Not living up to my idealized self

[Fallen Messenger]

This isn't much of a blog post in my opinion, but I just want to vent.

I do extemporaneous public speaking competitions for FFA at my school. That kinf of public speaking is where you have a few minutes to prepare a speech out of a little but of info. The reason I  put myself, a complete introvert, into this position, was because my idealized self is a public speaker. And a very famous public speak at that. Because in my head I am able to perfect those speeches, it causes me to think very lowly of myself in real life. I am a very bad public speaker, and I know that, but I still want to be as good as my idealized self in my head. It hurts to know that I will never be as good as her no matter how hard I try. I don't want fame because I'm an introvert, but I want to be her. I want to be her so badly that is crumbles my self esteem into nothing. I feel as if I'm living in her shadow, even though nobody knows she exists.

That's basically all I have to say, but please vent below with your similar experiences or maybe ways to help my esteem. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks for reading!

[EntiWarmRock]

I feel this so hard!! I am obsessed, and i mean OBSESSED, with my character. He's perfect and yes, and like your character, is good at things like public speaking. He is just adorable, and perfect, and ergh. I am also an introvert. 

What I do is I try to act like my character would in situations I run into. I literally pretend I'm my character. I want to be him, for other people, and even the act of trying and practicing to, feeds my soul in a way nothing ever has. 

And when I succeed, it's like nothing I can describe. I have something you might be interested in reading that I wonder if you'd relate to. It's about how I experience my character and my desperate want. 

I think maybe if I keep at it, someday, I'll just be like my character naturally and it will be beautiful.

I also want to point out that my character is IMPERFECT definately, and is a well rounded character in my actual STORY I'm writing. He has to try and struggle to get things, but his imperfections somehow make him even more perfect!! He is literally a real person.

[MatthewR]

I think we're all living under the shadow of our ideal self. No matter what we do, it'll never be good enough. I sympathize with how you feel. I remember feeling despair over the unattainable life i had created for myself back in school. It still hurts to think about it, because I would imagine all the things I would never personally experience, and that just reinforced my sense of hopelessness about life. It's an awful feeling, I know. Still, i applaud you for doing the competitions. I think that's brave of you, and I'm very happy that you're willing to try. Please don't feel like nothing. You're doing a lot already, and i think self-esteem comes from taking action like that and working to better yourself, which you're clearly doing. So, good luck, and I hope the best for you!         

[Annie]

Hello my dear!

Your post worries me a bit. Although I am also trying to be more brave and outgoing like my internal version of me, I think we all should remember that our 'idealized' versions of ourselves in our head, are just that: ideal and perfect. No flaws, no fuck ups. Unfortunately life is not like that. Never. So although I think it is great that you dare to put yourself into those situations and gathering these experiences you crave deep down, I don't think you should expect yourself to do as well as an absolutely perfect fantasy tells you you should. That's not healthy because it's not achievable. It might make you feel worse.

Isn't real life still better than the fantasy versions? You are experiencing real adrenaline, real competition and sometimes real failure. That's what makes you better next time. Being perfect all the time is boring, no?

Keep up the debating, I would say, but try to lose the expectation of perfection. Enjoy reality instead! Otherwise you will never be happy in the real world. It will just continue to never measure up and you will continue to be miserable.

Please don't do that to yourself. you are clearly a clever and ambitious person, and you deserve to be happy as well!

Best wishes :-*

Annie

[Source]

What you're doing isn't healthy at all. You're rejecting the real "you" and trying to replace yourself with a constructed, impossibly "better" identity. Nothing but pain can come out of this and I speak from experience. It's a mistake I also made when I was your age. I was dishonest with myself, excusing my way out of every bad decision, fleeing my problems instead of standing my ground against them, and I cursed the second half of my teens with an unsustainable amount of self-inflicted torment. I realized this not long ago, and then discovered that the problem was much, much deeper.

It seems to me like you're doing the same thing. Don't set your standards to infinity or you'll never reach them. Don't run from your limits, acknowledge them, take action if you still won't accept them, but don't make the mistake of giving up on yourself at the first sign of hardship. The desires behind your idealized self are your own, its strengths are the ones you wish you had, but its substance is psychological cancer, and like cancer it will slowly devour you if you let it run rampant.

[Katie Reed]

Wow ! If you want to be more like your idealized self then you are certainly going the right way about it. 

I can tell this is really important to you and all I can say is keep pushing yourself, keep practising and you will become a far better version of this person.

It's easy for her when public speaking she already knows her audience, her material and there is nothing that is truley unexpected, everything just always turns out perfect. She has no experience at all of public speaking in the real world like you do. She has no experience at all trying to win real admirers like you do.