Go back to the basics.
Being part of this community, I'd suspect that there's a high probability of you being "in your mind" a lot of the time. Don't forget that that world up there is mostly conceptual. The map is not the terrain. The map is a lot more stressful. If you want to stay conservative, just change things up a bit to involve your body a bit more. If you're more radical, reinvent yourself completely. Some suggestions:
> For those who have been there and managed to get out and are now living a life you're proud of, how did you do it?
I'll answer the above question first:
- If you have the savings, travel. Plenty of places where it's the plane ticket that'll be the costliest expense. If you have the freedom, go for many months. Get a few books on topics you want to learn and go work through them from a place where the cost of living is permissive.
- Start taking courses in an unrelated, more "grounded", field (cooking, plumbing, masonry, woodworking, etc).
- If you already have some other skills, try turning them into a small business. Don't aim to change the world. Aim for basic cost of living before anything. Don't optimize your business for anything further until you have reached that goal. Premature optimizations will kill your business before whatever inefficiencies your analytical mind will undoubtedly spot very early in the process. Keep things super simple and non-optimal until it's absolutely clear that some factorization has short-term benefits.
- Find a physical activity to practice regularly. Don't rush the progress, savor it. Swimming, a martial art, yoga, etc.
> Depression, unemployment, lack of confidence, fear. I'm certain there are many on here who had high potential and feel they've squandered it.
I'm leaving this here in the spirit that you might be interested in trying a different approach to experiencing life. If this doesn't resonate with you, that's ok too.
The "squandering" of life is an outlook to it that is the product of cultural beliefs that we're meant to do "something meaningful". There's no evidence that there's a way to fail or waste life. There's reason to believe that every experience of it is valid. I'd suggest to start with some topics in philosophy as an entry point. Our culture is predominantly materialist and our thinking patterns generally already align like this, so I suggest to counter-balance that bias with contents in eastern thought (Alan Watts is a good entry point), idealism (A. Schopenhauer, Bernardo Kastrup), and stoicism (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius). This might help you expose possible underlying cultural beliefs you're operating from and why they're possibly wrong. Philosophy alone can raise existential questions. I strongly advise to supplement that exploration with a nondual contemplative practice where you will learn to explore and perhaps solve your version of "the world's problems", from within. Some good authors/speakers that I can suggest to begin with would be Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, and Rupert Spira.
Good luck.