond simply copying behavior. Other people’s choices can expand our sense of what is imaginable.
That can become particularly useful during periods of transition. A career no longer fits. A creative project has stalled. Your priorities have changed while the shape of your life hasn’t caught up yet.
At moments like these, another person’s story can provide a reference point without becoming a set of instructions.
Look at the Path, Not Just the Achievement
Success looks deceptively tidy from a distance. Awards, businesses, books, exhibitions and careers compress years of uncertainty into a handful of visible milestones.
Move closer and the edges become rougher. There are abandoned ideas, missed opportunities, financial constraints, rejection, luck, privilege, difficult decisions and periods when the eventual destination wasn’t obvious at all.
That’s often where a role model becomes interesting.
Instead of studying only what somebody achieved, look at how they behaved when circumstances changed. Did they begin again? Protect time for their work? Ask for help? Leave an environment that no longer suited them? Spend years developing a skill before anyone noticed?
The finished result may inspire you. The decisions behind it are more likely to teach you something.
Ask What You Admire, Not Who You Want to Be
“What do I want?” can be an intimidating question when you don’t have a clear answer. Try another one: What qualities consistently attract my attention?
Perhaps it’s someone’s independence. Their patience. Their creative discipline. The way they speak honestly without dominating a room. Their willingness to change careers at 45. Their curiosity at 70. Their ability to make ambitious work while maintaining a life outside it.
Those details are clues.
If you repeatedly admire people who reinvent themselves, perhaps change matters more to you than stability. If independent artists fascinate you, autonomy may be important. If you’re drawn to people doing quiet, useful work in their communities, your idea of success may have less to do with status than contribution.
The role model becomes a mirror. What catches your eye can reveal values that were difficult to name directly.
Don’t Confuse Inspiration With Comparison
There is a less useful version of this exercise. It happens when admiration turns into constant comparison.
Online, especially, you’re rarely comparing two complete lives. You’re comparing your ordinary Tuesday morning with somebody else’s edited public record. Context disappears: money, health, responsibilities, connections, timing, support and simple luck can all shape what a person is able to do.
Research discussed by the American Psychological Association illustrates some of the complicated relationships between social media, comparison and well-being. Inspiration stops being particularly helpful when another person’s life becomes evidence that yours is inadequate.
A useful role model leaves you with an idea to explore. An unhealthy comparison leaves you feeling diminished.
Build a Constellation of Role Models
There is no reason to find one perfect person who represents everything you hope to become. Such a person probably doesn’t exist.
Instead, build a loose constellation. You might admire one person’s creative discipline, another’s approach to friendship, someone else’s courage in changing direction and a fourth person’s ability to maintain boundaries around work.
Look beyond celebrity, too. Memoirs and biographies can be valuable, but so can the people already around you: the colleague who remains calm when a project goes sideways, the relative who started again after retirement, the local artist who kept making work without much attention, or the friend who learned how to say no without turning it into a performance.
Ordinary proximity can sometimes teach more than distant fame.
Turn Admiration Into Something You Can Use
The useful question isn’t “How can I have their life?” It is “What, specifically, can I learn from this?”
- Name the quality. Replace “I want to be like them” with something precise: courage, consistency, curiosity, independence, generosity or creative discipline.
- Find the behavior behind it. What does that quality look like in practice? Perhaps they protect an hour each morning for creative work, continue learning throughout their career or recover quickly when an idea fails.
- Adapt it to your circumstances. You don’t need their schedule, resources or career. Find the smallest version that works inside your own life.
- Keep your critical judgment. You can admire someone’s work ethic without sharing their worldview. Inspiration doesn’t require unconditional approval.
This is where admiration becomes useful. It moves from something you consume to something you practice.
Borrow the Lesson, Not the Life
People are complicated. Someone can produce remarkable work and still make terrible decisions. A person you once admired can disappoint you. Another may simply stop representing what matters to you as your own life changes.
That’s fine. A role model doesn’t need to become a permanent hero.
Take what is genuinely useful: the discipline, the curiosity, the courage to begin again, the refusal to let one failure become an identity. Leave the rest.
The point was never to follow somebody else’s path. It was to notice that more paths existed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can adults have role models?
Yes. Role models can be useful at any age, particularly when you’re entering a new stage of life, reconsidering your priorities or trying to develop a particular quality or skill. They don’t need to be older or more conventionally successful than you.
Does a role model need to be famous?
No. Friends, relatives, colleagues, teachers and people in your community may provide more realistic and relevant examples because you can see how they behave outside a carefully managed public image.
Is it okay to have several role models?
Absolutely. Different people can represent different qualities you value. Thinking in terms of several influences also reduces the temptation to idealize one person as a perfect example of how to live.
What if a role model disappoints me?
You can reconsider what, if anything, remains worth learning from them. Admiring a person’s particular quality or achievement never requires you to excuse behavior or beliefs that conflict with your values.