A life well lived may be measured by far more than what we accumulate
Success changes shape as we change. What once looked like possessions, promotions, or milestones may eventually become something quieter: meaningful work, personal growth, contribution and the influence we leave behind.
How do we measure a successful life?
How does one measure success for a life well lived? Is it the amount of money in your bank account, the highest position you have reached at work, the home you live in, the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the family you care for, the relationships you have built or the respect you have earned?
We all carry a scoreboard of some kind, whether we admit it or not. Sometimes we inherit it from family. Sometimes it is shaped by schooling, culture, religion, advertising, social media or the people we quietly compare ourselves with when nobody is watching. From early in life, we learn that certain things signal success: income, property, status, recognition, influence, confidence, appearance, busyness and achievement.
And to be fair, some of those things matter. Money provides security and choice. Good work can offer dignity and purpose. A home provides stability. Healthy relationships sustain us through the complicated business of being human. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting comfort, progress, recognition or beautiful things. The difficulty begins when we confuse the symbols of success with success itself.
Success is deeply personal, and its meaning rarely stays fixed. Things that once made us feel we had arrived may later become ordinary, irrelevant or quietly amusing. What matters enormously at one stage of life may carry completely different significance at another. Perhaps success is therefore not a destination we eventually reach, but a measure that evolves alongside us.
When success looked like rollerblades
When I was younger, success once looked like a pair of rollerblades. Not a promotion. Not property. Not a qualification framed dramatically on a wall. Rollerblades.
At that stage of my life, being able to buy them with my own money mattered enormously. They represented independence. I could want something, work for it, pay for it and say, These are mine. There was only one small flaw in this triumphant milestone: I couldn’t rollerblade to save my life.
I remember going skating with a friend along Durban’s crowded beachfront promenade. Well, skating may be a generous description. There was movement. There was ambition. There was also a considerable amount of wobbling, flailing and negotiating with gravity. The promenade was full, my confidence was wildly misplaced, and my dignity was several metres behind me trying to catch up.
Yet those rollerblades still mattered. Not because I became a stylish beachfront athlete; I certainly did not. I used them properly once, discovered that balance and I were not in a committed relationship, and they eventually found their way into the back of a cupboard before being pawned off. But for a brief period, they represented success because I had crossed a small but meaningful threshold. I had bought something I wanted with money I had earned.
Sometimes possessions matter not because of what they cost, but because of what they represent.
When success became a computer
Later, the measure changed. For years, I had hand-me-down computers: machines somebody else had already used to the point of frustration before passing them on. I was grateful for them, of course, but using a computer that sighs before opening a document requires a particular kind of patience.
Eventually, buying my first brand-new computer became another measure of success. It was not simply about owning technology. It was about choice. I had earned enough to buy a tool I wanted and needed, and I could invest in my own work, learning and creativity rather than relying only on whatever somebody else no longer wanted.
That computer represented possibility. It could hold writing, design work, ideas, experiments, learning materials, documents and plans. It gave me greater freedom to create, build and participate in work that mattered to me. Once again, the object itself was not really the full story. The deeper measure was agency, independence and the ability to create something of my own.
Looking back, I can see that the rollerblades and the computer were not particularly different measures of success. Both represented the same underlying shift: the growing ability to make choices for myself.
The quiet success of ordinary adulthood
Success changed again as life became less about individual milestones and more about building an everyday existence. It became renting our own flats, eventually owning a home, creating a shared life, adopting dogs, paying accounts, buying groceries, managing responsibilities and somehow keeping everything moving when nobody was applauding.
These things may not sound particularly glamorous. Nobody stands in the kitchen holding a packet of dog food and whispers, This is what greatness looks like. Although perhaps they should.
There is a quiet satisfaction in managing the ordinary responsibilities of adulthood: paying what needs to be paid, feeding the dogs, fixing what breaks, making plans, adjusting when those plans collapse and finding a way through months that refuse to behave politely. Success comes from creating stability; not dramatic stability or Instagram stability, but the real kind built through ordinary choices, repeated effort, and small acts of responsibility.
At different stages of our lives, some of these milestones may once have seemed impossibly far away. Then, one day, they become the things we do without ceremony. That does not make them insignificant. It means they have become integrated into the lives we have built.
Perhaps we underestimate this kind of success because it rarely comes with applause. Yet much of adult life is sustained not by dramatic achievements but by small decisions made consistently: caring for people, maintaining commitments, managing difficulties, adapting when circumstances change and continuing to build despite the occasional chaos.
When success becomes meaningful work
As I grow older, my measure of success has shifted again. Today it is less about what I own and more about what I can create, contribute, and continue becoming.
I find enormous satisfaction in work I genuinely enjoy: writing, editing, graphic design, education, instructional design, learning architecture and shaping ideas into something another person can use. That last part matters. When creativity produces something useful, work becomes more than employment; it becomes contribution.
There is a particular satisfaction in taking a messy idea and giving it structure, turning confusion into clarity, or helping a learner, colleague, or reader understand something they could not see before. For me, designing a learning experience is not merely about delivering content. It is about helping someone move from uncertainty to understanding, from knowing to doing, or from where they are to somewhere new.
That kind of success can be quieter than recognition, but it can also be considerably more meaningful. It may not come with a title, a certificate or a round of applause. Sometimes meaningful work is slow, detailed, repetitive and deeply unphotogenic. Yet when what we do aligns with our abilities and values, it carries a different kind of reward.
