The Successful Self

Whether or not something can be defined as successful depends on whether it achieves what it set out to. So, in order to decide whether we have a 'successful self ' we need to be clear about what we want our self, our identity, to achieve. Of course, that is not always an easy question to answer because we do not tend to think of our identity as being about achieving something, it is just who we are.

So, perhaps it might be more helpful to think in terms how happy we are with who we are - to what extent we feel fulfilled in our strivings. In this sense, then, the notion of 'the successful self' can be said to be a spiritual one (whether religious or not) - as it is about how well we feel we fit into our world, how secure and comfortable we are on the one hand and to what extent we are 'living our dream' on the other.

Existentialist philosophy has taught us that it is not wise to conceive of the self as fixed and unchangeable. It is more helpful to think of identity as a process - a journey even - in which we grow and evolve over time, influenced in no small part by people and circumstances we encounter along the way and the wider social (cultural and structural) context in which we live our lives. What direction the journey takes us in, how fulfilling we find it and to what extent we feel we can call it a success will depend in part on choices we make along the way, opening some doors and closing others.

In view of this, some important questions to ask ourselves would be:
• Do you feel comfortable with who you are?
• If so, what is it that makes this the case and how might you be able to use that insight to help others to feel comfortable with themselves?
• If not, what is stopping you from doing so and what might you be able to do in order to
change the situation in a positive direction?
• Do you strive to be more than comfortable, to achieve particular goals?
• If so, do you have a clear plan for achieving them?
• If not, might you have a higher level of well-being if you were to develop some goals for yourself?
• In your work, would there be benefits for you to consider how comfortable in themselves the people you work with are (that is, supervisees, managers, colleagues, clients, service users, patients, customers)?
• Would it help also to support them in identifying goals for themselves if they were happy for you to do so?

Being 'successful' is often interpreted narrowly to mean material success (income, status or social position, for example), but it is arguably the case that material success will not bring about a successful self in the form of happiness or a sense of fulfilment. Feeling comfortable with who we are, being comfortable 'in our own skin', as it were, is much more likely to give us a sense of well-being, but ironically the major focus in modern, western societies seems to be on material success, resulting in overly competitive, highly unequal social relations, with all of the problems such factors can bring for individuals, groups of people, and society as a whole.

Perhaps it is time, then, for us to think very carefully about what we mean by success, how we define it and how we go about trying to achieve it.