Summary: the anxiety is driven by pressure to do well in life, amplified by technology constantly reminding kids of this.
Pick something and try to get really good at it. If that doesn't work, pick something else.
(Privileged, top 5%-er) parenting in 2019 is a constant battle against the temptations of over-scheduling and over-enrichment. Kids need time to relax and goof around without being under pressure.
Don't look to me to tell you what you should do; the hottest vocations of my generation will likely not even exist for yours (example: petroleum engineer). Look externally, experiment, measure, iterate. (essentially your first point)
* Make lots of mistakes, because mistakes mean you're trying new things, but with 2 caveats:
1/ try not to make any fatal mistakes
2/ don't repeat the same mistakes
* You have the resources of multiple generations of lucky & hard-working people at your disposal; don't waste them but make sure you use them (meaning educated families, diverse experiences and money)
* Your overall goal is to do your best to leave the environment you were born into better-off than it was when you started, meaning you've worked to improve the position of your family, community and the broader world.
This is all well and good when they're in school and still dependent on your financial support. Once they're on their own (say, at age 22), and start making mistakes, the stakes are a lot higher and the margin for error a low narrower.
Let's say you majored in something but did poorly overall. That's mistake #1. You won't have as wide of a berth for mistake #2, because you are likely still suffering the consequences of #1.
It's so sad.
Example: sports start splitting kids at ages 5 and 6. They call it "assessment" but it's really try-outs for the competitive teams. From this point on the majority of effort and resources go to the predictable audience. Better hope your preschooler is coordinated for their age. Growing a foot in middle school will no longer get you on the basketball team as everyone else has 10 years of club ball.
Arts and academics is no different. Our local gifted school screens per-kindergarten and you won't even be considered without a private (read: $$$) assessment as part of your application.
Not sure it's a great system, is what I'm saying.
And by the shredding of the safety net, meaning that failure will result in a lifetime of indignity and struggle that you will likely never claw your way out of.
Compare the possible career and life paths of a middle of the road person born in the US in 1930 vs 1960 vs 1990.
An average non high achiever had much better prospects in 1930 than 1960 and better prospects in 1960 than 1990.
If born in 1930 you could get a high school diploma and then buy a house and raise a family on your factory worker salary. You could just go through life with no strategic planning and do well enough and live comfortably.
Someone born in 1960 would do well to get a degree and a white collar job if they want that life. Strategic planning is nice but not necessary, you can probably do ok without it.
Someone born in 1990 needs to have a 4yr degree in something lucrative (STEM) and even then buying a house and starting a family is not a given. To succeed you need to have figured out your strategic plan by about age 15 and then execute on it in order to have the same life that someone born in 1930 could just happen into without much thought.
This is not remotely true, but I grant that it's the currently popular narrative.
It seems like there are plenty of non STEM blue collar jobs that afford a nice life, but the problem is they are looked down on.
I think part of the problem is that everyone is optimizing for the same niche, which makes that niche very crowded and requires extreme amounts of optimization to succeed.