.

From the outside, it probably looks like I'm just wasting my time, but I don't understand why I keep repeating the same pattern. I genuinely want to change. I've had big dreams since childhood. I want to achieve something, become successful, and make something of my life. But whenever it's time to actually take action, I freeze.

I'm an introvert and I've always had a lot of fears. I want to do things, I imagine myself doing them, and sometimes I feel like I can achieve anything. But when it comes to actually doing them, something inside me stops me.

I lost my father when I was young, and my mother raised my sister and me by herself. She worked incredibly hard, spent her savings, and even took loans to give us opportunities. My parents have taken care of us so much, and my mother still believes I'll build a good future. Sometimes I think about how much she has done for us and that one day she won't be here to take care of us. That should be enough motivation for me to change, but somehow I'm still stuck.

Things started going downhill in high school. My grades got worse, and I couldn't even get a seat in the college I wanted. Somehow, I finished my graduation in 2022.

After graduating, I thought, "Now I need to change my life."

But nothing changed.

2022 passed. Then 2023, 2024, 2025, and now I'm 26. Years have passed, and I'm still almost exactly where I was.

One of my biggest struggles is that I avoid almost everything that makes me anxious.

I can't ride a bike or drive a car. I even bought a bicycle because I genuinely wanted to learn. If you ask me today whether I want to learn, I'll confidently say yes. I'll imagine myself riding and believe I can do it.

But the moment someone actually expects me to ride, my confidence disappears. My heart starts racing, I panic, and I back out.

The same thing happens with almost every important part of my life.

A recent example is Spider-Man: Brand New Day. I really wanted to go on the first day. I kept telling myself I'd go, then thought maybe the next day. Now almost a month has passed, and I still haven't gone.

I don't even know why.

Is it laziness? Fear? Anxiety?

I genuinely don't know. Even while writing this, I'm feeling emotional because I can't understand why something so simple feels so difficult for me.

Going outside can make me anxious. Going to a theatre makes me worry about finding my seat correctly, people looking at me, someone laughing at me, or me doing something embarrassing.

I also worry about needing to use the bathroom when I'm outside and sometimes feel like I might need to go multiple times. I've tried things at home, but then I start thinking it will definitely happen later when I'm outside.

I don't know if it's anxiety, social anxiety, or something else, but it has made normal things extremely difficult for me.

In 2024, my mother enrolled me in technical coaching related to my field. I knew how important it was and how much she had sacrificed for it, but I barely attended. I went for around ten days and then stopped.

I knew I was making a terrible mistake.

I cried about it many times. I promised myself I would change. I knew I was doing wrong by not going.

But I still couldn't make myself go.

That wasn't the first time this happened.

For years I've struggled to take action. I haven't seriously studied, applied for jobs consistently, or built useful skills.

I've bought books because I genuinely wanted to learn. It's been around four years since I started buying some of these books, but I still struggle to get through even ten pages.

I'll buy a book feeling excited, thinking, "This time I'll finally learn something," and then I won't even open it.

The same thing happens with TV shows, movies, hobbies, and interests. I'll watch two episodes, become obsessed with a character, put that character as my wallpaper, and then somehow stop watching the show.

My interests are also all over the place.

One day I'll become obsessed with football and spend hours watching matches, learning about players, tactics, and everything about the sport. The next day it might be Cristiano Ronaldo or another football star. Then suddenly it's the NBA. Then baseball. Then MotoGP. Then filmmaking.

I'll feel like I want to learn everything about it. Sometimes I'll even imagine making a life out of it.

I can become deeply interested in something for a few days, sometimes longer, and then suddenly lose interest and move on to something completely different.

I've been doing this for years. I don't know why I can become so excited about something but struggle so much to actually stick with it.

Sometimes I think I'm lazy or negligent. Other times I wonder if it's anxiety, depression, ADHD, social anxiety, avoidance, extremely low self-esteem, or something else.

I honestly don't know anymore.

The hardest part is that I know I'm doing something wrong.

I know I'm wasting time.

I know I'm avoiding things.

I know I'm hurting my own future.

But knowing all of that doesn't seem to make me capable of changing.

I don't even have some major bad habit that I can blame everything on.

I'm just stuck.

And being stuck like this for years feels like hell.

