Why “success” isn’t always the best option

And why redefining your versions of success should be your midlife mantra

After 15 years walking the road from my house to the local Primary school, today I walked it with the chatter of a child beside me for the last time. 

In two months, all that will have changed is the colour of her skin, blushed with the summer sun, and perhaps the weight of her schoolbag, now carrying secondary school books.  But in fact, everything will have changed. 

I first walked this road with one hand enveloping one apprehensive little hand, my other pushing a buggy. Then I walked it with two little hands in mine, or me yelling for little scooter legs to slow down and watch for big cars coming out of driveways. 

Then I walked it with feet in surer shoes beside me and a double buggy in front of me, new baby sleeping while her sisters nattered and chatted about the wonders that young children find so fascinating in every day life. We played I Spy, yet as the seasons changed the scenery, we never ran out of letters. And before they even knew spelling we did colours, delighted to explore their world any way they could. 

I have walked this road with moody tweens, princesses, witches, ghosts and goths, minions and dead brides. I’ve walked this road with an inflatable dinosaur and smiled with silliness as cars hooted their cheers as my little TRex waddled down the street. 

As the Primary School gates close on us for the last time, so a chapter of my life closes too.  When I first walked with that apprehensive little hand, my life was full of joy and hope. Three weeks later I would give birth to her sister, the last of my three daughters; the end of baby making and the beginning of child-rearing. Four days later it would be the beginning of the end for my mum who would suffer a catastrophic stroke and need 24 hour care for the next five years. It was the beginning of the end of my marriage, which would take its last breath a year before my mum did.

As the shoes bedside me got bigger, and the conversations grew deeper, my life changed in ways I could never have imagined on that first school day.  

I have walked this road with love and pride, such gratitude for what my life brought me in its weaving, wondrous way. I have walked this road so broken hearted I wasn’t sure I’d make it home without having to sit on the curb to grasp my heart in my hands to hold it in. I have walked this road in joy, in tears, in grief, in frustration, in fear, in haste distracted and slowly with intention, and every emotion that has pulsed my life for 15 years.  

As my life changed in so many ways, this walk gave me consistency. 

As my marriage fell apart, this walk gave me structure. 

As my mum died, this walk gave me direction. 

As I started to rebuild, this walk gave me strength. 

As I started to flourish, this walk bounced my step.  

And as I waved my glorious girl off to her last day at Primary school, I turned to walk on with my dog knowing, just like with my other girls, we will always be walking together, wherever they, and I, go next. 

Now, aware of how important it is to be intentional about defining what success looks like next, I reframe, redefine where and how my energy goes forward. Now it is about waving them off with trust, our feet maybe walking in different directions but always from the same starting point: our family. 

We sometimes think of the stages of our lives as the big 10 or 20 year phases that can be wrapped up in a bow with a tag saying ‘childhood’ or ‘teenage’ or ‘college years’. Then there is the young, free and single stage, the relationship years, perhaps the early married stage and then the kids years.

Midlife is a blaze of blurry mayhem and if you’re not careful - and I see this all the time with the women I coach - you can living your life according to outdated definitions of success, or ideas of what your life should look and feel like. But what can - and does - happen, is as you grow, evolve and experience lots of things you couldn’t have imagined, you can be living by outdated versions of success. 

As I say in my book, Midlife, redefined: Better, Bolder, Brighter: 

Your adopted ideas of success might have been formed of your own design, but from an idea of success derived for a world designed for men. Or from your parent’s expectations or an airbrushed Instagram post. Your life has moved at a pace, and what was a reasonable definition of success in your twenties might not feel so right now that you’ve experienced some of those ambitions. Your opportunities have changed too. What was possible for women twenty years ago is different. For me, what does a post- marriage relationship look like? (I like to joke that I want to take a man’s shirt off, not iron it, but I’m not really joking!). Relationships can be whatever you need and want them to be. You are no longer reliant on the prescribed formula. What does a successful life feel like when kids have grown up now there is freedom to travel, work remotely, be financially independent? These are the questions you now get to ask: who were you before you were taught to be and do the way you are? 

It’s something at the very core of my coaching women in midlife. In our twenties, we create the checklist we hope our life will seamlessly hang, no ironing required, that will later define whether or not we’ve been “successful”.  For many of us this can be, and often is, heavily influenced by those we see around us, and are guided by our family, peers and culture. 

Defining what success looks and feels like for us for every relationship, every stage and phase of our evolution is a crucial part of my coaching, because it is the essence of living intentionally. And at midlife, this is so important because life is so hectic and harried with constant change. 

I had an idea of what success looked like in those Primary school years. It hasn’t always been perfect. Bad hair days are rife in a house-hold of girls.  And now as they are in a new stage, I’ve had to redefine what that success looks like - for them and for me. Less hand-holding, more stepping back and zipping my mouth shout, lest I turn into my mother and tell them to cover up more. 

But there are little stages all through those big phases, each one marking a shift, a slide away from what you’ve just got used to, so you have to adapt and adjust. 

It’s not that the scripts are necessarily wrong (although the one from the 80’s about women were) but to ask are they right for you now, at this age and stage of your life whether you’re in your 40’s or 60’s.

If we are living our lives by the expectations of an outdated or wrong definition of success, it can be devastating.  I had a client who, in her early 50’s, had come to me to figure out what was next. Her kids were finishing school and leaving home, she was bored of her 20 year career, and she wanted something else. Something more.  She realised she still had 20 years of midlife and a whole new chapter was waiting to be written.  

As we worked on what kind of career and work/life balance she wanted, how to redefine her marriage now that they were no longer bound by the teamwork focus that had held them in a shared vision for 20 years, one thing kept coming up.  She kept mentioning a bigger house.  Even though every other part of her life plan was indicating something totally different - a freedom to explore, space to develop, time to find adventure - she kept coming back to “but I need to get a bigger house.”  When I delved deeper into this, she kept repeating it had always been the plan. “But what about now?” I asked her. “What do you really need now? What do you really want now?” And her face did that think that makes being a coach the best job in the world: it transformed with the realisation her definition of success had completely changed. Hanging on to an old, outdated version of success was blocking her from being able to make the decisions she needed to make for her new, relevant definitions of success for her current life. 

We are handed a script by our culture, society, parents and peers and sometimes we can be chapters in that script before we think to write our own story.

As I’ll pass the Primary school in September with my dog, my girls all now making their own ways to school, I’ll take time to redefine what success will look and feel like for the next few years as we all spread our wings a bit more.  I’ll redefine what success looks like for my work and life dance, for my health, for my finances, for my romantic relationships - all because the end of this particular walk signifies more time and independence for me, and a deeper understanding of who I am and what I want. 

What areas of your life do you need to redefine what success looks and feels like? I’d love to know in the comments below.

For my paid subscribers I’m giving an extract of the chapter on defining your versions of success from my book, Midlife redefined: Better, Bolder, Brighter, along with an exercise to help you define your definitions of success.

If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscriber , please do here.