All workplaces contain expectations, deadlines, responsibilities and compromise. That is simply part of working life. But there are also private questions worth asking: Does the work mean something to me? Does it allow me to use my strengths? Am I still learning? Am I creating something useful? Does the work reflect something of who I am becoming?
A demanding role can still hold meaning. Difficult work can still align with purpose. But achievement completely disconnected from personal meaning can look impressive from the outside while feeling strangely empty from within. Organisations and job titles can describe what we do, but they cannot entirely define who we are.
From “What have I achieved?” to “What has mattered?”
At some point, the questions begin to change. Instead of asking only, What have I achieved? we begin asking, What has mattered? And that question hits differently.
Achievement tends to focus on things that can be named, listed, displayed, promoted or compared. It likes certificates, job titles, property values, income brackets and visible milestones. Meaning asks something else. Do my choices reflect my values? Does the way I spend my time resemble the life I say I want? Am I becoming more fully myself, or am I simply getting better at performing somebody else’s definition of success?
That can be uncomfortable territory because many of us reach milestones we were told would matter, only to discover the feeling doesn’t last. A life can look successful from the outside while feeling surprisingly disconnected from the person living it. That does not make achievement wrong. It simply means achievement deserves examination.
We have one life, not as a motivational slogan printed on a mug, but as a practical fact: one life containing changing responsibilities, unexpected turns, losses, joys, recoveries, reinventions and opportunities to choose again. If we spend that life according entirely to somebody else’s scoreboard, we may eventually find ourselves surrounded by evidence of success while wondering whether something important was left unattended.
The danger of external scoreboards
Money, careers and possessions are not meaningless. They provide security, freedom, dignity and genuine pleasure. There is little value in pretending that practical needs do not matter, and it is difficult to reflect deeply on the meaning of life when the bills are shouting from the kitchen table.
The danger comes when external measures become the only measures we consult. If we measure success solely by income, enough may never feel like enough. If we measure it by status, somebody else’s promotion begins to feel like a threat. If productivity becomes the dominant measure, rest can start to feel like failure. If appearance becomes the measure, ageing becomes an enemy rather than an inevitable part of being alive. And if approval becomes the measure, we may spend far too much time shrinking ourselves to fit rooms that were never designed for our full humanity.
External scoreboards are noisy because they constantly tell us who appears to be ahead, who is falling behind, who earns more, who looks better, who is moving faster and who has ticked more boxes. What they rarely ask is whether we are satisfied, still learning, becoming more honest with ourselves, using our abilities in ways that matter or caring for the people, work and values that genuinely deserve our attention.
Those questions do not always produce tidy answers. They are still worth asking.
The ripple effect of a useful life
Another measure of success is the growth we encourage in other people. If something I have written, designed, taught or shared helps another person learn, adapt, self-advocate, think more clearly or try something new, then its impact travels beyond me. That matters more to me now than it once did.
Influence does not always announce itself. Sometimes a sentence stays with somebody. A conversation shifts their thinking. A resource gives them language for something they were struggling to name. Feedback helps them improve. A practical tool makes the next step possible. A moment of kindness helps somebody feel less alone.
We may never see the full effect of those moments, and that can be frustrating if we measure success by immediate feedback, applause, or measurable proof. Yet not everything meaningful returns to us as evidence.
Perhaps legacy works a little like the butterfly effect: one small action can create ripples we may never witness. We often imagine legacy as something grand: a building, a book, a business, a public achievement or a name attached to something that lasts. But legacy can also live quietly in people: in a learner who gained confidence, a colleague who learned to speak up, a friend who felt seen or a family member who remembers that you cared.
Some influence becomes part of another person’s choices. Some learning becomes part of their confidence. Some encouragement becomes part of their courage. None of this is particularly easy to quantify, but perhaps the most important things in life rarely are.
Success changes because we change
Looking back, success has travelled through many forms for me. At one stage it was rollerblades. At another, it was a brand-new computer. Later it became homes, dogs, bills, groceries, creative work, professional contribution and the ability to help other people learn.
None of those earlier measures was wrong. They belonged to different stages of my life.
We should not mock our younger selves for wanting what we wanted. Those things often represented something deeper at the time: independence, confidence, belonging, progress or possibility. The problem is not that our measures of success change. The problem comes when we fail to notice that they may need to change.
A measure that once helped us grow may eventually begin to confine us. A goal that once gave us direction may no longer reflect our values. A symbol of freedom can become a burden if we continue pursuing it long after its meaning has faded.
That is why the scoreboard deserves an occasional review. Not obsessively, and certainly not through constant self-interrogation until we become unbearable at dinner, but honestly enough to recognise when our definition of success needs updating.
Define success on your own terms.
A life well lived is about more than what we own or achieve. It is shaped by whether our values, behaviour and choices create meaning; by what we build, repair, learn and share; by what we contribute; by the people we help grow; and by our willingness to ask whether the life we are living still feels like our own.
Success may include money, career progress, property, comfort and recognition. It may also include peace, usefulness, creativity, resilience, contribution, self-respect and the quiet knowledge that our presence mattered. Perhaps the real measure is not whether we eventually reach one destination, but whether we continue learning how to live more authentically as our lives change.
So, the question may not simply be, Have I succeeded? It may also be, Am I measuring the right things?
What measures are you using today? Are they still yours? Do they reflect who you are now, or who you were trying to become years ago? Are they helping you build a life with greater meaning, or are they keeping you in pursuit of a version of success that no longer fits?
Success changes shape as we change. The invitation is to notice when an old measure has done its job, then choose a better one with intention—not because possessions, promotions, or milestones don’t matter, but because a life well lived deserves a measure deeper than accumulation alone.
