Perceptions of perfection | Joey Harrington | TEDxPortland

With an honest and vulnerable approach, Joey Harrington, delivers a masterful Talk on the idea that perfection is a matter of perception. From the narcissistic pitfalls of social media to the "Joey Heisman" billboard in Times Square, we are setting ourselves up for failure if we do not choose to live our most authentic, true selves.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I know that was my wife over there.

(Laughter)

I'm going to talk to you today
about the idea of pursuing perfection,

and how our environment affects
our perception of what is perfect.

This idea, which has always been around,

has become increasingly poignant
with the evolution of social media

and our desire to portray
our life as a wonderland.

You see, rarely does anybody
go to Instagram

to post a picture of the mess
that is our daily life.

(Laughter)

Admit it, it's a mess.

Instead, people are constantly
searching for the perfect light

to take the perfect picture,
in the perfect place,

having the perfect time.

We then share these pictures,

hoping that people will validate
our experiences of -

the perfect meal.

God, that looks so yummy.

The perfect body.

Thank you, Kim Kardashian,
for posting that on National Women's Day.

Seriously.

(Laughter)

The perfect vacation.

We've become conditioned to share only
our best yet completely unrealistic selves

as a way of keeping up
with the virtual Joneses.

This desire isn't realistic,
it isn't healthy,

and I believe we are setting
ourselves up for failure.

A recent parody that played
on this Instagram phenomenon

was called Socality Barbie.

I'm not sure if anybody saw this.

She was created by a Portlander
named Darby Cisneros.

It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

With the help of a doll, she'd satirically
reenacted the most perfect moments,

at the coast.

(Laughter)

I didn't know Haystack Rock was so small.

At the coffee shop,

I'm not kidding.

My wife actually saw somebody
draw a cat face in her coffee froth once.

That was actually kind of incredible.

With her favorite friends -

Loot at the quote,

"We took a break
from technology this morning.

It was only for 10 minutes,
but it was exactly what we needed."

(Laughter)

Hashtag OMG.

(Laughter)

Ice cream just looks better
in front of a concrete wall.

(Laughter)

This is my favorite:

"Waking up at 10 a.m. was so worth it

to get that perfect light
and the perfect fog."

(Laughter)

After capturing the attention
of over a million followers,

she decommissioned the account.

She made her point.

To quote her last post,

"I started Socality Barbie as a way
to poke fun at all the Instagram trends

that I thought were
absolutely ridiculous.

Never in a million years did I think

it would receive the amount
of attention that it did.

Because of that, it has opened the door
to a lot of great discussions

like how we choose
to present ourselves online,

the insane lengths many go to
to create the perfect Instagram life."

Why are we trying to create
a perfect Instagram life?

This made me think.

Rewind 15 years ago
to my first "Instagram" post,

Joey Heisman.

For the better part, of six months,
I had over a million views a day.

A ten-story billboard in New York city

at the top of Penn Station
across from Madison Square Garden,

as a way of attracting eyeballs.

And for six months during 2001,
that is where I sat.

Overnight, I became a media sensation
in the largest media market in the world.

Some people were thrilled that a player
from a west coast school, not named USC,

was receiving this type
of national attention.

Some people were furious

that someone would have the audacity
to promote themselves in a way

that was so in your face and over the top.

But most of all, people were just curious.

Who I was and what I had done to deserve
this larger-than-life attention.

Why was I standing over everyone else?

And why did I deserve the highest
recognition in college football?

It created an idea that I was
bigger and better than everyone else.

It created the idea that I was someone
who was completely in control

of everything that happened
on the football field.

And I believed it.

And that would eventually
become a problem.

This campaign was part of my experience
at the University of Oregon.

I had my wonderful life
from 1999 until 2002.

I was a kid that helped turn a local team
into a national college football power.

And with every win
came another member of the media.

And with every member of the media
came another headline,

and with every headline
came another story,

another chance to buy into this idea
that was created for me:

Perfection.

I was the quarterback
for the Oregon Ducks,

and during my time,
we won a lot of football games;

27 of the 30 games that I played.

But it wasn't always that way.

The year prior to my arrival on campus,

the Ducks failed to reach
a postseason bowl game,

and never in their history
had they won more than nine games.

The goal of our freshmen class

was to take this program
to heights that it had never seen

and not let anything,
opponent or teammate,

stand in our way.

That wristband used to be white.

When you win 27 games, you don't wash it.

(Laughter)

It was lucky.

We achieved this goal,
winning both 10 and 11 games respectively,

in a season for the first time ever.

And when our time
at the University of Oregon was finished,

our senior class had won more games
than any in school history.

As the quarterback,
I was the face of that team.

Since it seemed
like all our team did was win,

I believed that that was
all I was capable of.

And the media was more than happy
to continue that narrative.

What inevitably came was something
that everybody in life faces,

but something that I was absolutely
and completely unprepared for:

Failure.

In 2002,

I was selected by the Detroit Lions ...

(Applause)

I was selected by the Detroit Lions,

with the third overall pick
in the NFL draft.

And in my four years in Detroit,

we never finished the season
with the winning record.

You see, up until this point in my career,
I had never experienced losing.

Sure, we lost a couple games.

But continued losing at this scale

flew in the face of everything
that I had come to believe.

According to everything
I had done up to that point,

I didn't lose.

If I worked hard and prepared the way
that I knew I was capable of,

everything worked out.

They'd write a nice little newspaper
article about it afterwards.

When you're taken third in the NFL draft,
you're generally taken by a team

that was one of the worst
in the league the year before.

And with rare exception,

that team will continue to be bad
even after drafting you.

(Laughter)

Believe it or not,
it takes more than one player

to turn around
the fortunes of a franchise.

