Age anxiety - I feel like I wasted my life. Everything is becoming uneventful

I can sympathise with how you’re feeling, and know it must feel pretty shit & suffocating. I think I’d just offer up some hope when it comes to building new, meaningful connections “even” at 25. Cliques/existing friendship groups can seem pretty hard to break into, but trust me, it’s so much easier than it looks once you’ve mustered up the courage. There are a lot of welcoming circles out there, a lot of people happy to make new friends.

And from the tone of your post it would seem that you know that what you’ve been conditioned to feel — that endless drive towards more and more work and education — is not what you want. If that’s the case, it’s super important for you to take your foot off the accelerator, just a little! Hell, there’s even a pragmatic case for avoiding burn-out — but just in terms of what sort of life you want to live, sounds like it’s time to leave some time in the day for new things. Unironically look for new hobbies: not something like collecting watches, I’m talking about an activity that puts you out there, keeps you engaged, and that will get you in contact with new people from different backgrounds.

Best of luck :) if you’d like, u can drop me a DM!

But quite honestly it's such a pain thinking about and seeing how enjoyable life could've been under different circumstances.

What do you mean by this? Had you gone into medicine, you'd still be in med school. The same goes for law or any of the professions where you can really "make it" in your 3rd world country. 25 isn't that old tbh. 

Hey dude, sounds like you have worked yourself to the bone. However, at least now you have come to the realization that there is more to life at the age of 25. Some people come to this realization at 50 or even later. You are still young and you can make the best out of the rest of your 20s and further on. I would not dwell on the past and focus on making the best future you can achieve. 

Doing literally anything other than the CFA would be a better use of your time

drop the CFA and go spend the time out at bars making friends. Learn to drink and pickup girls... have some fun dude - go to some music festivals.. take some vacations to some exotic places or go snowboarding in the alps.. do something cool 

Those were supposedly my best years

That right there is your problem, fuck your 20s. don't buy into that propaganda bs. the best years, esp if you are man are those once you have established yourself, have some power, money and respect. for most that's from 30s onwards maybe till mid 50s, with modern medicine even longer. id rather not relive my fucking early 20s (im 27 now)

Honestly, not that your situation is that bad, but I recommend you talk to a therapist. Just getting out of bed, and getting dressed for the purpose of speaking and expressing yourself will do a lot in terms of filling the void. A lot of people have suggested you go to travel, chase women etc., but I don’t get the impression that it’s the pleasure that you are after. It's not easy fulfilling every aspect of life in a 24 hour day. For people like you, the sacrifice has been social life for career, for others it would be career for health, or social life for health. There's always going to be trade offs. Another thing you want to consider, is how badly you want to change your situation. As insensitive as it sounds, I'm not sure how much your situation is stinging you. You could've been in a real bad state at the time of writing this post, and gotten over it by the time you woke up. If you want to make a change, you have to take steps towards it even when you aren't feeling the pain. You can't expect to have people around you during your down times if you are spending most time alone during your better moments.

Whenever I see someone publicly sharing their "happiness" these days, I question what their motives truly are. Most people I know who have all their shit together pretty much lay low.

My suggestion is to find a way to really disconnect from the BS behind career, education, social status etc., and just do things that you think are truly meaningful and therefore worth your "free time". Instead of thinking about what you should be doing by a certain age, just do something that's worthy of today, and then some more tomorrow. You can't possibly feel like you've "wasted your life" in the future if you spent every single day along the way doing something meaningful.

Don't compare your "behind the scenes" with someone else's "highlight reel". Traveling can be overrated and is often just a modern way of signaling wealth behind a veil of "cultural immersion". As someone with connections to the airline industry, I can pretty much travel anywhere for 10% of the cost. The most enjoyable part of traveling for me was always the ability to unplug from all the BS in life. Where I traveled never really made a difference as I pretty much pay the same ignorant tourist tax everywhere. Hell, even the scams are the same.

Grass is always greener. One of my buddies had his tech startup exit. He has so much money he has no idea what to do with it. But as my friend, he was willing to share something pretty dark about his success. He told me some of his peers from his YC batch are actually billionaires and he sometimes wonders why he couldn't exit for just as much. So you see the hedonic treadmill truly never goes away. You really have to stop judging life by its series of outcomes, but rather the intensity of its experience. Just hearing bits of your story, it sounds like you broke a lot of barriers and have squeezed a lot out of your upbringing than what most can obtain. You got more than half of your youth left to experience the rest of what life has to offer and I'm willing to bet you set yourself up well to do just that.

Just be your authentic self. Takes some people a lifetime to understand that.

If I can offer any advice from someone a few years ahead of you it is that comparisons can be misleading.  Sure, those photos of your acquaintances in Thailand or Brazil look amazing, but that is their highlight reel.  Like it is for everybody else, life is slow 95% of the time with 5% where important or memorable things are happening.  Heck, even when you travel, most of the time is spent moving to places, or preparing to move, or waiting in a place before you start moving or waiting in lines once you get to a place.  Even the minority of these big trips is memorable.
 

I have roomed with a few people who naturally become the center of attention at parties and they too are just looking at their phones after work like everybody else most days.  I am also friends with people who have zero posts on social media and lead content and happy lives with the few people and family they deeply know.  You are at a much more level life wise than you think. Everyone likes to make themselves look good to others.  Just read it with a dose of perspective.

 thebrofessor please chime in as well, as I always like your words of wisdom.  

I'll write one up following thebrofessor if he is able to share some life wisdom.  This has become a common theme on WSO lately these days, and quite depressing to see.  I remember my old manager once told me when we were looking at the glass buildings when we were posted at the airport gates, "kid, I did that corporate life nonsense until retirement hit me.  You won't find meaning in your work, but you will find meaning outside of work."

My father once told me when he always saw me studying and never went outside to go play with the kids, and told me that I should put the book down and go make friends.  He was always able to make new friends easily and was the center of attention wherever he went.  Wealth/career/prestige were never factors on him (relatively poor, but always generous with his money).  Whenever he showed up to a spot and people knew he was there, he'd be swarmed with company.  

Yeah, I'd finish this post when my tears dry up.  This often brings back old memories of my old man.  Just know that you have a community here, so don't be a stranger.

It's a terrible day for rain.

-Mustang