trenton

@ted73104 I honest to God worry that nothing else in life will make me happy. I have never been happier than when I was in a hotel alone preparing for my next game. I don't know how to find the same happiness in any other field. Sometimes I hate myself for failing to do something which is nearly impossible, that is turning chess into a career. This follows the same problem as not living up to my potential and wasting my talent. Sometimes I manage to get this to stop, but only temporarily. I end up picking all of this up again.

I think it is my fault that I am not already a professional chess player. It is easy to blame myself for not trying hard enough, not going to enough tournaments and not practicing enough. In my defense I was getting back into tournaments but as soon as I did covid hit and shut everything down. I was working at a grocery store that whole time.

@Schizophonia I think my misery is my fault for not playing in enough tournaments or practicing enough and instead trying to build an alternative career that will never make me happy.

@meta_male Leo and other members of the forum insisting that I don't pursue chess triggered feelings of depression. the only Two times I felt at the mercy of someone else's opinion was going to college due to pressure from my family or my mother refusing to evict her abusive boyfriend who stole my money.

I know this forum means well by telling me not to pursue chess. I tried hiring a career coach to find an alternative path. We considered macro social work. I have been in this position ever since I went to college. It still drives me crazy when I feel like a waste of talent. All of the success books I have been reading from the book list just reinforce the mindset that I have been applying to chess since before getting into personal development. Arnold Swarzenegger is just another example of this exact same mindset. The problem is that most people can treat things like chess as a side hobby to enjoy. I'm not like that. I get enjoyment out of being competitive. Mediocrity is unacceptable to me. Spending a thousand dollars on chess courses simply does not compute with a low level ambition.

@Leo Gura any chance you know how to contact this guy? I'd like to learn more about this person and how he managed to do this.

I am struggling with knowing when to give up and when to persevere. This is about my career as a chess player. It is hard to make it as a chess player. I seem to stake a lot on My ability to be successful. I don't know where to draw the line between being too stubborn and not being stubborn enough. My struggle started when my family wanted me to go college, but there was no major for becoming a professional chess player. I started struggling to find other paths for my life. I have identified a few alternatives to pursuing chess. After finishing an associate degree, I didn't see the point in continuing college. Instead I started working a job I hate at a grocery store. I was already working during college to help pay off the loans. I've had this job for five years now. The prospects of working here forever makes me feel hopeless about my life. I worry about being stuck in meaningless work forever. I have been looking for opportunities to replace this job with something I enjoy. I struggled to find jobs teaching chess for years until I finally landed a job with chess in schools. I have been working here for about six months. The students love my lessons and I love it when they challenge me. My least favorite part is when the kids refuse to behave. In fact one kid said the n word. Even with this job, I still don't make enough money to replace my job at the grocery store. I therefore work two jobs. Therefore, if I want to replace the job I hate, I would have to get a third job then quit. I am trying to get a job with varsity tutors so I can teach chess online. If i make enough money during the week, I can finally have my weekends open permanently for chess tournaments. I am wondering if I should quit pursuing chess for a couple of reasons. Trying to set up my life in the way I want it seems to be making life more difficult. This is far from my ideal of travelling the world to play the top grandmasters. Ben finegold became a grandmaster at age 40, so it is not impossible for me to become a professional chess player, it's just difficult. It makes it hard to tell when to quit. The sunk cost fallacy kicks in when I think about all the courses and books I purchased for chess and all the time I spent studying and playing in tournaments. I have a few alternatives for what I could pursue. The problem is that they probably require me to go back to college. This does not appeal to me. 1. I happen to be good at philosophy and bible studies because I listened to hundreds of hours of actualized.org. Maybe I could build on this. I helped a woman restore her faith in after losing both of her children. 2. I could be good at working with a research team to mitigate polarization in politics. I stopped a lot of fights by teaching my family about self deception and I helped my coworkers get 60,000 dollars in student debt forgiven because my research. 3. I happen to be gifted in quantitative reasoning. I scored 130 on the iq test and I would probably be good at engineering. I just never tried pursuing this kind of career. 4. My alternative passion is teaching emotional mastery in schools. I have been skeptical of the educational system because it ignores life saving teachings. For example a non-profit similar to chess in schools could be used for cbt or other emotional mastery teachings to help prevent suicide. Spiritual teaching could be included to some degree. I hesitate to pursue this because I myself suffer from depression and I have struggled to cure myself somehow. I still suffer from suicidal thoughts even though I tried educating myself on emotional mastery, I tried pills, I tried therapy, I tried the forgiveness exercise, and other things. All of them helped partially, but I still feel stuck in the same pattern. Part of the hopelessness is the job I hate. Despite my continued struggle with depression, I managed to help my brother stop his suicidal thoughts. I could be good at helping people, but I struggle to help myself. My top values include open mindedness, pure understanding, learning, truth, authenticity, helping others grow, and objectivity. When should I quit?

