Your deck's bracket is NOT reflective of your skill.

I like the bracket system, I really do. I think some small improvements could be made here or there (biggest one for me would be dropping precons to bracket 1 and splitting up bracket 3 into bracket 2 and 3). But I think the biggest issue people have when it comes to ANY system meant to measure a deck's power level/place in the meta is how much importance players attach to their deck's bracket.

Without proper exposure to the absolute top end of what an EDH deck can look like, it's very hard for some to accurately judge where their deck fits within the bracket system. If you're used to playing at home with two of your buddies and your ONE trek to the LGS ended up with the three of you getting whooped by some mono green ramp deck, you'd be forgiven for thinking that's what a bracket 5 looks like. If that's the strongest a deck can be (based on what you've experienced), then surely your decks are a reasonable 3, right? And your deck isn't a 2, because you're a good magic player and you have always brewed your own decks. It stands to reason that whatever you come up with, unlimited by budget, is better than whatever you can find in a precon.

Unfortunately that's not how it works. Let's look at two different bracket 3 decks:

* Deck A is built by a veteran of mtg with 30 years of experience, some standard and modern competitive experience AND has a cEDH deck in his arsenal.

* Deck B is built by a player who has been playing for 4 years, looks at edhrec as their first/main ressource whenever they build a deck and has never dipped their toe into standard or seen an actual cEDH deck in action.

Generally, deck A is going to be much more consistent, resilient and flexible than deck B. On the surface, they'll seem pretty similar to something you'd find by picking cards off edhrec, but they probably don't QUITE follow the same strategy and just seem to ALWAYS have the right answer to every situation.

Deck B on the other hand, often starts feeling giddy about their next turn coming up, because they know they'll be able to cast that big card they've been slowly building up to over the last 4 turns. As long as nobody touches their stuff, they'll pull off something REALLY cool.

If they played against each other, I suspect deck A to win the vast majority of games against deck B. Does that mean deck A is actually bracket 4? No, I'd argue deck B is bracket 2.

Here is the problem though: No player WANTS to play a bracket 2 deck. This is the best they could do, this is the result of all their hard work. They've put time, effort and money into this deck. If they categorized it as bracket 2, they would feel awful. Yes, deckbuilding IS a skill, and it's a skill that can be learned, but it takes a LOT of time and practice to develop. Maybe right now, your very best IS a bracket 2.

And that's okay.

Players need to detach their sense of self-worth from whatever bracket their decks end up in. Be honest with yourself, be honest about your deck. Is is ACTUALLY "3 borderline 4"? Or is it just the best you could come up with? I believe that if players get more comfortable with the idea of building a bracket 2 deck, then the bracket system will work better as a whole. Less people will erroneously categorize their decks as a 3 or 4, which will raise the ceiling and give a bit of breathing room for what kind of decks you can expect to find within each bracket.

tl;dr - Your bracket 3 deck is probably a 2, and that's okay. It doesn't make you a bad player and you shouldn't feel like a lesser player because of it.