The things you need to be a success

Picture a busy street in a city of your choice. You’re standing on the corner, waiting for a friend, when a sports car pulls up outside the five-star hotel across the road. You see the person climb out and give their keys to the hotel staff. They are laden with shopping bags adorned with designer names which they pass to an assistant to hold before making their way inside.

What do you think about this person? They must be successful, right?

For many people, success equals ‘things’. The more ‘things’ you have, the more successful you are. The bigger house, the flashy car, the designer clothes… In our society, these are all signs that a person has ‘made it’.

When you have these ‘things’, there’s no denying it feels good — you feel like you’ve finally got there, you’re a real success. After a while, though, they become normal to you. There is always something else to aspire to — something that promises to make your life better. An even bigger house. The latest sports car. More expensive clothes.

And so continues this cycle of dissatisfaction, of constant reaching, of never feeling like you have enough. You might look successful, but you still don’t feel it. We amass these ‘things’ simply to impress other people.

But here’s the real secret… It doesn’t work.

Take a second to think about the people in your life — your family and friends, the people who love, the people you can be yourself with.

What do you think about when you picture them? Do you think about their clothes or their car or how nicely their home is decorated? What about the jewellery they wear, or how much money they spent the last time you went out together?

For me, when I think about these people, I think about how they make me feel. The advice they have given me. All the times we have stayed up, late into the night, drinking and laughing and reminiscing. The difficult moments in my life that they have helped pull me through.

The way you make people feel — that’s your success.

My Nana Florrie, my great Nana, was never rich. She had four children and had learnt to make money go a long way. She was a seamstress who made her own clothes, she didn’t have a car and she never even got on a plane. But when she died, she had her all of her children around her. And now, almost 10 years later, I still find myself thinking of her every day. And that’s because of the way she made me feel.

She was rich beyond ‘things’ and still the biggest success I’ve ever met.