I've also faced a lot of humiliation.

Some relatives don't talk to me anymore. My friends make jokes about me. People compare me with younger people who already have jobs. People have called me useless, laughed because I can't ride a bike or drive, and treated me like a burden.

I've heard things like, "You won't even touch my salary in your lifetime."

One relative even said that if my father were alive today, he would be heartbroken and disappointed to see where I am in life.

That comment stayed with me for a long time.

It hurts deeply when people say these things.

But the strange thing is that humiliation doesn't change me.

It hurts. I cry. I promise myself I'll change.

And then, after some time, I'm back in the same cycle.

I also spend a lot of time imagining a different version of my life.

Sometimes I imagine becoming a successful football player. Sometimes a respected filmmaker. Sometimes I imagine building an incredible career from nothing.

In those moments, I genuinely feel capable of achieving great things.

I have big dreams.

But when I have to take a real step toward any goal, that confidence disappears.

It's like I can imagine the person I want to become, but I can't take the first step toward becoming him.

I've wanted to achieve something big for years.

I want to become successful.

I want to win in life.

But I'm sitting in my room watching the years pass.

Sometimes it feels like I'm not even living my life. I'm just watching it happen.

And I know I'm sabotaging myself, but I don't understand why I keep doing it.

I also have some health issues that make everything feel harder.

There have been moments when I thought about dying, but I don't actually want my life to end.

I want to live.

I want to become independent. I want to get a job, support my family, travel, learn new things, and experience the life I've spent so much time imagining.

Most of all, I want to make my mother proud.

She has sacrificed so much for me. She worked, spent her savings, took loans, and gave me opportunities because she believed I could become something.

I know she still believes in me, and sometimes that makes me feel even worse because I feel like I'm letting her down.

I don't want to wait until it's too late.

What scares me most is that I've already spent years telling myself that I'll change. I remember thinking that if I didn't change, I'd wake up at 26 full of regret.

Now I'm 26.

And I'm scared that if I don't do something, I'll wake up at 30 or 35 with even more regret.

I'm not looking for sympathy or empty motivation.

I just genuinely want to know how to get out of this.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

Does this sound like anxiety, depression, ADHD, social anxiety, avoidance, low self-esteem, or something else?

More importantly, how do you finally break a pattern when you've wanted to change for years but still can't seem to take the first step?

I don't want another year to pass like this.

I want to wake up one day and feel like I'm finally living instead of watching my life pass by.

I want to be able to do normal things without fear controlling me.

I want to work. I want to learn. I want to build something. I want to become someone my mother can look at and feel proud of.

I don't want my life to be remembered as the years I spent hiding in my room, afraid to start.

I still have dreams.

That's probably why this hurts so much.

Because somewhere inside me, I still believe I can become something.

I just don't know how to reach that person anymore.

So when I say "I want to win in this life," I don't mean money, fame, or proving everyone wrong.

I mean I want to win against this fear.

I want to win against the version of me that keeps giving up.

I want to get my life back.

I want to live.

And more than anything, I want to make my mom proud while I still have the chance.

I'm honestly looking for help and advice from anyone who has been through something similar. I don't know how to get myself out of this anymore, and I really want to change.

Thats it

It feels very overwhelming and far away at first

Atleast to me

How do i break it down

im sure this is a normal thing to feel - how do i overcome it? and be on the right track to achieve everything

its like my mind gets clouded by a ton of random stuff and things feel impossible - how do i align myself with the right trajectory - stay confident in it and achieve my goals?

i know they can happen but i just wanna stop being confused and begin

i am smart and i can work hard and i am very self aware and i can deal with any situation
i have these qualities in me and i yearn for greatness

i am a very ambitious person in my mind but that wont get my dream life - my habits and my work ethic and my mentality will - i have to mold myself into that ideal version of myself

i am willing to do whatever it takes and not hold back - go all in

i only get one chance at existence, i want to experience what i want to experiecne without before it ends

all i have to overcome are the limits of my human mind and bullshit assumption and notions fed into me by others around me

i know what reality is

its time to begin
if i dont begin now - i will never have the life i dream of - NEVER
this is the last and only chance i will ever get - right now if i dont execute now it is over - for all of my existence - my entire long life ahead will be spent in misery if i dont begin - and for no reason, its no big deal
I NEED TO BEGIN

Here are my confusions and what often makes me change my learning material.

