The key to success in the 21st century

Bupa Global are committed to supporting you – physically, mentally and emotionally. Offering premium holistic health plans with a range of preventive health and wellbeing services. As the world evolves, here they explore what success means today.

Corner office, holiday home, new car. These were once the defining features of success, but are these traditional markers still relevant? In today’s world, how do we measure success and happiness?

According to experts like Emma Kenny, a psychologist specialising in life balance, there’s now a greater focus on personal wellbeing when it comes to measuring success.

“More people are coming around to the idea that living a life doing what you love is a life spent happy,” Emma says. “And that by playing to their gifts rather than standards set by society, they can be successful in their own right.”

Take Cheryl MacDonald. After years of seeking the traditional badges of success as a business analyst, she was made redundant while on maternity leave. After previously enjoying a course in pregnancy yoga, she took her knowledge and made it the key to a more holistic career.

Starting YogaBellies in her spare room, her company now has 100 franchises worldwide and she’s worked from home ever since.

“Choosing a business based around a practice I love changed everything,” Cheryl says. “We’re often taught to put success first, before our own health but self-care is incredibly important to personal happiness and should be prioritised.”

Even the names we associate with success aren’t necessarily driven by the goals that fit the conventional ‘winning at life’ definition.

“Too many people measure how successful they are by how much money they make or the people that they associate with,” writes billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson. “In my opinion, true success should be measured by how happy you are.”

Ariana Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, has made it her mission in recent years to encourage others to add a ‘third metric’ to the shared idea of success, going beyond the metrics of money and power.

“To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a third measure that consists of four pillars: wellbeing, wisdom, wonder and giving.”

What Cheryl and scores of experts agree on is that when it comes to success, your best bet is to look within, rather than seek the answer from others.

What your parents and grandparents saw as ‘the good life’ doesn’t stand up when it comes to the 21st century. We’re defining our happiness for ourselves and doing whatever we can to achieve it. That’s what true success looks like.

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