Do you feel you've lived up to your potential?

[Peanutbuttershake]

I've been thinking lately a lot about potential and how scary it is to look back and think, what the heck have I done with my life? It seems to me that so many people are full of ambition and dreams at a young age but somewhere along the line fall into the 9 to 5 grind, get tied into a mortgage and have a child or 2 or 3, and shelve many of their dreams entirely. Of course I'm not saying having a mortgage or children prevents you from achieving your dreams, but practically speaking it becomes a lot more difficult to give up comfort and security than to take risks and it can become easy to just plod along because daily life is tiring and busy enough.

I don't even have these commitments yet but I can see the pattern amongst friends I think are quite brilliant and talented who I really thought were going to be movers amd shakers, and I can easily see that I'm heading in that direction too (not that I'm brilliant or talented, but you know what I mean). Of course it may be that many people are perfectly happy and content in their nice home in a nice suburb working a decent job but I fear for myself that I'll look back and think, what happened to all of the things I thought I'd achieve?

Does anyone else have this fear? Do you feel you've reached your potential?

Oh god no, my potential waved cheerio a long time ago!

Is there anything in particular you want to do?

What do you think held you back @LanguidLobster?

I'm not even sure what it is that I want to achieve necessarily. I had this idea that I wanted to be a writer, so that's one thing. But instead I'm in a perfectly comfortable job, plodding along. I suppose it's the idea of settling and mediocrity and wasted potential that is really sad to me.

Teachers always said I had huge potential. I did v well academically but was lacking in confidence (undiagnosed SEN a possible issue).

But I’ve, through therapy, come to terms with it. Part of it is AsD-related because I feel like I’m “special” (as a child read the Bible and wondered if I was the next messiah, that sort of thing).

Part of it is also “if she can see it, she. An be it”. I was never aware of high-achieving females and didn’t have that in my life. —Margaret Thatcher was a robot and doesn’t count.—. So my ambitions were to get a job (any job) after uni (uni in itself was quite something) and have a family mid-30s.

I felt oddly lost and adrift when that time came. I had no role models on how to be.

I was top of the school (sink comp so grades not actuary that spectacular) academically and didn't even go to uni. I'd taken a summer job and they made me a good offer to stay. I did really well I think that job and they sponsored me to do a degree later. Then I gave it all up to have DC and a family friendly career, and which doesn't pay as well but I do OK and do "good work".

So, it depends what you mean by achieve. I probably haven't earned as much as I could have and I didn't achieve great things in academic research like I was supposed to but I've done things no-one would have expected of me when I was at school. E. G I've won trophies for running and I was hopeless at PE and my job involves public speaking when I was a quiet mouse at school. I've made a difference in the communities in which I live and work.

Oh, I wasn't expecting a question. Just confidence and ex got increasingly abusive. It really crushed me in some way as it wasn't what I was anticipating in life. I was quite loving and expected to be loved in return.

There's quite a lot you can do though, sounds like you need a creative outlet in some way

I was probably on my way there, not in a way that I'd dreamed of when I was younger. I'm not the stylish journalist I'd dreamed of being.

But I had worked my way up to a great position in a brilliant company.

Unfortunately got made redundant last year after returning from maternity leave. My role was incredibly niche and the job market had changed hugely in the 8 years I'd been there. I now work in admin at my IL's business. It pays the bills.

But I do live a better lifestyle (albeit more materialistic than anything else) than I'd ever assumed and for that I'm grateful.

My life is more suburban than I expected, but much happier. But isn’t that the point? We imagine being prime minister or an astronaut but in reality we follow our interests, find our niche, and have careers that are not too stressful because quality of life is often more important than striving. And lifes challenges are a more complex and shit, often, than we imagine.

Its genuinely a dream, isn’t it, suburbia, living in a niceish house in a niceish area that we can afford with beautiful kids, half decent neighbours and half decent schools and walking the dog and a not too bad commute and having some hobbies and some sense of community. People recreate that or try to everywhere I think.

No, younger me would be really disappointed. Not in terms of work, but in my life.

When we think about potential, I believe the majority think in terms of career, high earnings, academic achievement, and all the trappings that go along with these things.

You can have all these things and still not feel you have reached your true potential. Without going into to much detail, there is one thing I never have and will never be a mother, for me it just never worked out that way. I really wanted to be a mum, I have always wanted children and believe I had the potential to be a good Mum but it was not meant to be. So outwardly I could appear to have it all but inside I am heartbroken. I will never be the woman standing at the school gate waiting for my little one(s) to come running out and whisking them of home for their tea, homework and everything else that happens.

Sometimes I guess that we can never have everything in life unless we are truly blessed and have to accept it.

So for anyone thinking that they may have never reached their potential career wise because of having children etc, don't beat yourselves up, the grass is not greener it can be a very lonely place.

No. Hate it. Stuck working for the charity/statutory sector and trapped paying a mortgage in a shit part of the country. Children really scuppered any hope of a career. It upsets me all the time. Have to wait until the dc have left home before I can move and by then I'll be too old to do anything better. Many regrets. I've told my children not to make my mistakes!

From age 12 all I wanted to be was a mum and a wife, so yeah I think I have. I am the best wife my DH has ever had and my kids are 26 and 24 both married and really happy so I did all right there too. I never wanted anything other than what I have now.

No I feel I've fallen very far short of what was expected of me - and this is the source of the mental health issues that cripple me. I was in g&t at primary, did summer schools, got mostly As and A*s at GCSEs and A level, got into a top 5 university... then had a breakdown, dropped out, was sofa surfing for months, spent a while working dead end bar jobs and then fell pregnant with DD. 2 deaths and 5 cancer diagnosis within close family since then have made it impossible to keep bouncing back. DD's almost two now and because I had her so young it's hard to watch all my peers (and their younger siblings) go from uni into high flying careers and amazing group holidays etc. I didn't have much of a life before I had DD due to controlling (but well meaning) parents, and I regret that I never really knew myself or had the confidence to defy my parents follow my dreams. I was supposed to be going back to uni this year, but I've decided against it for now for a variety of reasons, my university's unfair treatment of me being the main one, followed by the fear of accumulating more debt only to fail again. I feel a great deal of guilt every day that my parents spent six figures on my education and I've made nothing of it. The future feels very daunting and bleak to be fair. I just hope that I will be able to put DD in the position to live up to her potential and be happy whatever she chooses to do.

icepink

I genuinely didn't think too far ahead when I was younger and never really thought about potential as such. Just to be able to have my own home is a dream come true to be honest, I still feel like someone is going to come and pull the rug from under me one day but that's just me worrying!

I don't mean that everyone has to aspire to have a high-flying career, just that whatever your particular dream/goal is, many seem to leave it unexplored. Even if we were never going to be the next JK Rowling the point is that many people just seem to shelve it entirely in favour of comfort and security if they're lucky, or survival mode if not.

Maybe pursuing that dream would have brought about misery anyway, but that's just it - if you never try you never know, and that's what I wonder about.

Actually @Peanutbuttershake I had a huge struggle with a friend a few years ago who was developing a severe mental illness and didn't know how to help her. It reached a bit of a dramatic conclusion but she's published a book about the experience and is doing really well now. So it's possible!