What OP needs is mechanisms for generating the desire to pursue some good goal. Off the top of my head, both travel and psychedelics seem to have nontrivial rates of inducing new goals/dreams.
That’s all true, but I think that the problem for the OP is generating goals/dreams that fit inside the constraints of his life. Once you have your own family and kids the range of (non-drastic) things that you can do narrows considerably. Things like going off to live on a Polynesian island for a while, or, say, deciding to become a starving artist and create ART in capital letters—all these become… problematic.
(The constraints of one’s life shouldn’t get there by mere convention, but only appear as cost of pursuing goals/dreams deemed important. You don’t have to get burdened with supporting a family or professional responsibilities as you get older, if you are primarily interested in pursuing different goals that would benefit from having more time and less constraints. In particular, if your goals change, it should be possible to get rid of some of the costs required by the old goals.)
That’s all true, but I think that the problem for the OP is generating goals/dreams that fit inside the constraints of his life. Once you have your own family and kids the range of (non-drastic) things that you can do narrows considerably. Things like going off to live on a Polynesian island for a while, or, say, deciding to become a starving artist and create ART in capital letters—all these become… problematic.
(The constraints of one’s life shouldn’t get there by mere convention, but only appear as cost of pursuing goals/dreams deemed important. You don’t have to get burdened with supporting a family or professional responsibilities as you get older, if you are primarily interested in pursuing different goals that would benefit from having more time and less constraints. In particular, if your goals change, it should be possible to get rid of some of the costs required by the old goals.)
Generally speaking, yes, but note that in the specific case of the OP he has the still-active goal of being a good father.