EPTtoday I will talk about my own life a bit. Normally, I create content for SC2, do guides and stuff, but today is going to be a little more selfish.
For those that followed my time when I was streaming, creating content and doing Vlogs, you probably already know that I have mentioned a lot of times that I am incredibly competitive. However, I dont think a lot of people really understand what that means.
So here is my story.
Ever since I was young, I had this feeling. I dont really know where it was coming from to be honest, but I had this drive to be better than other people. There was something, a second voice in my head that was telling me to try harder, to be better than what I am.
I dont know where this all started, but I remembered back in the days in elementary school, I wasnt very tall. So a lot of people would be calling me "small" and I was automatically associated with that word. I remember how much that would fire up my ego. I was so incredibly sensitive when it came to my size that I got into a lot of fights. The weird thing was, i never feared any of it. Its like I needed to prove something.
I remember that day when I got into a fight with a guy that was 4th grade when I was 2nd. I was small, but deep inside I knew I was strong too.
Im not a fan of violence at all, so dont get me wrong here. What Im saying is, I could never accept to be the "weak" one, the loser in a sense.
Maybe this is where it kind of started, maybe I had it all along before that, I honestly dont know. But here is how my life went on. So far, it sounds pretty normal, like talking about someone with a big ego.
As I got older, I developed a tendency. A tendency to focus so heavily on one thing that I forgot all the things around. That one thing could be a sport, an activity, anything. I started developing an obsessiveness with whatever I was doing at the time and only focused on that.
Basically, with 10 I really got into soccer. I wanted to be the best, so I trained for insane hours. I went out and didnt come back after playing around 8-10 hours. I played a lot together with my friends, weirdly enough the only thing that was fun for me was mainly winning. I could only enjoy my time when I was winning. I cant describe how hard I was beating myself up about losing, how difficult and impossible for me it was to accept failure.
I remember one of my friends' mother always said "You are really bad with your nerves niklas" because I would always get so angry when I lost.
I remember how I would be so incredibly upset and in self-hatred that i would punish myself by having to practice overtime for hours in my own backyard even tho I didnt enjoy it after playing for so many hours with my friends. It wasnt about fun, it was about winning, thats where my fun was.
This still sounds pretty normal, but there is something that I feel very alone with to be honest. Until this day I havent met a person that was alike in that sense, so Im just going on to describe further.
It wasnt just years of soccer I was obsessed with, what was really weird is, once I found a new passion, something that was interesting for me, I instantly dropped the ball and never looked back. I gave zero interest back to what I was doing for years, what I worked my ass off for. Once I found something new, I focused 100% of my time and willpower to it.
I remember how my mother told me countless of times why I always have to "overdo" things once I enjoy something. But I could not even really decide that, once I got hooked with something I got obsessed with being good at it, be the best, win.
I remember when I got into skateboarding, I wanted to be the best in the world. I trained for countless of hours, every day. There was no "off-days", my competitive spirit was so deeply branded into my mind, there was never even a thought of not practicing.
Now, what I realized is after about 16-18 years of my life (im 20 now), I saw a tendency. Once I found a passion, I generally did that very thing for a couple of years. And nothing else besides that. The more I fail at something, the more I am hooked, because I just can not accept defeat.
Now, all of that does not sound that bad, does it? Generally speaking, Im proud that I always work on improving myself so hard and that I am pretty damn good at a lot of things. But there is a side-effect to that and this is what I want to really talk about. Believe me, being hyper competitive has its downsides.
The downside of strong, obessive focus towards one task in your life:
When I say Im focusing on one task, I mean one hobby, one passion. At that point, there is nothing else in my life that really matters to me. This one thing is the most important thing for me. If you take this from me, my life is emtpy, worthless.
I am literally obsessed with this one thing. I only enjoy doing it for as long as I am doing well, for as long as I am winning, as I am edging out on others. Why? Because I put in the time, the effort, the willpower, my everything. This is not a hobby, not a passion, this is ME.
