Issue 42 – April/May/June 2022

Feature

Hello again,

This issue is all about success both in business and life. It’s not, however about that old-fashioned yuppy take on success. We’re not talking about success meaning you have to own a designer wardrobe, fly by private jet, have a holiday home in Tuscany or buy a new car. That’s not what success means today.

How do you define success? Once it was probably fairly straightforward for most people. Success was doing well at school, finding a job, falling in love, settling down after marriage, buying a house and having a couple of children that you hoped would do better than you had. You’d know you’d made it
when you bought your first car, went on your first holiday abroad of when one of your kids was the first person in your family to graduate from university.

With the 1980s, success became synonymous with wealth and possessions as we moved towards a more polarised and materialistic society. Cheap credit led people to spend money they didn’t really have on things they didn’t really need. The era of the 125% mortgage was followed by global
recession after recession.

So what does success mean now? How do we define it and how do we achieve it? Success is now far more personal than in previous generations. We don’t have that procession of milestones to measure ourselves against. How can it be the same when a third of adults are still living at home when they
are 25? When the average age of a bride, at 31, means they fall into the category of geriatric mothers?

A generation ago, they’d have been buying their first flats and pursuing a career. A generation before that, they’d be married and be looking after a child or two. Now, even young people with a fortunate start in life face a mountain of student debt, frightening rents and a cost of living that’s getting out of control. Social mobility and standards of living are going backwards. This generation will be worse off than their parents.

In these circumstances, it’s less about fitting with the external view of what makes a person successful and working out what it means to you as an individual. It’s not about an excess of wealth, but about getting the balance between work and other aspects of your life right. It’s about feeling safe,
happy, healthy and fulfilled.

We’re here to help you find success on your own terms!

Love,

Alison and everyone at Holistic Therapist