I would’ve started earlier than that, more like birth to three, to set the stage for me approaching later education with more curiosity and willingness to fail.

I would’ve started earlier than that, more like birth to three, to set the stage for me approaching later education with more curiosity and willingness to fail. I do not blame my parents, mind. My hurdles are my own, and I’ve found Blindboy’s mental-health podcasts (CBT, transaction analysis, Rogerian psychology stuff) helpful along the way. Disassociating my sense of worth (self-esteem?) from my failures would be a big one towards a thorough working-through of challenges. I imagine myself working diligently like Teddy Roosevelt (an anecdote from Deep Work by Cal Newport, if I recall correctly) rather than procrastinating to hide from the fear of failure, judgement, and whatever else I haven’t figured out yet. I’d use Anki (or some sort of spaced-repetition system) daily, and I’d get to know as many people as I could, at least to break the ice, because who knows how we might help each other later on.