Save Your Kids From This Trappe

Summary

A young adult reflects on their personal struggle with the pursuit of perfection and the fear of failure, which led to a cycle of underachievement and self-doubt.

Abstract

The author, a 24-year-old, shares their journey of grappling with the pressure to be the "perfect kid" from a young age, which resulted in a pattern of avoiding challenges and quitting activities to maintain an image of effortless success. This behavior eventually caught up with them in their early twenties when they faced real academic failure, prompting a realization of the damage caused by their fear of failure and the facade of perfection they had constructed. The article serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of living according to others' expectations and the importance of authentic self-discovery and pursuit of personal dreams.

Opinions

The author believes that the pursuit of perfection, driven by the desire for instant rewards and the fear of disappointing parents, can lead to a life of unfulfilled potential and regret.
They suggest that the educational and social rewards system based on instant gratification can be detrimental to personal growth and self-awareness.
The author emphasizes that living according to others' expectations rather than one's own desires can result in a life that feels inauthentic and unfulfilling.
They advocate for a life approach that treats life as a game to be explored boldly, without being constrained by the opinions of others.
The author acknowledges that breaking free from years of ingrained habits and societal pressures is a difficult but necessary process for personal growth and happiness.
They express that confronting one's failures and the resulting self-realization is both a relief and a source of frustration, signaling the start of a challenging but rewarding journey towards self-improvement.

The slow death of being the perfect kid.

I saw this meme a few days ago and it hit me so deeply. The accuracy is spot on, even though the age is actually a bit off. I am 24 years old and I have been in a half depressed state for way longer than 3 years. I am saying kind of depressed because I saw what real depression looks like and I am thankfully far away from that. Yet I can’t say that I am happy, I don’t even remember the last time I was.

I am going to tell you my story, this is not at all the only truth or a medical review. I am not a mental health professional, but I hope my experience will help you and your loved ones.

It goes way back, when I wasn’t even 10 years old, I can’t recall the exact year, but that is something that started a long time ago. As a kid your parents tell what you should and shouldn’t do. Those are good advise most of the time, it comes from years of experience and a need to protect us from making the same mistakes they did. This is the first step of this silent downfall.

As the nice kid, I was I wanted to make my parents proud of me. This is mostly caused by the instant reward thrill. The thing that, still today, is killing us little by little. I was a smart kid, I didn’t need a lot of work to be good at school, piano or some individual sports. I was making them proud of my accomplishments and I didn’t even have to work for it. Call that the perfect situation, well it was the beginning of the end.

I am a fast learner, so I took the habit of doing something for a little time and then go off to the next thing when it got too hard. And it was ok for a long time, I just changed focus to always be good among the beginners. In an instant reward world, I found the golden solution. It was like I was getting paid for nothing in return, it was like free money.

Then the fear of failure started to kick in. What would happened if I wasn’t the perfect kid anymore ? Would my parents still like me ? This was the beginning of my second downfall. You can’t fail if you don’t try, right ? Well, even though there is some truth to this twisted thinking this solution is definitely not the best one.

I didn’t realise it at the time. I quit everything I was doing, swimming, piano, guitar, archery … I started to get lazy at school, not listening and not working at all. I still got away with it, I just aimed to be average, barely good enough to keep going. I kept on doing that for years until I got my first real failure because of this behavior. At 20 years old I doubled a year for the first time in my life. For the first time I wasn’t even good enough. The time had come, in an aerospace engineering school where barely working wasn’t enough to be average.

It wasn’t an electroshock like I expected it would be. It was the starting point of the slow realisation that I have been destroying my life little my little because of my fear of failure. The enlightenment that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. I was finally called out for my fake perfection. It was both a relief and the most frustrating things that have happened to me.

The more I was getting out of this cycle the more I realised all the things I messed up and how late I was on life. The thing is that I still had big dreams, and I was lying to myself the entire time, telling me that I was good enough to realise those dreams too. But I wasn’t because I never worked for anything. And the least that I was doing was to live in the expectation of others.

This is the core reason for all of that, believing that pleasing others will make you happy too. It doesn’t at all, it makes us living a fake life that is a reflection of the deceptions of our parents or others. Sure, being an aerospace engineer is cool and I do like Space a lot, but is it something I would have done ? I don’t know. I never really thought about what I really wanted. I never tried anything that I wanted to do for myself. All my life was made out of suggestions and expectations.

Don’t let anybody fall for this trap that leads at best to be numb and wondering what you could have been. I am lucky enough to finally realising where the problem is coming from and being only numb. I am now in a constant fight between myself and the façade I created. Let me tell you, this is a tough battle, 20 years of bad habits don’t go away in a few days, months or even years. It is made out of constant doubts about myself and my choices.

I felt a sense of relief writing this article. This is the first time I am talking about it, even though it might not be the best idea to do it here. I still think that it is really important to talk about it and to acknowledge the reality of these mistakes and the consequences. I don’t blame my parents at all for that, I know they wouldn’t want that for me, I am the only one to blame, I chose to be like that.

My final takeaway from all of this is, live your life like it is a fu**ing game. Try things out, explore the world and all its possibilities. Never let anyone’s opinion dictate your life, the only difference with a game is that there isn’t a restart button after a game over. So live your life to the fullest, be bold and do whatever it takes to make your dreams come true.