Your story resonates with me on a level that you can't even guess.
I also started business fairly young, at 14. Made somewhat around $20-30k between the ages of 14-16. I was a literal child who was stupid, inexperienced in life, and loaded with cash.
Surprise, surprise, I lost all that money to some useless dumb stuff because I wanted to show off.
At the time, I was very devastated because of the money lost and quit my business entirely. I wanted to come back to business a few months later but I couldn't come up with any business ideas and felt like a failure.
Now that I look back on that almost 3 years later I can see a silver lining. That experience taught me the most about the perspective of money than anything else.
I learned to manage money,
I learned to find happiness without money,
but most importantly,
it taught me to ignore other people's expectations about me.
When I felt like a failure back then, that feeling came from other people's expectations.
I was always top of my class in school without really even trying. I then started a successful business at the ripe age of 14.
Combine those two and you get extreme peer pressure and super high expectations from other people.
When I then lost all my money and quit my business, I got very depressed because I felt like I didn't reach the unrealistic expectations other people had set for me.
Believe me when I say that my life hasn't been better ever since I learned that 'you should live your life however you like it. Not how other people expect you to live.'
With the new confidence, maturing, and life lessons that experience gave me,
I have now managed to built over 10 income streams including 2 agencies and a book (productivity biohacking) in ~3 years and have a net worth in the mid six-figures. (There was a lot of luck involved, but nonetheless)
What I mean by all this is that you should try to find peace within yourself.
Ignore other people's expectations, come to peace with yourself, and don't stress about being 'successful'. Try to find a silver lining in losing the $250k.
We're both young guys. We have absolutely no obligations to anyone to be 'successful'. No one should ever blame a 19-year-old child for not being 'successful', we're still children after all.
Things will get better.
