You will not grow out of it. If you're unhappy now for feeling like you're wasting potential, per the rest of your post, then that feeling will only get worse as time goes on, making you feel more like you should have used your time for something - to head in a certain focused/decided direction, toward something you want to have. What you should change depends on what you want, and I'll explain.
This is really good, lungs! Very helpful for people, you EII Humanitarian, you.
I just want to add on to the bolded part - from my experience of talking with lots of people, if you ask them them what they want in life, they don't know what to say, since they've never thought about it before or don't know. They usually will just say something basic trying to sound good. A much better question, imo, would be 'What's important to you?' Then let the person answer.
For me, deciding what's important to me was relatively easy when I knew what to do. I learned I just had to think back to moments in my childhood/teenage years when I was the happiest. What was I doing at the time? Why was I happy? How close was I with family? What activities were I doing? What did I like getting attention for? What were my friends like? How close was I with other people? Was I happy being by myself? What at the time was I focused on?
Questions like those in the paragraph above helped me find connections between the moments where I was happy, and really understand what things are personally important to me. After learning that, I just had to try to recreate those moments/situations in my adult life.
Ainfigur, I'd suggest taking some time, even if you have to sit in complete silence for 30 minutes, and hour, whatever it takes, and just think. What do you want your life to be like in 5 years? What will your family be like? Do you want to have traveled anywhere? What kind of career do you want? What kind of house do you want to live in? What kind of clothes do you want to wear? Try to envision your future as specific and as detailed as possible.
After you do that, the rest is easy. Beginning with the end in mind, work backwards. To get that 5 years from now, what do you need to have done 4 years from now? 3 years? 2 years? This year? What do you need to do each month this year to get what you want? What do you need to do each week this month to get what you want by the end of the month? Lastly - and most importantly - what do you need to be doing each DAY to get what you want?
Once you know what daily action you need to do, this is when TIME can actually be on your side - rather than feeling like it's being wasted, if you know how to do your daily action consistently every single day, then over TIME the results will compound exponentially and you will be moving your life in the direction of your choosing.
Let me give an example. Say someone wants to lose weight. They make a 1-year goal, work backwards and decide they want to work out every day for 20 minutes. Will it make a difference the first day? No. After 2 days? Probably not. After 1 week? Probably won't be that much different. But check this out:
If they keep working out every day for a simple 20 minutes, over the course of 1 year they will have worked out for over 120 hours!!! Now that's time-compounding working in your favor! Your body will definitely be a lot healthier if you can give it 120 more hours of heart-pumping exercise. That person is guaranteed to lose weight for exercising 120 hours in 1 year.
Another example - if you read 2 books a week for 10 years, you will have read over 1,000 books. And you can't read 1000 books without it drastically affecting your thinking and influencing your lifestyle. What should you read about? It depends what you want to learn. But that's another example of how the amount of knowledge you have can drastically change over time, and you can learn and master whatever you want, if you're willing to make that simple daily decision every single day and be consistent.
Once you know that daily decision you need to do, be warned and remember - it's very easy NOT to do it. Why? Because there are no consequences for NOT doing it. You won't be punished and likely won't see any difference that 1 day from not doing it. But remember, over TIME the punishment will come out, or you'll feel guilty for not using time in your favor to craft the life you want. The simple daily decision can be easy to do, you just have to stay focused and have faith and continue to be consistent. Luckily being consistent will also help keep your emotions steady, and the longer you stay in the process and make something a habit, the easier it is to stay in the process.
This post was long, but to sum up: To be happy in life, you have to figure out what's important to you and then use that to create your future. You figure out what's important to you by looking at your past and when you were most happy. Then you switch to the future and envision how you want your life to be like. With that picture in mind, you work backwards and set goals each step of the process, until you have narrowed it down to a single daily action you need to take to reach what you want. Once you know that - keep doing it! Stay consistent. Have faith that you'll reach your goal, and keep doing that daily action. Over time, you will reach your potential and your goals and be happier for using time to your advantage.