Comment by bithive123

I went through a very similar thing at around the same age, and one of the insights that really helped me was meditating on impermanence, and cultivating more mental proprioception (awareness of one's subtle thoughts, "mindfulness", whatever you want to call it.

Put simply, it's fine to have goals. But chasing achievement can be unfulfilling. Why? Because all experiences are fleeting. Even if you train for 5 years and win the gold medal, you get to stand on the podium for a few minutes and then life goes on.

It's easy to get people to agree with this intellectually, but you have to really see it on a deep level. There is nothing really to achieve in life. We make goals and cast them out ahead of ourselves in the future, but if that future comes, it doesn't last. We put ourselves on a treadmill of achievement and becoming, then wonder why we feel stressed.

Instead of imagining some future state of completion, work on being aware of how your mind is moving, all the time. Don't chase goals as a way of disproving some fundamental negative assumption about yourself. Don't make happiness contingent on external conditions.