Don't hold onto your past victories too tightly. They mean little now. Let me explain.
I'm an underachiever, and I hate myself for it. 
I was the kid that annoyed you in school because I won virtually every contest that was held each year locally. My classmates half-seriously told me I was going to be President someday. I won a US national math fair at 14. Very good high school student. Attended a top college. I was supposed to be "SOMEBODY".
I've had a decent career as an adult, but have never reached the heights that I know deep down I am capable of. I'm in my 50s and don't have enough money saved for retirement, and it's completely my fault. My house needs repairs that I'm too lazy to get to. I have unpaid taxes because I'm too lazy to do them -- even worse, I'm probably OWED tax money by the government.
I see a therapist about this stuff (first time I've ever admitted that to anyone). Just a couple of weeks ago when I explained all of this to her for the 100th time, she looked at me and said "Your success as a child means nothing. You were in a sheltered environment. Adult life is completely different. You're not owed anything or deserve anything." It was a slap in the face and I was angry, but I had to admit she was right.
When my mother died, I wrote a letter to her and my pre-deceased father that night while grieving. I promised them that I would finally reach my potential, the potential they never had seen me reach and that they had wished for me. My parents died worrying about me. I placed that letter in her casket, in the desperate hope that it would spur me on.
Yet here I sit at 730am, with a mountain of work to do, and I'm on RAWK wasting time again.
DON'T BE ME.
I fucking hate myself. This is my last post on RAWK until at least February.
Not so fast, Soxfan. I dearly hope you stick around on RAWK. I enjoy your posts and you come over as a very decent guy and a lovely character. We need more like you, not less.
I'll be honest, I loathe the under-achiever tag, regardless of whether it's put on us by others or ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I spent four decades of my life feeling an abject failure, so I well understand your own feelings here. I was never academic, maybe because I wasn't that intelligent in that way, but also because I suffered crippling Social Anxiety Disorder which left me hyper-avoidant and rather isolated. Despite that, I was bloody good at athletics and could run the 100 metres in 11 seconds as a kid. I never lost a single race up to the 1,200 metres mark. It pissed others off so much that the school bully asked me to throw a few races to let someone else have a chance. People said I could be a very good short distance runner, but I was too anxious to even represent the school, never mind push myself further in the sport. Missed opportunities there, but that was my life back then so I have no regrets. Of course, others berated me over it, though.
I grew up being a big disappointment. The guy who became so scared of failure that he decided it was easier if he didn't try at all. If you don't try, you don't fail, and if you don't fail, no one can criticise you. Right? Wrong. People criticise no matter what you do or don't do in life. My education was a write-off and I came out of it alive, but with nothing else of note. To be honest, I was always a dead man walking. Always with one hand on the suicide door. I never thought I'd still be alive today, so I made no provisions for being so. I'm alive by the seat of my pants. In a materialistic sense, many, many people half my age have attained more and are better at most things than I'll ever be. Truth is, I absolutely loathed and hated myself into my 40s. The only thing I excelled at was disappointing people and failing to achieve anything of note with my life.
One day I was sat at the local beach in my car with a pen and a pad in my hand. I drew two columns. One for reasons to kill myself and the other for reasons to carry on. Whichever list had the most in was the one I'd act on. Luckily for me, the 'carry on' list somehow came out longer, with the proviso that I did something with my life I could feel proud of and which gave me purpose, regardless of if it meant others saw me as a success or not. I ended up training to be a counsellor so I could help others in a similar position to myself. It took a few years, it was difficult for me too, because there is a big academic component and I didn't have a clue how to write essays or anything. Due to the social Anxiety it was also well over 20 years since I'd last sat squirming in a classroom, and due to the trauma that was school, I vowed back then never to sit in a classroom ever again in my life after I left.
I'd had plenty of counselling / therapy myself over the years and that, along with learning my own life lessons to an extent, actually helped me alter my perceptions. We cannot live our lives for other people. We cannot devote ourselves to fulfilling other peoples expectations of us. We have to work out what
we value in life and work towards that. Of course, I like nice things if I can have them, but I'm not really materialistic. I'm not money-driven or job/career driven. I'm driven by trying to be a good person. I value time with my dog and my partner over money and 'achieving'. To me, being a good person, helping others, being productive, being supportive etc
are my achievements, simply because I value them.
No one can ever look at me and think ''wow, he's got life sussed. What a success'', but I also know that, inside, I now hold no self-hatred. I am not full of self-loathing. Funny enough, when you are a counsellor you see a never ending stream of people who
appear to have life sussed because they have a good job, a flash car and a nice house, but who are desolate inside and craving the basics of genuine love and understanding. There are millions of people out there who on the surface look to have everything, but who feel that apart from material wealth, they actually have nothing. Basically, capitalist society cons us into believing we need the wrong things if we want to feel content and fulfilled. There is a void within people that they try to fill with money or the material things money can buy, but those things cannot fill that kind of void. People need more than that.
I now know that I'd rather be skint but have my current mindset than loaded but a drone in a rat race until I die. When I look at people I try to see the human being, not the size of their house, the price of their jacket or the year of their car. I look for the quality of the humanity, because it's that which determines that person's development and success in my eyes. I think you could benefit from realising your value a bit more. You are more of a success than you think you are. You are a decent human being and you care. In this world it's harder to care than not care. It's braver to give a crap than not.
I have to disagree in part with your therapist. Your childhood successes
do mean something and always will. They were yours, and of their time. Never let go of them, because you deserved them. You did the best you could in the circumstances as they were at the time. Adult life is no different at all in this respect. Where I do agree with her is where she implies that past success is no guarantee of present or future success. If that were the case, Everton might actually still be winning something.
To get the most out of our lives I think we have to still do the best with our circumstances at the time. Change the circumstances that hinder us if/where we can, and work as well as we can in circumstances we cannot change. Much of it comes down to our own values. We have to ask ourselves what our values actually are, because many people don't even know themselves. Once we identify what we actually value in life we can then ask ourselves whether or not we are currently living by them? The answer to that will determine future direction. There are lots of different areas of our lives where we can look to identify our values. Work them out, then live by them and no way can you look yourself in the mirror and still feel a failure.
Potential? In what? In things that you personally value, or things that other people might value? We only have one life in this skin, so we have to live it in service of what
we value. From many posts I've read from you you come across as ahead of many people when it comes to being a successful, decent, caring human being. You cannot be taught that, and you cannot buy it either. Think Abu Dhabi FC and Class/pedigree for that one.
EDIT: Sorry for the long post, but I just hate seeing good people suffering.
