Defining success

Towards a more holistic criteria of a life well lived

Jun 07, 2026

The older I get and the more I move away from the dominant global system, the more aware I’m becoming of the term “success”. For a long time it wasn’t really a word I would pay attention to. I never once through my schooling thought of being a successful student; I was a bullied child, handling a lot of hormones, and besides all that my main focus was probably just to do the best I could in exams.

Move forward to the uni years and again, doing my best in assessments was paramount alongside the social aspect, but I never used the word “success”.

Even when I was doing my teacher training or actually working in schools, I didn’t try to be a “success” consciously.

Looking back now, I can see that the notion of success underpinned everything, whether I was aware or not. School was about being successful enough to pass exams and stand out in the future, but also to make the school look good in the league tables. For most young people the purpose of university is to be a successful student and become a successful professional utilising the specialised qualification. The world of work defines many of us for the majority of our lives, and how high up a ladder we climb before retirement or how much money we earn each year is the absolute embodiment of “success” within W.E.I.R.D.1 nations.

The omnipresent spectre of the Anglo-American, Protestant “work ethic” serves to instil this definition of success within the hearts of many of us. It is a point-of-view that sees people below a certain latitude as idlers causing their own problems. It views those who step away from the dominant work pattern as lazy and leeches on society. Most insidiously, it can rise up inside those who have chosen not to lead conformist lifestyles and weigh them down like a stone of guilt and shame in their bellies, grasping for rationales and excuses. Or is that just me?

Success in globalised capitalism

The simple fact is that the definition of success in globalised capitalism is just far too narrow and monocultural. We’re humans, we’re meant to be brimming with creativity and adaptability and proaction, and yet how many of us are siphoned into the modern system, straightjacketed inside it? I know I saw no way out for a long while, and despite feelings of non-conformity, I felt I had to study, work harder and harder, climb higher and higher, and only achieve some of what I wanted later in my life - at a point that none is guaranteed will arrive.

And in fact, in addition to being narrowly defined, I see the prevailing concept of success as a form of slavery. From a very early age we progress through an education system that is actually becoming increasingly prescriptive. One only has to consider “off-curriculum” activities. When I was in school, we had sports days, field trips and residentials. Nowadays many schools have forgone these; if the students are to pass all exams with flying colours, they can’t afford to miss lessons, even for something that broadens their horizons outside of the classroom.

After the gauntlet of unimaginative education has been run, those who don’t leave feeling undermined by the system will start to earn money - trading their time for a salary, and most likely lining the pockets of the already rich and established with even more money while taking a pittance home in comparison.

It seems to me that four unavoidable questions stand out within this definition of success:

Am I earning enough money yet? The answer, as with any craving we chase, will normally remain “no” because that approach to life always leaves us wanting ever more.
Do I own everything I want? To which, again, the response will be “no”, particularly when we live in the consumerist world of constant bombardment by adverts that sell a better life, if only we buy this extra item.
Am I doing better than him, or her, or them over there? And so on and so forth… because modern success is competitive and comparative, and we’ll never feel quite good enough.
Is your job ~~meaningful and regenerative or~~ soulless and extractive? Unfortunately more roles seem to be the latter, although I think we are in an age of more people realising the former is essential, and making that change.

Knocked “off course”

Since graduating in 2009, I’ve never managed to answer any of the above questions positively. I graduated into the global recession, so my confidence took a nosedive, with months of fruitless job-seeking and a sense of not being good enough. When I have worked, I’ve always chased more money. When I reached pretty high up the ladder in 2024 as a manager, the salary was great, but I spent it on things I’d never have spent on ordinarily, nor did the position feel workable or productive.

Earlier I mentioned feeling a deep draw to non-conformity - perhaps rather antithetically to the people-pleasing element that grew within me in response to being bullied and isolated through much of school. Through all of my attempts to live the average Western life, books and observations and ideas would knock me off that course every so often, even if only mentally. The most important ideas of all to derail any ongoing conformity have been permaculture and Buddhism.

Permaculture began as the obvious next step in the evolution of my gardening practice, leading it from my early decision to quit chemical inputs to growing more edibles and promoting biodiversity. It has taken my lifestyle to another level too, in a way gardening-after-work-me never foresaw. I’ve got to know more about its ethics, its principles and its non-land-based design applications, and through Laura Oldanie, encountered the eight (and more now) forms of capital.

Buddhist thought falls into step with permaculture so comfortably, probably due to the oft-understated indigenous influences within the latter. Buddhism’s emphasis on change and adaptation, the inter-being of all life and the necessity of a right livelihood echoes the wisdom forming within permaculture, and draws systems thinking into their orbit as well.

‘The insight of interbeing and no self can help us make use of our life force – what Freud called sublimation – to take action in life to help and protect others, to forgive and to reconcile, and to help and protect the Earth.’2

My own definition of success

Thanks to such expansive learning and thinking, the way I envisage “success” has expanded too. It’s no longer an ethereal being drifting beneath the shaky foundations of my life. It’s an illuminated figure drawn more readily to mind, to help me stay on track. Looking at it, I now recognise what success looks like to me.

It’s greater liberation from the globalised capitalist system. Not quite full freedom yet, but working part-time has released me to develop other aspects of my life.
It’s flexibility, resilience and wellbeing, bolstered by the time liberated from an office.

‘Whatever the nature of this flexibility - physical, mental, social, technological, or economic - it is essential to the system’s ability to adapt to environmental changes. Loss of flexibility means loss of health.’3

It’s the time and ability to choose to…
- …give back to the whole web of life through regenerative practices.
- …grow food and share it with others.
- …be an even better life-long learner, through books, online courses and hands-on practice in the garden.
- …share my learning with others via my writing or in-person discussions with those around me, be that friends, colleagues or neighbours.
- …build deeper, more meaningful relationships with my loved ones while also widening my sense of community through online groups and I hope one day soon local permaculture/regeneration groups also.
It’s multiple forms of capital. I concentrate more now on a healthy spread of wealth that incorporates living, experiential, intellectual, social, cultural and spiritual forms of capital, not just financial and material.

‘Most importantly, this means realizing that money is not our only goal - a wealthy life and healthy society is a far more important one!’4

Eulogy

If I were to hear my funeral eulogy read out loud, I would hope to hear above all that I had lived as a beacon of optimistic and practical change in a time of polycrisis. That I’d lived regeneratively and approached the web of life here on our beautiful Earth in a kind and empowering manner.

I would like to hear people say I’d had a positive impact on our planet instead of a wholly negative influence.

I’d like them to describe my understanding of “enough” rather than the unrestrained pursuit of “more”.

I’d like others to say that I had uplifted and encouraged them, been compassionate and considerate, light-hearted and wise, and generous with time and attention and not just “stuff”. That I collaborated and connected as much as possible.

I’m not there yet. It’s a difficult journey - I’d say it's harder than the conventional, unquestioning route - but it feels much more full of hope, much more full of purpose and much more full of life. If I carry on with this trajectory, I hope to know I’ve led a life well lived, where success was on my own terms.

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