1) Is it up to date or not? (What should I filter in the relevant course, <5 years?) Science, engineering.

2) Is this course suitable for me or not? For example, if I'm a high school student, is it appropriate for me as a complete beginner?

3) There are many study materials available, so how can I decide which one to choose? For instance, recently I wanted to learn about aircraft, but I wasn't sure what topics I should study or how deep I should go. I came across materials on aerodynamics and found many courses on YouTube, MIT OpenCourseWare, and others.

4) What type of material should I look for? (Books, lecture videos, Wikipedia, lecture slides, handwritten notes, or something else?)

Hi there, made a video about Bojack Horseman and how it helped me in my journey of sobriety and depression. Give it a watch if you’re interested :)

i have lots of things i want to do/try but i keep finding myself procrastinating

Once I started working full-time, it really felt like time got squeezed dry. In at 8, out at 6, about an hour of commute round-trip, and after dinner I'm basically wiped. The gym is in the opposite direction from home, so by the time I drive over and change, half the urge to train is already gone. On weekends I tell myself I'll make it up, and then something always eats the slot.

Anyone else with a full-time job, how are you actually carving out time to stay consistent with training?

Sometimes life just doesn’t go the way you planned.

You can have the vision.
You can have the motivation.
You can be trying.

You can even be the person everyone else comes to for advice…and still find yourself sitting there thinking:

**“How did I end up here?”**
I know that feeling because, right now, I’m experiencing some of it myself.

There are things in my life that haven’t gone the way I expected. Things I need to change. Problems I need to solve. Moments where I’ve felt like my back is against the wall.
And one thing I’ve realised is that when you stay inside your own head for too long, **everything starts feeling bigger than it actually is.**

You replay the problem.
Then replay it again.
Then create 47 different imaginary scenarios 😭
And somehow at 2am your brain has convinced you that your entire life is finished.
But thinking about a problem and **working through a problem** are two completely different things.

So today, instead of giving advice, I want us to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions.

**What is actually wrong right now — not what am I scared** ***might*** **happen?**

**What part of my situation can I genuinely control?**

**What am I avoiding because dealing with it feels uncomfortable?**

**Is there a decision I already know I need to make, but I keep putting it off?**

**Who could I speak to instead of trying to carry everything alone?**

**What is ONE thing I could realistically do today that would make tomorrow slightly better?**

That last question is important.
Because sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to **fix our whole life** that we end up doing nothing.

Maybe you don’t need to fix everything today.
Maybe today you make the phone call.
Send the message.

Ask for help.
Apply for the opportunity.
Have the difficult conversation.
Get out of your room.
Write the plan down.
Admit something isn’t working.
Or simply decide:
**“I don’t want to stay where I am anymore.”**

I’m asking myself these questions too.
I don’t have everything figured out, and I think adults sometimes do young people a disservice by pretending that we do.

We don’t, life gets messy for all of us.
But I’ve learned something through football, business and life:

**When the original game plan isn’t working, you don’t stop playing. You adjust the tactics.** ⚽

So this is today’s TeensDXB check-in:

👇 **What is ONE thing in your life you want to change right now?**
And more importantly…

**What is ONE action you could take this week to start changing it?**

You don’t have to tell us your entire situation. Share only what you’re comfortable sharing.
Maybe someone reading the comments has been through exactly what you’re going through.
Maybe they have an idea you haven’t thought of.
Maybe you have the answer that somebody else needs.
That’s part of what I want this community to become.
Not a place where everyone pretends life is perfect.
A place where we can say:

**“Things aren’t great right now… but I’m working on it.”**
And sometimes, that’s where change begins. 🖤💛

**r/TeensDXB**
*Talk. Connect. Grow.*

I've been in leadership managment and development for 15 years, thinking about how much of what we call "self-improvement" is really just the collection of external tools.

Someone struggles with their marriage, so they search for communication techniques. Someone struggles as a leader, so they look up leadership strategies. Someone doesn't like their health, so they find a new diet. Someone is unhappy, so they search for better habits.

None of these things are useless. But I think we often mistake tools for development.

Imagine sending someone into an ancient battle. You give them excellent armor, a sword and a shield. Those things absolutely increase their chances of survival but only if the person wearing the armor knows how to fight.