@Schizophonia I want to be a professional chess player, but I feel trapped in life due to not seeing how to turn this passion into a career. Apparently there are also musicians who have suicidal thoughts due to being unable to pursue their passion.

I have been talking with my coworkers at the grocery store. I have been asking them "what are you most passionate about in life?" I have some interesting findings including the fact that life purpose causes me much more anxiety than the average person. I found a couple of people who value family very deeply. I found a woman who was once a nurse but was injured and lost both her legs. I found a woman who was the victim of predatory loaning. I found a woman who never had a passion for anything even as a child when asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Even the managers don't know what they want to do with their lives. I noticed that like myself, some of my co-workers feel like failures for not accomplishing anything with their lives. I'm not alone in that regard. Some people are afraid to think about or discuss this topic at all because it is depressing. I refuse to wallpaper over this issue. This is how I approach all of my problems believing this to be the key to solving them. It leads to rumination and anxiety. It makes me feel like screaming sometimes. I have talked with two career coaches, both of which pointed out that I have a lot of anxiety around this issue. I don't know why I have so much anxiety around this issue. I have been striving to live my life by a higher purpose or calling since I was in elementary school. I viewed the other kids as idiots for not taking school seriously and misbehaving. I was isolated and didn't talk much to others. I was afraid of pissing my life away by not taking it seriously enough and I feel stuck and trapped anyway. I can't seriously engage in the pleasures of life without having this issue handled. I don't enjoy chess as much nor do I enjoy videogames. Any guesses as to why life purpose bothers me more than most people? What could cause this? I fear that I will never be happy in life.

@koops I read that book. It was a good book about refuting the common advice "follow you passion." Instead you are supposed to build up mastery and then your passion follows you. The goal is to get people out of searching for the right work and instead doing their work right. I have the sequel to that book.

@Danioover9000 interesting theory. I would say I got some recognition from my family. I was recognized as a chess champion for being the first in my schools history for winning the scholastic series. My father saw me as brave for risking everything to evict my mother's abusive boyfriend. My father and grandfather saw me as the key to changing the fate of the family which had a long history of criminal activity. They wanted me to change my last name to Hamann, but the name is meaningless to me. My sisters argue that my father and grandfather put too much on me with unrealistically high expectations for who I would become in life. They wanted me to accomplish something major for the world but they never specified what. That seems to be left to me to figure out.

@Schizophonia I see myself as a failure compared to everything I believe I should be in life. This is part of the 'failing to live up to my potential" which I mentioned on this forum before. I sometimes lose sleep because of this and not recognizing that I literally am potential rather than that which owns it. The image I wish I could project is one where I am proud of myself for the life I lived. I feel like I'm wasting my life and getting nowhere. I'm often disgusted with myself. This is one of those problems that seem unsolvable leaving me frustrated every day.

@Thought Art it is not easy to build a career out of chess. I managed to get a position as a chess instructor, but it doesn't make enough money to replace my job at Kroger which requires me to work weekends which is when most tournaments are. I can try to request off two or three days in a row but it is not guaranteed. Chess is good as a side hustle but it is extremely difficult to turn it into a viable career on its own. It makes me worry that dedicating my focus to learning chess will not pay off in the end. I don't know how I will make enough money to move out. If I could just focus on chess, then I know I wouldn't need personal development. My focus on learning personal development from Leo's book list is part of my hope that I will find success somewhere outside of chess. I'm not happy with the process, but I force myself through it. I am much more efficient at studying chess. Not being able to do chess is the entire reason I care about personal development, life purpose, spirituality, and career building. I don't know how I will find something that makes me as happy as playing high quality games against strong opponents. I also like video games, but I don't play them because they don't provide tangible results and value to my life. I wish life were as simple as following my passion. This all makes me feel depressed, anxious, and hopeless. Maybe I'm struggling because of autism and narrow interests of creates.

