So far this morning, I’ve managed to get my printer to work, I’ve changed a fuse, completed an online purchase and sorted out the timer on my Christmas lights. That, I’d consider, to be a very high achieving day, and it’s not even lunchtime. So, if a researcher phoned me up right now to ask whether I’d consider myself successful, I’d say: You bet I am.
Forget about all those other measures of success, like owning your own house, having a top of the range car, and travelling business class. The key to fulfilment is having a sense of control in a world that can often feel as if it’s conspiring against you. (Whether this is enough to make you happy is another thing, of course, but it’s a pretty good start.)
The relevance of my self-satisfied introspection is that Ipsos has just published research in which they interviewed more than 2,000 British adults to interrogate our attitudes to success, specifically what we considered to be the measures of personal achievement.
Alongside the obvious, outward signs which still rank highly, like material possessions (owning your own house, having a hot tub), and financial security (not carrying any debt and having enough money to retire) were more psychologically beneficial factors – finding enough time to pursue hobbies, maintaining good relationships with your family, and having a job you find interesting.
This is a definite shift, and one exacerbated by the pandemic, a time when people were encouraged to take greater personal responsibility. In its aftermath, we have changed our relationship with work into one where we are able more easily to dictate our terms of engagement, and I would contend that we also now measure our quality of life, and thereby our measure of success, not in terms of big ticket items – houses, cars, swimming pools – but by the more insignificant, less definable, victories that make us feel good, and by the level we are able to determine the course of our lives.
You may have thought that being successful in the traditional sense of the word (career, money etc.) is the thing that enables you to take control, whereas the opposite is true: being in control of your destiny is what makes you a successful person.
I speak as someone of a certain age with a degree of financial security, and whose striving for career advancement is a thing of the past, but, according to the Ipsos poll, all age groups believe that at the root of success “is a desire for control over our lives”.
This is perhaps unsurprising given how much younger generations must fear the march of robots, how our movements are tracked and how much of our personal data is held by corporations and agencies of the state. In this context, any expression of individual achievement, and any sense that we have beaten the system, is bound to be exponentially rewarding.
Importantly, the survey reveals that people regard having the time to devote to their favourite pastimes more a measure of success than owning stocks and shares or sending your children to private school, which gives me a huge sense of satisfaction as I set out on my next jigsaw puzzle or Lego creation.
As I do, I will be buoyed by the knowledge that others will see me as the undoubted success I am.