Underachievement is one of the worse feelings in the world. When you feel underachieved, you are unsettled and lost. You feel you are trapped by the circumstance and don't know what to do. It doesn't matter if your expectation is realistic or practical, or you have achieved what your ability permits you, or in other people's opinion you are already overachieved. It's only a feeling of underachievement, in yourself. What to do? You can think of ways to rationalize and justify your past path to get where you are now, but you still feel that you might have gone down the wrong path or wasted your time. You feel your life is passing you by without having any control of it. It is not simply about accepting yourself, or finding self-confidence. It is about fighting the sense of losing control and helplessness.

One way to deal with the feeling of underachievement is to re-evaluate your current situation. Stop thinking about what could have been different if you had done something differently in the past; stop dreaming about what you what you'd like to happen in your life but impossible to achieve. Evaluate your current situation, and think this way: I am here in life and this is what I know now, what I can do, what I have, and with all my knowledge and ability and resources, and with my passion and enthusiasm and will power, I can make such and such changes in my life; I can achieve this and that. In this way, you are living in the present and finding a balance and exact match between your abilities and your immediate goal. The negative feeling of underachievement can hopefully be diminished.

(I wrote this back in January after a conversation with my friend Lu.)

Lu: let me tell you a young woman that I met in Nanjing; she's 27, teaches Chinese garden in the university; has her own company, designing gardens; she has her own car, several apartments in nanjing, I was so jealous of her, so young and has accompanished so much
Jorielle: but she is still single.
Lu: yes, how did you know that?
Jorielle: i don't know... she seems to be single if she has her own this and that. now i think the happy life is a shared life. the more you share with people the happier it is.
Lu: hmm, how interesting
Jorielle: i know you probably sometimes feel that you have missed something in life by early marriage and family life.
Lu: well, I don't consider myself to be successful. but if I analyze all the choices that I have made, it's natural that I have come to this stage; I am a lazy person. I always take the easy way out. I have avoided working hard in career
Lu: I'm attracted to successful independent woman