If somebody held a gun to my head and asked me what I wanted to be my answer is as follows. He would probably stop me after professional chess player. I wanted to be a professional chess player. The problem was that there was no college major for it and it is hard to make enough money as a chess player unless you are world class which I wanted to be. I would study everything intensely, but the need to build another line of work takes the fun out of it. I Wasn't raised to be a champion like most child prodigies. I felt lost in life because it looked like following my passion wasn't an option. I needed to develop some other line of work. my second choice was to change the school curriculum to reach emotional mastery in schools to prevent suicide. This is also very hard to do. I don't know how I should go about pursuing this project. The best I know is to write a book on the subject. I'm on chapter 3 so far. I am very interested in psychology, but I see myself more as an advocate rather than as a therapist. Psychology was my initial major but I didn't like the career paths. Sociology is also interesting, but I'm not sure about the career paths. My next choice would be philosophy and politics. I don't like it, but it has a lot of noble goals to strive for. If the impact on humanity is important enough then I would push through the difficult parts. I see beauty in having well thought out positions and using them to improve people's lives. It requires selflessness and objectivity which Most people lack, hence the polarization of America. The common problem is that I am not confident about the career paths. It leads to frustration as I feel lost in life.

I doubt aliens will be revealed. Humans are not evolved enough to understand their level of consciousness. If aliens wanted to tell us that we are God, then we would just turn it into a religion and start a genocide over it. Humanity needs more time to evolve before aliens decide to speak with us directly.

I don't see my family members as more important than random strangers. This might be the reason that I don't feel much of any emotional bond them. The same logic applies to romance and children. I don't see any child or girlfriend I have as more important than strangers. Things like romance and family therefore hold very little meaning to me. I think that human values are better then family values. It is a broader circle of concern which treats all humans as equally important. Similarly, animal values might be better than human values because it is a circle of concern that accounts for all living beings including aliens. Presently I do not see inanimate objects as something that should be valued as much as living beings. It is because living beings can suffer and feel pain that I think they matter more than objects even though I am imagining that living beings have value. I prefer to leave an impact on all kinds of people rather than dedicating my focus to building relationships that might fall apart anyway. Some of this attitude might be due to autism. I struggle to relate to people anyway and that makes it harder to form emotional connections. Is it weird that I value my impact on humanity more than I value relationships like in family and romance? Is my logic hurting me in some way? Who would I be if I let go of this position? I don't know if trauma has anything to do with my anti and my struggle to feel an emotional connection.

@Yimpa I saw that episode. I felt that way even before watching it. Why would someone be more valuable just because of genetic similarity? If you question reproduction deeply enough, the illusion falls apart.

My parents were very dysfunctional. I used to believe that one day my mom and dad could get back together. After becoming disillusioned with this I started feeling hollow and uncaring. Mom and dad were never going get back together because dad was a drug dealing gangster who owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support as he used me as pawn against my mother. Maybe in an alternative universe in which my mom and dad loved each other I would have mimicked them by loving my family more. Instead I am mimicking my parents by embodiment of their lack of love. On the inside part of me feels like screaming "I don't give a fuck" or " I don't care. " "I don't give a shit about my family." the only person in my family I felt a strong connection to was my grandpa. I was ashamed of myself for taking his love for granted as child. I never had a chance to realize how much he meant to me. He had a lot of faith in me hoping that I would be different from his son. He wanted me to change the fate of the family. I managed to do this, but in the end it all felt empty to me. My grandpa believed in family values, but I have seen it to be a pragmatic lie which holds no basis in reality. I never talked to a therapist about why relationships feel empty to me. I am more concerned about finding a good career. Discovering my life purpose to leave an impact on humanity is part of my universal philosophy.

I'm looking for help on an issue that causes me a lot of anxiety everyday. I need to develop some kind of work outside of chess because chess doesn't make enough money. I have a lot of options so I typed out a paper detailing my interests, stengths, and weaknesses. I'm unsure of how to build a viable career outside of engineering which I otherwise have no interest in. I hope to find a career coach to help me through this issue.

@universe Good question. I never thought of this before because I try to find meaning through other people. I could only play chess against myself or a computer. If I had no job, then I would be free to do whatever I want. I would not need to become a published author and worry about finding a good career. I don't know what I would do if there were no other people. I'll keep thinking. Maybe I would still explore psychology in the hopes of alleviating my OCD and depression. Maybe I would try to contact aliens or spirits. Maybe I would go on hikes and explore different forests and mountains. I would still want to try psychedelics. If there were no people, then there would be no social stigma, therefore I would be free to pursue God consciousness. God consciousness might be the key to discovering true happiness and peace. Because there are people, I am prevented from pursuing this because of legal troubles for example. I would probably do a lot of meditation because there isn't anything that needs to be accomplished. I would struggle to feed myself if there were no people because nobody would be working the farm land. I would need to learn to hunt and forage. I would need to learn to get clean water. If there were no people then I would not care so much about purpose. Nothing needs to be done, therefore I don't need to worry about it. This would free me from a lot of anxiety, depression, rumination, hatred, and judgement. I would be much more peaceful.

