LARPing – definition from Urban dictionary, means Live Action Role Playing, where people act out their fictional characters and scenario in real life. While most relates this to fantasy groups enjoying their D&D skirmishes out in the field, believe it or not, the average person have been LARPing for almost the entirety of their lives. Do you happen to be one of them?
LARPing on Social Media
How real are you on social media? Do you intend to show the best of you or a fabricated ideal of what you think your life should look like? There is a clear difference between the two.
There is no harm in wanting to put your best moments online for other to look at. People change their behaviors to fit where they are. The you that goes on their first date will be different than the you that’s running the 14 people meeting, or the you that’s at home helping your parents. All of them are best versions of you depending on the situation at hand. Unfortunately, social media became an unregulated gateway to creating “overly curated” personas that can not be farther from the truth.
Over dependency towards the need to look perfect all the time for the gram can make you a LARPer, choosing to live your life for the sake of other people’s perceptions rather than actually living.
LARPing in Real Life
Life isn’t always pretty or exciting as one would like it to be. In fact, I’d say at least 80% of life is monotonous and routine-like, even those vacationing in the Bahamas will get bored of it eventually. People crave changes in their lives but at the same time are quite adverse towards risk taking. Hence, we depend on some forms of safe escapism to satisfy this craving our ours.
Escapism is defined as “the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities”. Forms of escapism can be found in medias such as movies, books, TV series, video games and plenty others. These are all simply a means of distraction that sedates and prevents you from actually taking action to apply change. You are living vicariously through them, while still remaining a stagnant constant in the real world. We all could use a breather, but too much of it is detrimental.
If you find yourself constantly being inside your own world, dreading the return to real life, and when you do, craving to go back in again – you may just be LARPing without even realizing it. Some can get so severe that the fantasy life they are living can bleed destructively into real life.
The Fake It Till You Make It Fallacy
It’s not enough and frankly difficult to maintain a false identity throughout your life. Yes, that’s right – LARPing is, for all intensive purposes, a false identity that people have molded to distort what their current life truly is. For some, they try to break from it, while most are content with simply living the fantasy even if it means lying to themselves every single day.
I can tell you that it doesn’t have to be like that. I believe everyone has the power and ability to manifest their dream self into the world. All it needs is a conscious effort to move away from faking it – to later on – making it.
How to Stop LARPing and Live Your Life to the Fullest
Rather than individual tips or “life hacks”, the following serves more of like a step-by-step guide to fulfilling your goal.
1. Set small achievable goals
These ideally should be aspirational goals, or how you’d like to see yourself in the future. Do you want to be a doctor? A lawyer? An artist? Or even something vague like being “successful”. It all comes down to how you’d define success and what steps towards it that you’re taking. Set small goals for those step and celebrate whenever you hit them.
2. Taking reality as it is
So you’ve done step 1, great! Does your current situation fit to what you’re trying to accomplish? Probably not likely. Most goals remained unattained due to the external factors that’s preventing you from doing so. These can range from disapprovals, to even the place you’re born in. There will always going to be obstacles in your way, it just depends on how you’d hurdle over them.
Reality will not change for you, you have to make that change onto reality – no matter now unpleasant or difficult it is. So, remember to take small steps and you’ll be good to go!
3. You are the main character
So act like one! Do not just let life flow past you and certainly stop LARPing, simply dreaming that you’re going to reach your ideal through sheer luck. Out of the nearly 8 billion people living in this world, there exists only one unique you. So never dream or LARP without exacting actual change!
We often find people who enjoy reenacting the Civil War or the Renaissance Period to be a bit outlandish at times. Heck, you might even ridicule them for such a supposedly absurd hobby. BUT, at least they have the courage to play out their fantasy to the best of their abilities despite everything else. So, do tell me, if they can do it, will you too?