It doesn’t significantly change my advice and was actually already factored in my answer. Your obligations are your own. If you can’t afford to change, that answers the question.

It’s not about empathy. My point is that inherently there are no advices to be had on life choices. Just do what you want to do, decide to try or decide you don’t want to. There are no right and wrong general answers here. A bunch of strangers on the internet can’t give someone permission or an excuse.

Obligations become roadblocks due to a failure of imagination or ignorance. That sounds pejorative but it describes the common case, not the exception. If this applies to you you are normal.

To overcome the belief that "my responsibilities are preventing me from doing X" you need examples of people who have those same responsibilities but are doing X, or some X-adjacent thing.

Luckily there are lots of examples through interest forums, youtube, etc where people with say a mortgage and two kids are still traveling and adventuring. There are people who have built support networks so that they can still have time to learn languages while caring for an elderly parent, autistic child, sick dog, etc.

The viable path to unblocking yourself starts by asking for help. Ask how others are doing it, get advice, take time off specifically to do this initial research. The thing you will likely find is that you can't go straight from A to B. You need to build a support network, tie into relevant services, improve your financial circumstances, etc. But once you know something is possible it can be sufficiently motivating to do the upfront work.

And, I'd add that past experiences greatly impacts tolerance to risk. A person who had no money for food and/or was homeless as a child, and a person with a financially secure family to fall back on so there are no consequences for failure are going to have very different risk tolerance.

Even when we are aware of it, fear can control us. And, previously poor people know, from experience, what the consequences of failure can be.

This was demonstrated on a macro level by the generation that grew up in the Great Depression having a high savings rate (emergency fund), repairing rather than replacing things as long as they could, and being otherwise thrifty almost regardless of income.

In my experience, being blunt without the sugar coat can have a massive change on people as well. Having a mortgage and kids can be seen as a reason or excuse not to embark on change/risk but it could also be seen as a great reason to do so. We decide how we want to look at it. The old saying "actions speak louder than words" will outlive any self-help new age fad. No one cares what was said or what was thought, but what was done.

"I judge myself by my intentions but I judge you by your actions".