[Bubble_Pop_22]

> How do you come out of this and break the cycle?

Probably realizing that even if you live up to your expectations you'll always be a nobody, especially in a world that is about to be populated by 10+ billion humans.

If you think of all the 'greats' : Newton, Einstein, Galileo, Leonardo, Alexander, Aristoteles, JFK, Gandhi...the world was much smaller back then and yet their death was absorbed by the rest of humanity in a nanosecond or even less. The half mast flag and months of grieving imposed from above are just that, people will keep eating and laughing and drinking and partying behind closed doors, not out of respect but out of fear of prosecution.

An other way to talk yourself out of it is to understand that whatever you are after is a great goal indeed, and the self will be elated when you reach it, but the self will be even more elated if you reach it with the minimum effort, and so by thinking about it too much and ruminating on the paths to the goal you are going to automatically deny the 'minimum effort' bit and thus end up with a sub-optimal path due to excessive preparation