I truely identify with what I am doing. For me, once I found a hobby, there was never a moment in my mind where i could accept defeat, where I could let go, where I could chill and have fun with my friends whilst failing. I had to succeed. Because in the end, I was so deeply into that one activity, that one hobby that it was essentially who I became. I became that guy doing that, that was the only thing I was doing, that was me.
Okay, so I had this very strong connection with what I am doing. But what is the downside? First of all, I want to talk about some things that I still struggle with to this day.
I am an extreme introvert. Most guys that watch my stream dont realize this as I have worked incredibly hard on myself to get more outside of my head, but I honestly dont know a lot of people that are even close to as introverted as me. I was the kid that was rather sitting alone in a corner, thinking about himself than playing with his friends. I remember one of my birthdays (maybe my 9th/10th birthday) where all of my friends would be playing, having fun, but after a small disappointment I would sit alone a bit further away, just thinking about myself. Thinking about life, how I felt etc.
I am the kind of guy that sits in class and is completely in his head. I am physically attending class, but I am completely elsewhere in my head. I could never really focus on what people where talking about for a long period of time because I got caught up in my head so hard.
It wasnt that I was shy, it wasnt that I had no friends or was an outsider. I was/am simply very introverted. I think a lot about how things are, what im going to do. I constantly daydream.
I kind of enjoy these moments sometimes because its so peacefull in my own mind. But there is a huge sideeffect that to this day I suffer from and feel the aftermaths from years before.
I think it was due to my introversion (Which is also a part of why im so competitively obsessed) that I developed a social anxiety. I was always so in my head that I didnt really communicate much with the outside world. Yes, I had my friends, but I was never talking to anyone else. I was not comfortable with talking to anyone that I did not know and I was never doing things alone. I was scared shitless of teachers for so long, I dont even know why.
Because I was so introverted, I missed so many things in life. All the things people talk about that "one is supposed to know", all the things that are seen as "general knowledge", I completely missed that shit. I was so in my head when I was not doing my "passion activity" (most times thinking about it), that I was completely ignoring what went on around me.
I also remember how so many teachers hated me guts. I think it was because they felt I was an ignorant asshole. I never "gave a shit" about what was going on. Thats not really true tho, I just could not keep up my attention as other kids could. I was so instantly hooked on my own thoughts that I missed so much from what was said, from what was going on. It seemed like im just disinterested.
And all that time that I was not at school or some other event that I was forced to go to, I would be doing my activity, my passion. I never had time to think about anything else, I never did care about anything else. I forgot about whatever else there was and focused solely on that one thing.
Yes, I got good at what I was doing, but at the same time I lack in so many things in life. Im so unadept in so many things in life because im not used to doing it. I feel so awkward in so many "normal" situations because I feel so stressed out, not being used to doing "normal things". My mind was always so focused on what I wanted to do at the time, that I just never learned a lot of the things that "normal people do".
To this day, I still lack a lot in general knowledge for example. You can ask me the simplest of things and I cant tell you, because I was always so much in my own head, thinking about myself and only about my own craft, never cared about anything else.
You will probably laugh at me now, because im 20 and "should know", but im going to be honest here. A year ago I did not even know where the biggest countries in the world were on the atlas. I knew where germany was and where the US was, that was it. "Thats very sad" you will probably say now. And yes, it kind of is. But its because nobody seems to understand how it truely is to be like this. To be so in your head that you dont ever realize whats going on around you.
People think im "stupid" because I dont know some of the shit that seems to be so generally known. I dont even know what to say to them because they will never understand how I am different from them.
These past months I have worked a bit on my lack of knowledge and shit. I worked through a lot of my knowledge-lacks and what I miss from the outside-world. I still suck at so many things, one can only imagine how much you miss when youre constantly in your head for years.
