Change the tense in this sentence

Question

Here is my sentence. I want to know if I use the tenses correctly.
Bolds are confusing me.

I want to change my life, starting at stop doing ...

Answer 1

If I understand your use of the ellipsis correctly, you're giving a fragment of your intended sentence, not a complete sentence. (People sometimes pace an ellipsis at the end of a grammatically complete sentence that nevertheless leaves something unsaid, but I assume that's not how you meant it.)

Therefore I'll assume you're trying to construct a sentence that's something like the following. I'll use this extended version as an example, for the sake of clarity.

I want to change my life, starting at stop doing things because of peer pressure.

The sentence above does not have correct grammar. It should be something like:

I want to change my life, starting with stopping doing things because of peer pressure.

"Starting at" can be used when those words are followed by a place or time, but here you're not starting at a place, you're starting with an activity.

The activity here has to act as a noun, but "stop doing things because of peer pressure" would be a verb phrase. What you need is a gerund phrase, therefore the gerund "stopping" is used.

Just as a style matter, the "starting with stopping doing" sounds very awkward, both because of the combination of "starting" and "stopping" and the chain of "-ing"s. I'd recommend instead something like:

I want to change my life, starting with no longer doing things because of peer pressure.