im scared

@leisurecity

It's perfectly natural to feel anxious about something as daunting as the rest of your life. But maybe a change in perspective might help. I'm getting the impression that you feel as if you have one shot to nail your perfect life. Like it's a bullseye target at 300 yards. If you miss the shot you'd feel like you lost your opportunity to have the life you wish for. Under those conditions, anyone would be freaking out.

I think a more accurate and calming perspective would be to look at the bullseye target example in another way. Instead of shooting a high speed bullet, you're instead launching a slow moving, camera guided, remote controlled missile toward your target. You have lots of time to see the target and make as many trajectory corrections as you need along the way. Life unfolds over long periods of time and over many choices and decisions. Your dream life is something that you work towards one bit at a time.

@leisurecity I think it could help to elaborate an actionable higher-order goal hierarchy. Maybe, you could write a plan for your life. You can have what you want and need, assuming you're tacking care of yourself, that you're starting with a proper attitude towards yourself, which is that you are worthy of care and respect, and there's something to you that's valuable that at least could be developed. And then the question is, what's that that you need? You can have what you want, but you have to specify it. What would you like from your friends three to five years down the road? What would you like your friendship network to look like? How do you like your career to shape itself? How are you going to take care of your family, and then what about children and a long-term mate, wife? What are you going to do with your time outside of work that's useful and engaging, meaningful, and productive? How are you going to take care of yourself mentally and physically? Let your imagination roam freely and articulate that ideal future, particular to you, that's most probable to justify your suffering. You can use this program if you like to guide you, it's called the Future Authoring Program, and you can find the questions here https://medium.com/@tommyscience/the-future-authoring-program-jordan-b-peterson-9edc24a2edc6 . Then you can also articulate a strategy to achieve your goals and go about implementing them. That's the hardest part, but then at least you know, you know what you have to do, you know when you err. I don't know if this might be helpful to you. But, I hope it does.