Failed entrepreneur, broke, unemployed, now taking care of aging parents. Help.

I'm blown away and truly humbled by the compassion, advice, encouragement, and offers of help in all of your responses and emails. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I feel validated, empowered, and now more hopeful that things could eventually work themselves out. It looks like there is a way to fix all this and I've now gotten some better perspective on where I could start.

I'll use this thread as an action plan to get things going. I've already read some responses a few times and will make sure to review all comments and sincerely think through every suggestion. Please give me a few days to process everything as well as to follow up either via comments or email.

Thanks again, to everyone, for being there for me. You guys are unbelievably awesome.

Keep smile on the face 24x7. It helps.

[Edit]

Emotions are controlling our bodies. But is works in opposite direction too. If you will keep smile on your face, you will send clear message to your body: "Everything is fine", so your head will start to produce ideas. You will notice huge difference after about two weeks.

BTW:

My situation is worser than your.

No please don't - trashy pseudo-science at it's best :-( Some very enlightening reviews on Amazon if you want a second, third and fourth opinion (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Rhonda-Byrne/product-reviews/15...)

Being originally from a background and area where this is rife, I can only offer the following:

1. Change your mindset - Positive things happen to positive people, as basically they envision the positive result they want and engineer (either consciously or subconsciously) towards it. Negative people think they will always fail, hence don't try, hence fail, and vicious self-reinforcing circle repeats. This is hard to to when depressed, hence why you need to to change lifestyle as per following as example.

2. Take any job - It's not about doing something you love or pays well, but getting out of the house and changing your environment. A fresh/different perspective, new scenery, fresh air, and interacting with other (different) people always helps. It can also help you find structure and (different) routine in your life.

3. Focus on one change at a time - Thinking about everything at once can be overwhelming. Try and make one change at a time. Do the easiest (most achievable) things first. Success at them will make you feel good and help as building block to next (harder) thing.

4. Don't worry about external opinions of nay sayers - You are not in competition with others, only yourself, so as hard as it may be, focus on your path at the pace you are happy with and ignore what others say. The key thing is you keep moving forward, positively, even if only one step each day. Once you stop standing, and start moving, you will inevitably make progress, and that progress will help you move more.

5. Build income - Inevitably money is the cornerstone to fixing many problems in life, and with an income that meets your base needs, you may then be afforded the opportunity to do things you want to do, not have to. This could be something like hiring a carer a few days/hours a week so you have time to do something you want e.g. build your skills/portfolio/resume for a future step of a new/better job.

6. Do not be emotionally black mailed or feel guilt for wanting to live your life - We all have our paths to walk in this life and sadly there are people that will put you down or try to stop you for no good reason (i.e. your path is not self-destructive such as drug abuse) and its to do with what they want rather than what is best for you. No matter how hard it is to say this, or resentment parents/family may feel, but they have lived their lives and made their choices. You must live yours and make yours, even if in the immediate term it upsets people. In due time, most people realise things were for the good and the initial negative reaction such family has is more about the change itself rather than why/what change is for. One way to smooth this is to give people notice so change is not unexpected i.e. tell them you are telling them, tell them, tell them you told them, do it.

Though I agree with the sentiment, this is a lot easier to say when external to the problem. Much of it is about fixing or changing lifestyle and behaviour, and in such cases it may be easier to go for "safe" wins, such as a day job, with certain and known results (positives such as known income, and the negative such as web-app/startup opportunity cost) and building up and moving forward before re-exposing one self to risk (esp as it is similar as per his situation before).

The higher risk 'do another startup' could be the way to go, but in such an environment/situation, I fear this perhaps is only shying away from underlying problems and hence it is better to take safe route and fix them first.