I recently hired a career coach for 605 dollars. So far I'm disappointed with the results because we made the distinction between personal values and career values. Out of the list of careers we looked at, nothing really appealed to me. I'll take a second look and consider social work. I have been working on a book about emotional mastery. I'm almost done with chapter 2 but I might move stuff around. I wish practical psychology were taught in schools, but I don't know how to change the system. I'll share this project with my coach and see how she reacts. so far the lesson I'm getting time and time again is that I need to stop dreaming. All of my dreams start making me miserable when they seem unachievable. I started shifting away from chess by focusing on a new goal that seemed important to me. If I have to give up this too then it looks like I'm going to wind up becoming an engineer after all just to have a decent paying job. My over arching purpose is that I want to improve people's lives by sharing knowledge wisdom and research. I've turned people's lives around before, but I am failing to create a job like this. I could do this in many fields like psychology, politics, philosophy, or maybe something else. It's so frustrating to have passion leading me to dead ends. I don't know how to live a meaningful life outside of a career that aligns with my top values and makes me feel like my work is meaningful. If I have to give up a meaningful career for making money for money's sake, then not much else in life is meaningful to me.

@Thought Art thank you for making this post. I'm 25 and in a similar position. I feel like such a failure. I wanted to make a career out of chess only to realize that it is next to impossible to build a career doing what I would love. I have a ridiculous amount of anxiety everyday trying to figure what my career path should be. should I just pursue money and become an engineer? Should I try to follow an alternative passion in emotional mastery? It seems difficult to make a viable career out of my interests. I don't know what to do. I have all this raging ambition and I feel trapped. My dreams are big and hard to actualize. This issue makes it hard for me to not only enjoy chess, but it also makes it hard to enjoy life. Working for just survival seems bleak but that's what most people end up doing. There is a reason wage slavery is so prevalent. The one thing I have going for me is that I am a saver. I saved up a good chunk of change from working at the grocery store. I paid off all of my debts from college. I still might need to go back, but it is so hard to make a clear plan. I see the long term financial problems if I ever want to get away from my family. I'm lost at what I could even do with that freedom of i am stuck at the same job. I need a career coach to help me make a plan. This raging ambition is killing me because I feel like such a waste of talent and potential. I lose sleep at night because of this.

I have recently come to this conclusion upon further introspection. this insight feels like it has freed my mind and eliminated unnecessary suffering. I have been struggling with feelings of emptiness for a long time and I have been trying to fill this void through meaning. Throughout my life my attempts to create meaning came in many forms. I once looked to my family in search of meaning. My family was full of criminal activity and my grandpa placed a lot of faith in me. He wanted me to change the fate of the family by not ending up like my father who was a drug dealer. Along this hectic childhood, my mother let an abusive boyfriend live with us. I tried to find meaning and purpose by protecting my family and evicting the abuser. Although I got what I wanted, I still felt empty. This led me to believe that family was not meaningful to me or not one of my values. Instead of seeking fulfillment from relationships, I tried seeking fulfillment through impact and career. This was a different means of pursuing meaning. I recently read a book which mentioned a man who followed his passion to become a monk for ten years. He ultimately fulfilled his dream, but in the end he still felt empty anyway. Just because you get your dream job does not mean it will save you from feelings of emptiness. Is pursuing meaning fundamentally flawed? It looks like meaning and purpose can never fulfill me because all meaning is imaginary and therefore illusory. Is there anything you should pursue instead of meaning?

Good news. My suicidal thoughts finally stopped. It appears that I have been holding myself to impossible standards and judging myself as a bad person and a failure for not meeting these standards. In this case I have been trying to turn chess into an economically viable career but I failed. I blamed myself for not trying hard enough even though I was trying to do something next to impossible. I felt like I was wasting my talent and not living up to my potential. This is part of what caused me to lose sleep at night. I will keep trying to come up with realistic and financially viable career options. I like the emotional mastery route, but I don't know if it is realistic to teach emotional mastery in schools to prevent suicide. This would require either a non profit or some kind of political change to the educational system. I'm not sure how to achieve such a thing. I tried sticking to chess because I clearly had what it took to be a master, but I was left with the financial problems. My last resort is to go into engineering which I never had any interest in at all.