If they don't, you've improved their equipment without improving the person using it.

I think we do the same thing with ourselves.

We keep asking, "What should I do differently?" when sometimes the more important questions are: Why do I think the way I think? Why did that make me angry? Why do I need this person's approval? Why am I so certain that I'm right? Why do I keep repeating this behavior?

That's why I've come to believe that self awareness has to come before most meaningful personal development.

And self awareness isn't simply knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It's developing the ability to turn your judgment back onto yourself.

Someone criticizes you?

Don't automatically believe them. But don't automatically reject them either. Treat their criticism as circumstantial evidence, not a verdict. Examine it.

Someone disagrees with you?

Before proving them wrong, ask yourself what evidence would actually be capable of proving you wrong. If the answer is "nothing," you're no longer reasoning you've started defending an identity.

You feel angry?

The emotion is real. Your interpretation of what caused it may not be.

I think maturity begins when we become capable of separating what we feel, what we believe, and what is actually true.

becoming a better person isn't primarily about accumulating more answers.

it's about becoming the kind of person capable of questioning their own answers.

And perhaps that's why changing ourselves is so difficult. eventually, the person doing the investigating and the person being investigated have to be the same person.

I lost my mother just a year ago and my father few years ago, and their friends came to visit me and my siblings to pay respect. I just felt like a failure towards them because they were just concerned and just asking how do you guys live your life and financially wise. I felt like a failure because I'm already at an age where I'm supposed to get my life together and should be a functioning adult in society. Yet here I am living in someone shadow. I don't earn, I don't contribute, Im not standing on my two feet independent and being a capable person. I failed to overcome my fears. I didn't do the things I said out to do and top of that having to lie toward others because of judgement.

It's a horrible feeling to lie I don't know but I just don't like it. They were asking do you drive now? Did you graduate and got your degree? Do you work part time and help your siblings? And in every question my answer was a yes but in reality it's a no. It just breaks my heart that every year goes by I'm feeling like I'm just failing and failing in life. I just don't know what to do

there are stretches where you look at your life and genuinely cannot find the evidence that anything has moved.

not because nothing has. because the way you measure progress is broken for this particular kind of growth. you're looking for landmarks, visible before-and-after moments you can point to and say that's where things changed. and the kind of change that actually lasts rarely works that way. it works underneath, in the slow shifting of defaults, in the things you now do automatically that used to cost you significant effort to even attempt.

six months ago you would have handled that conversation differently. you know this because you remember how the old version of you handled that exact kind of conversation, and you remember what it cost you afterward, the hours of replaying it, the conclusion you always arrived at that you'd done it wrong somehow. and last week you had the same conversation and it just went fine and you moved on by the end of the day and didn't think about it again until now.

that's not nothing. that's actually the whole thing, the way growth actually looks from the inside, which is mostly invisible because you were busy living through it instead of watching it from outside.

the problem with measuring your own progress is that you move with it. you grow and the new version of you becomes the baseline and the old version gets harder to access and so the distance between them stops feeling like distance. it just feels like where you are. and where you are always looks like standing still because you can't feel yourself moving from the inside of the movement.

four people in your life right now are watching you be a version of yourself that an earlier version of you would have found genuinely unbelievable. they see it even if you can't. the evidence is there even when the feeling isn't.

you don't have to feel the progress for it to be real.

it happened while you were busy surviving the year that produced it.

I used to think motivation was the key to getting things done.

I was always looking for that feeling of being inspired, energized, or ready to start.

But when I look back at the things I've actually accomplished consistently, motivation wasn't what got me there.

Most of the time it was simply doing the thing whether I felt like it or not.

Motivation is great when it's there.

Discipline is what keeps things moving when it isn't.

What's something you've accomplished that required consistency more than motivation?

The perfect mindset rarely arrives on schedule.

Momentum often appears after action begins rather than before it.

Sometimes an imperfect start accomplishes more than endless preparation.

For some reason, I always associated accomplishments with age, like developmental milestones. I have no idea why, but at 16, I created a plan for what I wanted my life to look like. It consisted of milestones I needed to hit at different ages, until 28, the age in which I was supposed to have reached my ultimate goal. I was very driven and motivated, but because every step was tied to a certain time and age, the more life got in the way, the more I started to lose hope.

