News and Articles
The Measure of Success
1st March 2008
There’s nothing like an impending high school reunion to get you thinking about what you’ve been doing with your life.
The idea of fronting up to a gathering of former peers can be shrouded in mixed emotions. The anticipation of being reunited with long lost friends for a weekend of reminiscing and hilarity is accompanied by a generous serving of adolescent self-consciousness. Reviewing your life achievements can be done with grace and generosity in the privacy of your mind, but having them appraised in full public view can be quite another story.
Everyone has a different definition of ‘success’. For some it’s fame and fortune, for others it’s survival against all odds, and for others it’s a combination of the above with a dollop of love and happiness thrown in for good measure. Our sense of success and another’s assessment of our success can therefore stand poles apart. But whose opinion counts most?
The years that have flown by since leaving school bring experience and maturity, they dull that juvenile rose-tinted view of things, but they can also open up your eyes to so many other options and paths.
Where has the journey taken you so far? Is there a vast difference between your expected and actual path?
It’s an opportunity to review the years in terms of where you hoped you’d be as a young and wide-eyed school leaver. It’s also a perfect opportunity to put some of those objectives back on the list. Some may still apply to your life twenty or so years on. And all going well, you’ve still got plenty of time to make some of those things happen. Retrain for that dream career, update your skills, take control of your health or wealth (or lack thereof), travel again to an exotic destination and take some risks so you don’t die wondering.
Prepared by Ingrid Hennessey