I made and lost more money than anyone in my family ever had. Now I feel lost at 26..
Hi everyone, I’m writing this because I honestly feel lost and maybe some people here went through something similar... I grew up mostly alone after 12. My dad wasn’t around and my mother worked abroad for years to support me and my brother. Financially things were always difficult and from a young age I became obsessed with finding ways to escape poverty and become successful. At 16 I met my first real love. At 17 she left me during one of the hardest periods of my life financially and emotionally. That honestly changed me a lot.
A few years later I suddenly made more money than I had ever seen before through risky gambling-related opportunities and online loopholes. Overnight my life completely changed. I bought an apartment, traveled, bought my dream car, and for the first time in my life I felt like I “made it”, but I had zero discipline and a serious gambling addiction that I didn’t fully realize at the time. Instead of building a future, investing, or creating stability, I kept chasing bigger wins and bigger dopamine hits until I lost everything. Then I repeated the cycle again later, made even more money, and destroyed my life financially a second time. At some point I also got into legal trouble related to those decisions, and that was the moment I realized freedom and peace are worth more than fast money, since then I’ve been working regular warehouse jobs, making average money, trying to stay on a legal path and rebuild myself from zero. But mentally it’s hard because I already experienced a completely different lifestyle very young, the worst part is that deep down I still feel capable of much more. I know I’m not lazy. I know I can think outside the box. But I also know my mindset became unhealthy because I always wanted fast results instead of long-term stability, now I’m 26 and sometimes I honestly feel old already, even though logically I know I’m probably not. I guess my question is:
How do you rebuild your life mentally after losing everything multiple times? How do you stop feeling like normal life is “not enough” after experiencing extreme highs and lows?
Thank you for reading everything