Being a leader.

[Creatine Dreams]

I hope this thread makes sense because this is something I have been struggling with for a long time.

I feel the urge to associate with people who are better than me. What I mean is that I get bored when I hang out with people who I perceive to be less cool or less interesting than me.

I tend to associate with people who are more proactive at planning social events than me, while simultaneously, not making the effort to plan social events myself. I tend to see myself less as a host and more as a host.

The thing is, when I plan events they usually go ok, people come and we have fun. But I always have this paranoia that people will not show up.

As far as other things go, I often defer leadership to others, even if I know that I will do a better job.

There is one area in which I am a pretty good leader and that is in music.
I know how to work with other people who are not as good as me and get them to perform their best. Still, even in this context, I always long to play with better people who will challenge me.

Regarding women, I am often attracted to women older than me because I feel they have more experience and can lead. I often screen myself from talking to younger girls because I sometimes feel that I am not comfortable being the leader. I like to be pursued, and am sometimes terrified at pursuing. Plus, I want to be with a woman who I consider "better" than me. But the problem is, if I truly think she is better than me, she will leave.

In sum, I think that I am not comfortable with having people looking up to me because I do not like myself.

I think a good solution is to become more comfortable with leading and to become more comfortable with people looking up to me.
Has anyone gone through this?

[Thor]

I was chatting about a similar topic to a friend who is ex special forces. His reply was do whatever you have to do to earn your own respect. Once you have done that let others formulate their own opinions about you.

[ThatCatch]

Back in high school, we went on a mandatory retreat with about 60 guys per retreat (I went to an all guy school).

I went on one and was absolutely enthralled with it. The clarity, the emotions, and all that jazz. So I decided to lead one. In it, all of the leaders had to give a specific speech. A good friend of mine was up on the last day, giving his speech, when he asked the people on the retreat to take out their pad and paper and write down five people they consider to be their own personal "hero", someone they look up to, or someone who they think is a good leader.

After that, he paused for a minute and asked if anybody had written themselves down in this list. Only two, maybe three people raised their hands. One of them, one of the captains on the football team. People were divided into groups, based on leaders, and captain happened to be in my group, so afterwards I asked him why he wrote himself down.

In essence, he said that he had a team to lead, and he knew that people looked up to him just because of that. Then he began to question other people in the group, saying that if they had a brother, they were a leader. If they had a sister, they were a leader. If they were involved in a sport or activity, they were a leader. If they were a best friend to someone, they were a leader.

I can attest to this: I had people come up to me on that retreat and told me that they admired me for certain qualities. These were people I had no idea would feel that way. I didn't really even hang out with them, yet they looked up to me. What I'm saying is, you can't necessarily get away from being a leader, so embrace it. You must put yourself in those situations to become a leader too; don't except it to just come to you in most cases. I had to apply to become a retreat leader, had to bust my ass writing my speech, learning how to lead a group of guys in quite possibly one of the most emotional times in their life, ect.

And I would not change it for the world. You could sit back and follow someone, but if you are the leader, you will develop a pride and sense of accomplishment that is otherwise impossible by just association. Is it scary? Sure. Could you fail? Yeah. But what is worth it in life where those two rules don't apply?

Tldr; force yourself into leadership positions.