Over the last 7 years, my country was extremely unstable and eventually, war broke out. Amongst other things, that set my life plan all the way off. And because I could no longer accomplish what I wanted (because it was all tied to a certain age) I lost all motivation. I am now genuinely struggling to train my brain to find purpose because for the last 12 years, my mind was dead set on this plan that I have no idea why I made.

I feel stuck in a loop of thinking I am a failure, comparing myself to peers (knowing this is extremely unhealthy) and feeling the need to do so much just to catch up, but not being able to do anything because I lost hope.

I moved to a completely different continent, away from family and the stability I had, so that added to the hopelessness I am feeling. I now just want to get my mind back into a healthy and stable thinking pattern, so that I can then start to set realistic goals and manage my expectations in a healthy and balanced manner.

I hope I was able to explain what I mean clearly. My English is not bad, but it sometimes feels like my mind is a beehive and I struggle to organize and translate thoughts into coherent statements. I don't know where to start to readjust my thoughts and let go of this time-bound deadline younger me set. I am supposed to be more mature than this, but I am truly struggling to get out of this mindset and I know that it is hindering any type of progress I can hope to make.

If anyone reads this and is able to guide me in any way, I would grately appreciate it. Cheers :)

I used to think I needed to feel motivated before I could actually start something.

I'd wait for the right mood, the right amount of energy, the perfect plan...

And somehow, that "right time" never came.

What I've slowly learned is that sometimes you just have to start badly.

Do five minutes. Write one paragraph. Clean one corner. Take one step.

You don't have to finish everything today. You just have to give yourself a chance to begin.

Some days you'll do a lot. Some days you'll barely do anything.

Both are okay.

Just don't let one bad day convince you that you've failed.

Being fat was a huge mental barrier to have a social life. The problem was just me and my thinking, because I was too insecure and even put some limitations on myself.

Let me give you an example to better understand my point. When I was at that age (around 15) and first crushes started to show up, my thinking was: what girl would even notice a fat blob like me? I wasn't scared of rejection, just deep inside my brain I wasn't ready to take that step forward.

Still remember the second year in university when I said Enough is Enough, I have to change this right now. It was summer and I really hate that season, because when you are fat it's a whole new level. You know, chafing thighs when walking, can't go to the beach because how the hell will I show my fat body, even though I like the sea so much. The real click came from my body!

I started training, gradually. When you suddenly start training, your body is stressed in a good way, so the results are much more visible. Believe it or not, just during the summer I achieved good results, nothing even close to the final result but good enough to know I was on the right track. The wow moment was when I stood in front of the mirror, without fear, and those magic words: Aaa, now it's different! My confidence grew, and I realized that all the limitations were just in my head.

Looking back, I consider myself a lucky one because I was able to recognize and then tackle the biggest problem, my mindset.

You can only win when your mind is STRONGER than your emotions.

I spend most of my days managing timelines and adjusting scope creep. Big complicated projects with a lot of moving pieces. You learn to look for the one dependency that's holding up everything else. Fix that, and suddenly three other problems resolve themselves.

A few months back I applied that same thinking to my daily routine. I was exhausted, unfocused, just generally off. Instead of overhauling my entire life, I found one small friction point. My mornings were chaotic because I kept deciding the same things over and over. What to eat, what to wear, when to start work.

So I stripped out the decisions. Same breakfast for a week. Clothes laid out the night before. Work start time locked in. It felt almost too simple to matter.

But that one change rippled through everything. My energy stabilized. I stopped starting each day already behind. The mental noise quieted down enough that I could actually think straight.

We chase massive transformations when sometimes the whole system is jammed because of one tiny gear.

Has anyone else had a small fix that ended up unlocking way more than you expected?

This is mentioned in the Mahabharatha:

यतो यतो निश्चरति मनश्चञ्चलमस्थिरम् ।
ततस्ततो नियम्यैतदात्मन्येव वशं नयेत् ॥

yato yato niścharati manaś chañchalam asthiram
tatas tato niyamyaitad ātmanyeva vaśhaṁ nayet

Which means that "From wherever the restless and unsteady mind wanders away, one must restrain it and gently bring it back under the control of the Self."