How Can I Unlock My Potential in Such a Workplace?

There are moments in every workplace when you start to ask yourself deep and uncomfortable questions. Recently, I’ve been struggling with one that cuts right to the core of my professional life: how can I truly unlock my potential in an environment that constantly undermines me?

Let me explain what I mean. In my current workplace, whenever a manager — or anyone higher up — needs something done, it suddenly becomes the most urgent task in the world. They pressure you to drop everything, to respond instantly, and to resolve the issue without hesitation. There is no “later,” no “we’ll get to it,” only immediate action. Their expectations become law in that moment, and if you don’t deliver right away, you are instantly judged as careless, uncommitted, or worse, incompetent.

But here is the bitter truth: when it comes to the employees’ own needs — our concerns, our struggles, our personal difficulties — those same managers suddenly disappear. It’s as if our voices become whispers in a loud room, easy to ignore and convenient to forget. The same urgency they demand from us evaporates when the situation is reversed. What is urgent for us, what is critical for our well-being, doesn’t even register on their radar.

And what makes this situation even more painful is not only their neglect, but their broken promises. They tell you they will take care of something, they assure you that support will come, and they make commitments that sound good in the moment. Yet, those promises vanish into thin air. Nothing changes. The help never arrives. The situation stays the same. And still, despite all of this, they expect performance. They expect productivity. They expect results.

This contradiction eats away at me. On one side, they treat their priorities as sacred, unquestionable, and immediate. On the other, they treat mine as optional, dismissible, even irrelevant. It feels like a one-way street where my role is simply to deliver, deliver, deliver — while never receiving the same level of care or urgency in return.

The hardest part is that I know I have potential. I know there is more inside me than what I am currently able to give. I can feel the energy, the creativity, the drive waiting to come out. But how can I release it in a space that seems designed to cage me in? How can I find motivation in a system that seems to thrive on taking without giving back?

The truth is, I don’t have a simple answer. Some days, it feels impossible. Some days, the weight of this imbalance drags me down so far that I can barely see beyond the present frustration. But other days, I remind myself of something important: my potential is mine. It belongs to me, not to my workplace, not to my managers, not to any external system. They can create obstacles, they can build walls, they can ignore my needs — but they cannot erase what I carry inside.

So I try to shift my perspective. Instead of waiting for them to give me the right conditions, I ask myself: what can I do for myself? Maybe I cannot change the way they behave, but I can change the way I invest in myself. I can keep learning. I can keep building skills. I can nurture my own ideas, even if they are not recognized in the workplace. I can remind myself that my worth is not defined by broken promises or one-sided demands.

It’s not easy. Working in an environment like this feels like walking uphill every single day. But I believe that even in such harsh conditions, there is a way to plant seeds. Maybe those seeds won’t grow here, maybe they won’t be appreciated in this soil — but they will be ready when I move to better ground.

And perhaps that is the ultimate answer. I cannot control the culture I work in right now, but I can control how I carry myself within it. I can refuse to let their lack of care define my sense of value. I can push myself to hold on to my potential, even if it remains hidden for now. Because one day, I know I will find the right place to unleash it fully — a place where urgency, respect, and promises are not reserved only for those in power, but shared equally among everyone.

Until then, I will keep moving forward, not for them, but for myself.