You might think when staring at the ceiling at 2am when you can’t sleep:
“I am almost 28. Maybe I always pick the wrong choices. Everyone around me seems ahead & pretty settled. Did I waste the past few years? If i change now, what should i expect from this pivot and from those who might provide emotional support? maybe are you a loser?”
Maybe sometimes you are fed up with repeated house chores, and you might end up with the thoughts: what will people think? after new start, if I get excited for two weeks, then reality hits and I am back to feeling like shit and cursing myself like others?
Bottom Line Upfront
“You are not a loser, you didn’t waste those years, and whatever number is stuck in your head is not too old to change direction.
Only thing actually in your way is the fear that switching paths means admitting you screwed up. it doesn’t. it means you stopped letting relatives, and some rich dude’s online podcasts decide what your life should look like.
Everything below is just how that shift actually happens — messy, slow, and worth it.”
Maybe the question isn’t whether you are too old, but rather that you are scared changing direction is proof that you screwed up.
In the efforts of finding something to pursue, you open LinkedIn and see dudes your age becoming directors in companies launched last night
Yet you succeed in living another day in your life without feeling worthy of something.
You feel worthy only when a stranger says “Thank you, you look like a great guy” for some random help you had to do. Then you realize it’s been decades since i heard this (literally i never heard someone saying this to me, Guess it’s us all men).
You think I will have to take control of my life. Take control of my inside to change the outside of my life.
If i could quote one thing from The Defining Decade book, it’s that around 70% of lifetime wage growth happens in the first ten years of a career then you think, how did that dude do this, why can’t i?
Now things progress into depression and insecurity. You start questioning whether the last few years were a bad investment.
Having those thoughts is not the problem but the problem is we start counting those post-grad 5 years as an entire life.
Maybe something is not wrong with you!
Has this ever happened to you when you are scrolling and you see so many people sharing the same situation as you?
You are like, if XYZ has done something after surviving Trump’s presidency, this means, i can do something about my life too.
I tried to dig up another research paper on whatever happens to someone in life, you can find something related to this on the internet.
I found a 2026 study of 103 people between 20 and 34 looking at quarter-life-crisis symptoms, i mean job insecurity, social comparison, low self-efficacy, and lower life satisfaction.
So maybe you are not broken. Maybe the life you were building stopped matching the person you are becoming.
That guy’s startup just got funded $69m
Suddenly, in your family chat group, some unreasonable uncle shares how a smart guy got funded by genius investors. Then you ask ChatGPT: why you? Then ChatGPT says something like this:
I found a study of 482 students where career focused social media use was linked with career anxiety.
And it makes you somehow feel better. Maybe i am comparing someone’s 10th chapter with my preface (which is also blank :).
What will i think of myself if i lose!
What if i fail with a new start. You are right if you think you will, or if not, still you are right.
Sometimes it’s not the others, it’s you who is limiting your mindset. everyone else in your life, in thought and in reality, comes later. Losing your old loser version is harder than we think.
When you realize, you don’t want to do this; this is where the OG stoicism and some YT videos, like TED and Alex Harmozi type good shit, come in. You start making sense of the idea of “Designing Your Life on purpose,” not by default“.
You start making notes of what you don’t want in your life.
yes, you have to start in reverse, because the first thing you need to do is get out of that old mindset by knowing what poison is and what is black coffee. then you search about folks who have been through the same and then you read/hear their content, until your mind is almost recovered from default mode.
Next step is changing your environment. Talking to someone already doing the work.
21 days and you
The real test starts after 3 weeks of constant isolation or becoming self-obsessed over watching anime.
Now you have list of notion files, what you like about xyz, what do you think can work for you and why?
You start collecting data and resources on this. The best way if i would do is:
- make a list of skills + worthy of time and money; instructors.
- then you invest time and money to listen to this one dude for the next 2-4 weeks.
- If you ever feel you don’t know what this dude is talking about, don’t kill yourself. Just search about it over the internet and you might get an idea.
- Once you are done, you take a sip of chai or coffee and say to yourself: “dude, you ain’t that dumb.”
But what if i fail with new start?
You are right if you think you will or if not, still you are right (unknowingly quoted a Henry Ford). You might.
The new skills might not work. The first project/referral/gig/free portfolio assignment might fail.
You might somewhat discover that the thing you wanted in your new fantasy world of new career isn’t actually what you wanted and so on…
Good.
Now you know, what’s stopping you from getting there and why.
I like the idea of treating these things as experiments rather than putting your entire identity in question on every decision. Get back to the core idea of why you wanted to pursue this specific thing.
The question isn’t always why the heck it’s not working; maybe it’s where i can improve myself and start taking control of those vital pieces. You might get hanging at a learning-state plateau.
Yes, this is real self-talk and analysis driving from your shitty brain and it’s okay.
You did it. You betrayed old you. What now?
Let’s be real. The one who listened to relatives who never built the life you wanted, friends who were busy comparing salaries, environments that made you believe success means sitting in the same chair, and your own stupid belief that changing direction means you lost. Then hear me out:
You are not a loser(anymore). You stopped letting people who aren’t living your life take control of it.
Tbh, you might be still confused sometimes. Still broke, insecure, still opening LinkedIn and getting that little punch in the stomach when some 26-year-old dude just started traveling while having a good career.
But now you have something you didn’t have before:
Personal experience.
Now, you know what you don’t need, what you can learn, how you can survive, and what happens when you actually take control instead of waiting for someone to tell you that you are ready.
And what’s ahead? you don’t know man (sometimes). And for the first time, that doesn’t scare you as much. Maybe this is what starting over actually means. Not knowing where the hell you will end up but finally being the one deciding where to go next.
So, you already waited enough. Go. Start today, not someday.
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