Achieveing Greatness

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Does anyone else feel this way? I have this pervasive, constant, unending desire to do something important, something bigger than me that will outlast me. The feeling is driving me nuts though. I fret over the details, and remember my failures while I minimize my successes. I've been a competitive runner for eight or nine years, and I've managed to improve my times, but all I can remember is how poorly I did in high school, or how I kept getting injured. When I've finished a great race, the main thought in my mind is how there are a lot of runners who could do my time with little effort. It makes my efforts feel small and inconsequential. I still have dreams of being a truly great runner, but I have a constant doubt that I'm wasting time on a dead end...yet I can't give it up either, for I will always wonder what if?

I also make films (I'm a grad student) and I have the same feelings here too. I try to make great films that people will enjoy, that have something important and meaningful to say. I put my heart and soul into them, and yet when they're done, I can't bear to watch them. I see all that went wrong, or I remember what others thought of it. My first big film was an 85 minute feature that I worked on for two years. At the premiere less than a dozen people showed up, and after that I couldn't bear to watch it. I hated it.

The point being, I've got to do something BIG. Something good. I've resigned myself to the fact that I won't marry or have anyone. I certainly don't want kids...can't stand them, not to mention I don't want to pass on what I've got to some poor newborn.

I'm growing increasingly worried that I won't do anything worth remembering, that no one will care I existed. Worse still, I've gotten to be afraid to sleep. I have a recurring fear that I will never wake up, and no one will know about it until the smell gets too bad. I hate the idea of dying anonymously, for no reason, like in a plane crash, or of a freak heart ailment.

Sorry it's a lot to throw out, but I needed to get this out into the open. Does anyone else have these kinds of feelings? How do you deal with them?

BR

what you describe is an As feature....we try to over do it, or as the shrinks describe it.....perfectionism.

then you have a lot of egocentricity, which is an AS feature and then a lack of executive functioning, organisation...spending 2 years on a project for it to fail.

you can realise that you try to do too much and learn to modulate it, or become another washed out has been AS loser who is annoyed with the world and blames AS.

First of all remember to never compare yourself to others or at least try to minimize the comparison. Second maybe keep a blog of your achievements and write them down?

Im thinking about taking over the world if thats what you mean. olso it brings alot of paranoia sometimes.
But some day i will be called the master.

ooh tough one. Same general feeling this side. A good friend who I may or may not have lost last asked me "Are you proud of yourself, do you like yourself" To answer that one, NO.

But break it down. I have achieved some great things but overall they do not seem so great because hey, a lot of other people have a black belt, a lot of people play pool well, a lot of people dance well, a lot o people have acting jobs, do better than me at class, fly a parachute better, etc. Yes I am venting.

looking back on what I have written yes other people have achieved that as well, but not all THAT. some have one maybe two, I have no-idea how many I have. So looking at all this if I can say this to my friend i would say, yes I am proud of myself and what I have achieved. The problem is not in what I have achieved or how many but in what the few people around me look at it, which is wrong.

Final thought, look at what you got. Your name will be on 10 documents and 10 average to good things. They will have one great thing and 9 terrible things. Yeah it can go the opposite way but positively, I have achieved more in my short life than some 50 year olds, no offence please, have even dreamed of. Isn't that really what AS is.

I know exactly what you mean. I am a total perfectionist. I'm sure there are many factors that have led to my situation, some neurological and some psychological. I am indeed a very talented person, and I've always enjoyed tremendous success in everything I've ever truly wanted to do. I was also an only child with very supportive parents who built up my ego very much. I'm also very selfless, and although a small part of my desire to achieve greatness is so that I can be well-known, wealthy, and respected, the majority comes from this great feeling of pressure I feel - "to whom much is given, much is asked" - and I feel that with all of the advantages I've had in life, from very high intelligence to good schooling to financial support from my parents, anything less than being one of the most meaningful contributors to the world will be a failure. Shortly after going to college, this tremendous amount of pressure I always put on myself began to backfire. I had no clear direction, lots of anxiety, and I started doing drugs. I lost a ton of confidence and now I remember many of my past successes and can hardly believe that I actually did them, because it's so hard for me just to fulfill my responsibilities with school, feeding myself, etc., the idea of devoting that much dedication and work to something I love is very foreign. However, truth be told, I think the fact that I think of it as work is very telling. If I really find my niche, it won't be work... I have many passions. I just have to find a realistic and practical way to pursue the one(s) that mean most to me. Thankfully, my days of drug abuse are (hopefully) behind me, and my anxiety, while still a major issue, is decreasing. I am feeling stronger and more confident, and I'm realizing that I really can achieve my goals and that the main problem for the last few years has been anxiety, biting off more than I can chew only to abandon a project shortly thereafter (another thing we probably have in common), and simply not having any real concrete goal that I believe in enough to stick with.

