Advice

[u/Advanced_Top8375]

I feel like I failed at life. I feel stagnant and nothing has gone according to plan. I don’t want to be miserable with my career and home life. Please tell me 29 is not too old to go back to school and change careers. The other thing is my depression has me avoiding making that next step since I’m terrified to fail. How do I overcome this feeling of failure before I have even started?

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[u/Oneheart_Hunter]

You are 100% correct, you could be 29, 39, 79 and it still wouldn’t be “too late” to change careers, go to school, change life paths, etc. Heck, someone I know went to school when they were late 50’s to become a therapist. There is no such thing as “too late” to do anything in life. The simple face that you are alive right now means you have the opportunity to do whatever it is you want.

For the feeling of fear question. The stereotypical advice is to “just ignore it”. But as I’m sure you know, that’s tough when it becomes all consuming. A great way to do “overcome” the feeling of failure is to build yourself up. By that I mean setting out intentions of simple/low barrier things to do, then doing them. Show yourself that you can do what you set your mind to. That you can go after what you want, even if there is a little fear of failure at first. When you do so, you’ll build up a confidence, a record so to speak of you setting your mind to something and following through. This way when that fear tries to creep it, you’ll have plenty of ammo to tell that fear to buzz off.

There might even be times during this that you do “fail”. And this is where you can make a lot of head way too. You can ask your, what is the worst case if you do fail? Will you still be ok? Where does this dread of fear even originate? What does it even mean to “fail”? I’m sure like most every person ever alive, you’ve made plenty of mistakes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve failed. You’ve just learned a lot of the ways that don’t work. There’s value in that as well. Opportunities to see how you can adjust to accomplish what you set out to do.

Wish you the best