Does not having fulfilled your true potential in some areas of life often make you angry and a bit defensive?

No. The idea of true potential is an illusion. Life is about fulfilling what is realistic.

I agree with @mattbrowne. I was disappointed and bait mad at myself when I didn’t get the grades for veterinary school. So I just examined the other options avail to me and became a medical technologist and move on with my life (which has been terrific).

It makes me defensive when someone points it out to me as some sort of expectation they have for me. I think it isn’t someone else’s place to be dissappointed that I didn’t accomplish something or that they think they have the right to decide what I should or shouldn’t do. As I get older I think when my spouse does it, It is actually related to him having or not having respect for me, which I find upsetting. My reaction can come out as defensive or anger sometimes. With my father I think he worries I am going to have regrets. My sister I think she is being a little competitive. Their comments force me to think about the topic and in the end I wonder more about what could have been, a lot of missed opportunities. It makes me melancholy more than anything.

No. I’m fairly happy with where I am in life and although I am not independently wealthy, I am doing ok.

So, then it’s okay to just settle for and accept a life that if so much less than you were/are capable of living? Sad and a waste of good abilities, isn’t it?

Yes it is sad and a waste to not crank out life to the best of our abilities. We have to take up challenges and give it our best. Sure, sometimes we’ll get dumped on our faces, but we can always pick ourselves up and wipe off the dust and say screw you life, what else do you want to throw my way. Take chances, have fun and live it up.

Thank you all for such honest and uplifting answers! Wish we could turn back time and do things otherwise with the knowledge/experience we have now, but…...

@ZEPHYRA Isn’t that a ball breaker? By the time you learn the lessons of life you’re most of the way down the journey.

I regret not going to college and making the most of my ‘gifts’. However, that is tempered by the fact that I wouldn’t have the life I have today if I had. And I love the life I have today! So I’m not angry or bitter about it.

I have been in that position myself. Feeling ashamed for not having ever “accomplished” anything…for fear of failure or too lazy to work hard. It took the end of my marriage and the realization that my family was bringing me down to wake up. I chose to change. I moved from my home state and enrolled in college (for the first time) at age 30. I was a single mom of 2 kids, I had a full-time job and went to school full time. That experience has taught me that potential is about your own effort to work hard, every day, for a long time to achieve any goal. We are not special!!! We are MADE special by our own effort to work hard at being a particular thing or achieving a certain goal.