The script was no different for me.

In my first year in the league,
we lost 13 of our 16 games,

but, that was OK, that was to be expected.

It was what followed that rocked me.

For a variety of reasons,
we continued to lose.

And after each loss,

I went back to practice,
and I worked harder.

I studied more, I watched more game film.

Because according to my story,

when I work hard enough,
everything just works out in the end.

So the more we lost, the harder I worked.

And when we still lost,
I began to doubt myself.

And when I doubted myself,
I played poorly.

And when I played poorly, we lost.

And when we went into a loss,
I went back and I worked harder.

And when we still lost,

I figured that there must be
something wrong with me.

Because, you see, at that point,
losing wasn't just losing on the field.

When I lost, I lost in life.

Because -

losing wasn't part of my story.

Losing -

Losing wasn't perfect.

I set myself up for a crash.

Because football became
how I defined myself.

It wasn't what I did. It became who I was.

My perception of myself had become
tied to the number of touchdowns I threw.

My value as a human being
was connected to the final score.

My happiness was a direct result

of whether or not
I lived up to the perfection,

this image that I had bought into.

If it was only about my performance,

that's one thing.

But part of the reality
I was trying to live up to

was that of the infallible leader.

I was the quarterback

capable of bringing any team
back from the depths.

And I, and I alone, had the power
to bring together a group of guys

to do something that they had
never achieved before.

Remember, they didn't put
the rest of my teammates

on that "Instagram" post in New York.

So I believed it was my job
to be all things to all people

and inspire my teammates
to achieve success

that they had never achieved before.

I tried to tailor my leadership style -

and, frankly, the way I acted -

to what I thought each teammate wanted.

I tried to feel everyone else's idea
of what a leader should be.

And in the effort of trying
to please everybody else,

I lost myself.

I felt like a failure.

I was embarrassed

because I was letting everybody else down.

I was ashamed

because I was squandering an opportunity

that so few people get.

I struggled with depression because -

my world was crashing.

I dreaded going out in public
because I didn't want to -

I was scared.

I would face the same jeers
that I faced in the stadiums on Sundays.

I'd wear a hat to the grocery store

because I just didn't want
to have to talk to people

and tell them about what a failure I was.

I tried to pretend
that it wasn't getting to me,

or that this was merely one -

long speed bump.

But all I was doing was masking the fact

that I was scared, and I felt
like I was completely out of control.

I needed help.

And I had no idea how to ask for it.

Through the urging of our general manager,
I sought the help of a psychologist.

I had visualized being on a brown couch
and just complaining a lot.

(Laughter)

My perception was a little bit wrong.

My psychologist was a man named Greg,

and it's safe to say that Greg was
a little bit outside the box.

(Laughter)

And while our sessions often happened

on walks through the University
of Michigan campus

or on the golf course,

he made a really interesting point.

In order to play well again,

I had to stop caring
about other people's perceptions.

Well, this concept is,
you know, OK, at first.

When you think about it, it's brilliant.

You see, when I stopped caring
about how many likes I got,

I was able to remove
the unnecessary burden

of trying to be perfect for everybody.

And when I stop trying to be perfect,
I was able to relax and just play.

And when I played loose, I played well.

And when I played well, we won.

And woo, when we won, the poetic irony is,
"Hey, everybody likes me again."

(Laughter)

When I removed the burden of perfection,
something else happened.

I began to find myself,

and more importantly, like myself again.

People didn't like me because I lived up
to some idyllic expectation of perfection.

They liked me because I was me.

I was genuine,

just kind of a dork, you know,
I was real, I was unique.

The moment I tried to live up to this
perceived expectation of perfection

is the moment I lost what was real

and started chasing what I thought
other people wanted me to be.

And the moment I started
chasing something else

was the moment I lost what made me
so great in the first place.

You see,

people gravitate to individuals
who they know are truthful and genuine.

And when you're trying
to be like somebody else,

you're not living the truth.

I am not in the NFL hall of fame.

I am not even in the same zip code.

(Laughter)

But right now, I could not be happier.

(Applause)

I have the love of an incredible family.

And because of that, I know
that I don't have to be perfect

and I have permission to fail.

I've learnt that what makes you
a wonderful person isn't being perfect.

What makes you wonderful

is giving an incredible effort
and then falling short.

Because when you fall short,
you're given the opportunity to learn.

So, the next time you face a situation,

you'll have grown and developed
the necessary character

to become a better person.

Nice story.

How does it relate to you?

It's simple.

How many people opened up
their social media account at lunch time

and checked how many likes
their posts got?

Anybody? Yeah.

(Laughter)

Like our friend,
Socality Barbie, pointed out,

social media has given everybody -

even a doll, everybody -

the opportunity to experience
the unique feeling of being a star.

Overnight, you can have a million
sets of eyeballs watching what you do.

And while all of this exposure
has created a ton of opportunities,

it's also opened the door
for everyone to the potential pitfalls

and pressures of living a public life.

Be careful.

When you desire to live in a world
that's constantly looking for perfection,

overpowers your desire to live in a world
that is real and genuine,

you're setting yourself up for failure.

You're setting yourself up for the same
feelings of shortcomings and inadequacy

that I experienced.

So, the next time you're adjusting
the filter on your camera

while you're taking a picture
of your cinnamon roll at breakfast,

(Laughter)

or you're retaking your selfie because
your lips just didn't look pouty enough -

(Laughter)

just pause,

think about what you're doing.

I would encourage you
to keep that imperfect picture.

Embrace it. Love it. Own it.

Because it's only through
these imperfect moments

that we are really and truly able to learn

how wonderful life can be.

Thank you.

(Applause)