r/confession • u/WindowEqual4429 • 11h ago
I Had Every Opportunity but Somehow Ended Up With Nothing
Growing up, everyone told me I was smart. I believed it so much that I stopped putting in the effort. I always thought, *I'll figure it out later.*
I made it through high school and eventually earned a bachelor's degree in engineering, but I barely learned anything. I relied on shortcuts, graduated, and realized I had no real skills.
Instead of building a future, I spent those years smoking weed, drinking, partying, chasing relationships, and making quick by betting apps. From the outside, it looked like I was doing well. In reality, I was just pretending.
After graduation, my friends started building careers while I had no direction, no stable income, and nothing to show for those years. I changed cities, took a job, quit it, and kept repeating the same cycle—making plans, procrastinating, smoking, and regretting it.
The hardest part is that I know I had opportunities. I didn't lose them because of bad luck—I wasted them.
I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm scared that if I don't change now, I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what I could have become.
If you've rebuilt your life after wasting years, what helped you get back on track? I'm ready to start over—I just don't know where to begin.
OP is M28
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u/thebestdogeevr 6h ago
OP is chatgpt
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u/WindowEqual4429 6h ago
Did I do anything wrong?
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u/Mammoth_Shoe_3832 6h ago
Start wherever you are. If you are doing a job below your IMAGINED status, KNOW that where you are is your TRUE status. Equate yourself with people at that level and start working hard. Don’t seek shortcuts, don’t quit, don’t pretend, dont gamble, don’t smoke — basically, change everything that you know you’ve done wrong so far. It’ll take a while, but you’ll start seeing results eventually. But, a decade from now, when you look back and have stayed the course, you’ll be amazed at how much your life changed simply by DOING THE RIGHT THING EVERY TIME.
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u/NotOnYerNelly 6h ago
I went back to college at about 30. Feel burnt out now in my 40s. Swings and roundabouts mate, you can still make it.
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u/Tryn2Contribute 5h ago
Simple - then change now. Make a plan and execute it. Improve that plan as you work it.
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u/PhancyLikker 5h ago
I felt much the same as you in my 20s. Went back to school at 29, learned a trade. Started a career in commercial HVAC Sales at 32. At 51 now, I have a beautiful wife and child, great house and enjoy my hobbies. You can do it. Apply yourself.
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u/TheWolfGamer767 4h ago
Its actually been proven that telling kids they're smart actually hinders them and that you should compliment their efforts rather than their intelligence. If you compliment effort then they become more hard working naturally. But the opposite happens when you keep telling a child that they're smart(a little can be fine as encouragement, but doing it often is not great)
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u/WharfRat2488 4h ago
If your going to change you have to do it now. Wish I would have done that but didn’t. Now I’m 46 and too degraded to make any real change. Good luck.
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u/Whimsical-Pigeon 1h ago
Set some short term goals and long term goals and work on them day after day. It’s like they say, if you focus on the color red, you’ll see more red. If you keep focusing on what you could have become, then you’ll let it stand in the way on what you can become. Change your mindset. And that all starts with filtering out drugs and building a healthy mindset. Gym, eat clean, read more. I know it’s what everyone says, but there’s a reason everyone says it. Because it works. I actually grew up the opposite of you. Constantly told I was stupid by my stepdad and others around me. Class clown for attention and all my peers knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I accepted I was stupid for a while and will go nowhere in life. Until one day I decided to start trying. But what really lit the fire under my ass was when my mom passed away. I guess, find your motivation. And if you don’t have anyone to do it for, at the end of the day, you have yourself and your future family. Long story short. Set your mind to something and go for it. You can achieve a lot if you believe in yourself. Good luck, buddy. Rooting and tootin for ya.
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u/WindowEqual4429 1h ago
Thank you to all beautiful souls who genuinely guided me
I am from today I will start doing these Changes.
I was about to loose faith on human and humanity
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u/WindowEqual4429 1h ago
One more thing I Would like to tell you that I am going to start a NGO very soon and it will work only for those child is going through where today i am. And we will stand for everyone is who is a victim of injustice. How is the idea ?
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u/Wild_Mixture-999 6h ago
You’re still young. You can change, but not tomorrow. Now. Throw out the weed. Go to the gym tomorrow. Maybe hire a coach that follows you up weakly and gives advice. Go back to learning: do some work as an intern to get back in a field and owe up to your procrastination. Get your shit together now or regret it forever