When it comes to education, I am the most successful person my family has ever produced, judging by where I am at this point in my life. I am also, as mentioned, an only child, and a former (and still occasional) egomaniac. I often feel like I am a dog chasing its tail - I have all of these ideas, all of these interests, but I'm too anxious to pursue them (drug abuse has a lot to do with it). And the fact that the way to break out of it - positive thinking, pursuing what I love, setting small, short term goals - seems so obvious and yet for some reason I still can't bring myself to give anything my full effort - makes it that much HARDER to break out of the cycle because I feel like the only person stopping myself is me which makes me hate myself which makes me anxious which ad infinitum.

But, as I said, I'm making great progress. I no longer smoke weed every day and I've generally become a more active person again. But, I still have quite a ways to go. I just have to keep increasing my belief in myself and take baby steps to pursue healthy passions that give me life meaning and enjoyment. Hope some of this helps. You're definitely not alone.

Edit - by the way, I used to be a competitive distance runner, and for the longest time, every race that wasn't a PR I considered a failure. I was so nervous before every race that I had almost no fun except for the ego boost that I got from being good at something. Towards the end of my senior year, I finally realized that every race can't be a PR and that some races, especially smaller ones, should just be enjoyed. Still to this day, despite achieving a LOT in the sport, I see, for the most part, missed opportunities, lack of true dedication, poor race tactics, lack of mental toughness... it's really a sickness. Also, hilariously, I did a film program one summer, and although I enjoyed it, I was so embarrassed about the quality of my short films that I never showed any of them to anyone and never watched them again after the class, despite the fact that they were pretty clever.

To "The Master",

If you need a solid, charismatic right hand man then I'll send you my resume. I just finished my graduate level class called "Right Hand Man's Guide to Global Dominance and General Ass Kissing".

P.S. The lab sucked though.

Yeah, I have felt like what you describe. That there is something bigger for me to be a part of or something I do or create is going to elevate me from the mediocrity of my existence and I will transcend time. I think for me, after graduating college and not being able to find a job, the feeling you describe was replaced with the desire to have a normal life with a decent job. That all happened and then I discovered my AS.

Maybe take measured steps to accomplish something big. For instance, writing a novel. One of my favorite American authors is Herman Melville. His method of creativity may work well for Aspies. When he would get an idea for a story he would get a large barrel and write the title of the story on the outside. He would at times have more than one barrel, each for a different story. When he thought of something that applied to one of the stories he would jot it down on a piece of paper, crumple it up and then toss it in the correct barrel. Once the pieces of paper got to the top of the barrel he would go through them and start writing the actual story.

And, sometimes, finding the right person to spend the rest of your life with is the biggest thing to happen to you and the rest falls into place.

Good Luck

Actually, I'm pretty laid back in this respect, and I suppose it's a personal blessing. I don't really care if I leave anything behind because after I die I won't exist to appreciate it, anyway, but that's just me. People think I'm lazy and apathetic, but I think it's just my own reflection of how I see the thoughtless hypocrisy that many people practice. What I do is just a conscious expression of the same thing everyone else does. At least I'm honest.

I think I always figured I was entitled to achieve greatness, so I haven't been anxious about it. Instead I've been anxious about financial security along the way.

My rule is to find my own personal mountains to climb, and to climb them, and to keep climbing even after set backs until I get there or genuinely lose interest (because it turned out they were training exercises for something else). The key is to choose a goal that comes from inside - that's where the confidence and lack of anxiety comes from. If I try to succeed on someone else's terms, I'm doomed to never feeling I've got it, whereas doing something that comes from inside keeps me anchored.

I've already written a Great Work, that will keep me in funds when I'm older. It's sitting in a slush pile somewhere, waiting for someone else to figure out its worth, and has been for over a year now, but I know it will succeed in the long run, because I felt it come alive under my hands. It was really exciting when that happened.

And more recently I asked a researcher for advice on a paper I'm trying to get published, and his positive response has me seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, so my short term poverty isn't as bad as it was a year ago even though I'm still just as poor.

I know what you mean, I've been trying to write the world's greates novel for... some years now but I can't pass the stage of collecting ideas (a bit like Melville, but I've got coloured files instead of barrels ;p), mostly because of my ADD.

I've always had the desire for doing something bigger-than-life, I never suspected that I would end up doing some boring office job just to get by and that this s**t job would take all the energy I hoped to put into more creative things.

yet here I am, hoping for a job, any job that would pay the bloody bills. I'm still struggling with the reality check I got after finishing uni and being confronted with this.

then again, I know I had a lot of talents that went to waste because of my AS, my ADD and good old fashioned lazyness- for some reason I believed that because of my talents I will be given everything on a golden plate and lead a rock'n'roll lifestyle while everyone else is working their asses off for their daily bread.

Well yeah I feel this, for a while I have been colecting ideas for a novel series, though I find it difficult to actualy write anything. I wish that I could become great but my defects drag me down and I am thinking I probably wont get ther but at least I can try with my novel series at least it gives me a bit of hope. though some times feels a bit like I am wishing for too much.