Features Lounge

Are you really all that bad?

I've got a habit of throwing myself down on my bed all back of hand to forehead like and wailing "I've done nothing with my life," as I attempt to stuff as many Rolo's as I can down my gullet. I do it at least once a week and sometimes twice during PMT season. It's a bad habit granted and it's ruining my waistline, but it's one that - and I take comfort in this - more and more of us are becoming familiar with...the 'I've not achieved anything syndrome.'

I blame celebville myself. Those bright lights of Hollywood and...erm......Essex. As a society we are becoming more and more programmed to recognise celebrity and wealth as the only kind of success worth having. However, as a wise old man (okay, slightly inebriated old letch.....wise though, very wise) told me just the other day, success isn't all about red carpets and limos and by God, the drunken bum was right.

We spend so much of our lives feeling like second class citizens because we aren't called Angelina and we haven't adopted a 'bunch of babies that aint ever had shit,' and we all spend so much time wishing we were 'billionaires so fricking bad', that we sometimes forget to take notice of the achievements that we have made, therefore failing to realise just how wonderful we all are! And, let's be honest, how can we ever be totally happy with our lives unless we do just that?

The key to true happiness is in accepting that success comes in a variety of different forms, not just the jewel dripping kind. Being the best at what you do for example, whether you're a dinner lady or a million dollar diva. Finding a partner and settling down, starting a family, or simply holding onto a single friendship. Success is being faced with a whole world of problems and battling through them the best you can. Success is holding down a job. Success is learning. Success is being someones knight in shining armour even if it is only an ear and a shoulder to cry on that you lend them. Success is earning someones trust. Shit, success can even be not burning the dinner.

We are a materialistic society, we have been conditioned to believe that the be all and end all starts with a pound sign, but in doing so we wish away our lives and forget to live them and lets face it, there's no greater success than simply living.