Definition of success

[AliGrylls]

AIBU for thinking our society is becoming obsessed with defining success in terms of career / how much money one has.

I ask this question because almost everyone I know says things like "oh x is really successful - they have a really good job". Also on the thread about likeability some people have only correlated success with having money.

Is being successful in terms relationships / intellectual achievements / socially not valid anymore?.

Discuss (and possibly await flames).

When all my children are grown up, if they can turn around and say they had a happy childhood which set them on a positive path for adulthood, then and only then will I consider myself a success.

I have held this belief since the day I gave birth to my eldest and it truly is the most important thing to me in terms of what success is.

For me, ultimate success would involve:

• still getting on with dh and laughing at his jokes
• having four happy, healthy, positive, socially adept children (though accept that a lot of this = luck, so all normal disclaimers apply)
• being an innovator in my field. My hero is someone who devised a particular clinical intervention that is little known but from my POV breathtaking in its simplicity and applicability. I aspire to this
• having a house
• ultimately, having a cottage by the sea.

These are my aims in life. Money is in there, somewhere, but as a means to an end only.

I feel bad that I have not contributed more to this. I only have an hour in my day to play on mn.

I was brought up to believe that success was working hard and achieving results in the work place / academically. I never had a particularly brilliant career and I was always jealous of people that did because I thought I should be the same. It was only when I met DH I actually started to think that success was much more than this (MIL and DH have a much more rounded view of things).

Those that say career and money are the two easiest indicators if there is nothing else to go on are right but I guess I just find it a bit shallow.