However, because I want to live an extraordinary life and I think to do that you have to Understand the world around you. For me it does not come easy tho. It is an active process. I really have to force myself to give the outside world more attention. Otherwise, I fall back into the habit of ignoring everything around me, totally being in my head.
Additionally to missing a lot of things that were going on in the meanwhile, whilst I was comletely in my head and focused on my competitive fix, there was another downside.
Like I said, I identified with my passion. The instant I started doing something, I got so hooked, I made the decision of being the best at it. I remember when I started doing fighting-sports. I wanted to become the world-champion (yes, it sounds kind of ridiculous i know), so I trained so so hard. There were basically 2 lessons. The first hour would almost kill you already because it was just incredibly exhausting.
There was so much excercising going on that I have never felt this exhausted in my life before. The 2nd lesson was sometimes more focused on technique, other times even harder in terms of excercising because the guys that went to the 2nd lesson were often more advanced.
Nobody would go to both lessons as It was almost crazy to put your body through this much pain. I remember i forced myself after a while to almost always go through both lessons plus additionally doing pushups. I was so sore that I trained until the point where I broke down and couldnt do a single pushup anymore.
After that, I would go home and practice all techniques, oftern for hours. I would stand in front of the mirror perfecting the punches, stretching my legs, practicing my kicks and so on. Then i would go on, watching videos of professionals, studying movements and practice my stuff over and over. I would do that pretty much every time I went to training, which at one point was like 4 times a week. ( You really couldnt get any more than this because of your muscles )
After some months, I was one of the best. I wasnt "black belt" level for sure, but I surpassed people that have been training for years and years. My trainers told me that I was "an incredible talent of nature", but to be honest Im not. I am just like everyone else, with the small difference that I work my ass off, if i want something. I am neither hyper-talented, nor super smart. But I rather die than be the 2nd best. I never could understand that anyone could be as good as me if he started out at the same time. Because I would always do more, try harder.
I got kind of used to winning and being pretty damn good at something very quickly when I was younger. But I paid my price for it. Thats why that was an expectation. The real competition, the real fight was never against anyone else, it was against myself. I expected to be the best. For me, that was my foundation.
This was just something that I expected, because I was trying so hard. Because I was doing my everything for it. I was sacrificing so much for it and at some point in my life I realized that I was doing that. Just for being better.
After all that I have told you so far, can you imagine how it is to fail? To lose? To fuck up? To not be the best? If you are similar to me, you will know that failure is the worst thing you could ever feel as a person like this. Its your identity, your person failing. Youre not failing at a task, you, who you are - is failing. Why? Because I am so incredibly investing, sacraficing, that this is who I am. This is my life. And if im not good at this one thing, what good am I?
Being hyper competitive can be nice. But you can never have fun unless youre winning. I cant describe how many times I have cried, raged, fallen in such deep self-hatred through losing that i even got suicidal thoughts. I just felt like a worthless piece of shit when I lost. I get so incredibly angry and disappointed because it is not some skill that Im missing, its literally me not being enough, because I already invest my 100%.
This is why i get absolutely crazy when things dont go my way. Why I get so incredibly frustrated when I fail in starcraft or anything else. Some of you that read this will know my stream and will know me in that way. Maybe now, youre a bit closer to understanding who I am.
This also explains why "shock is not playing LoL" or anything else. I couldnt start a game without trying to be my absolute best at it. There is no way I will ever commit myself to doing it. Having fun for me is being good. If I was to play "league of legends a bit" I would try to research the shit out of the game and tryhard to become my best at it. I will never be able to just let go and enjoy something competitive. I cant be casual, and you know what? Thats okay.
This is who I am. This is who I have to be. I would never be anyone else, and I dont want to be anyone else. I lack in so many things, I am weak in so many things but im incredibly good at other stuff. You cant tell me to "care less and just enjoy" because thats not who I am. You dont understand how I work if you think its that easy. I dont decide this, this is just me.
Thanks for reading,
ShoCk.
