A couple of things of late have made me reflect on how we define success and how we try to give advice to others on what they should or need to do to achieve it.

One being a recent article in Femail that was flagged up to me last week.

And I quote:

Louise (Vesey) is one of a new breed of middle-class women who, quite simply, consider themselves too clever to have children.

‘You can be too intelligent to have children,’ she says. ‘To reach your full intellectual potential you need to be childless. If you are a thinking woman it’s more sensible not to become a parent.’

Well, once I’d got over being labeled less sensible or intelligent because I have children (and four of them at that!), I started to wonder about the whole view of the world expressed in the article as it’s clearly so different to mine.

There is an underlying assumption, by all the women featured in the article that success is equal to financial success and that is the only kind of success that matters. In my world there are many forms of success and many paths to achieving it.

My old friend Aristotle said that all people have one thing in common, we pursue happiness. Where we differ is in how we define happiness. So how happy you are with your lot might be a good measure of success.

The focus on intellectual fulfillment to the detriment of everything else is alien to me too. Intellectual fulfillment is not, for me, the only kind of fulfillment. In my world it takes many forms, all equally valid and worthwhile. I took a huge amount of pleasure this weekend in achieving my first belt in Kung Fu!

Anna White’s response in the Telegraph was quite entertaining but to my mind fell into one of the same traps, evidenced by the headline, that somehow intellect is related to worth.

Intelligence does not, in my humble view, equal worth – in my experience some intelligent people can and do live aimless lives benefiting no-one, whereas there are lots of people, who don’t qualify for Mensa, without whom my world would be a much poorer place. So to imply, as do both articles, that the decision by intelligent women not to reproduce is going to consign the planet to inevitable doom is surely intellectual snobbery.

And I kick back against people telling me or others what we need to do to achieve their version of success.

My interpretation of success and achievement is unique to me, as yours is to you. I am a unique person, with different qualities, capabilities and values to you. There is no point in me telling you what you need to do to be successful because it won’t necessarily work for you.

I can share my knowledge and experience of common barriers to particular goals and ways of getting round them but it’s up to you to decide which specific goal you want to reach, what barriers if any you face and how you choose to get round them.

Personally I’d rather give birth without anaesthetic (and yes I have) than run a nail bar or even a chain of them as Louise Vesey does. Nothing against nail bars (and I wish my lovely niece every success with hers) but it would not fulfill me.

And I suspect that my gorgeous, large family and, for me, tremendously fulfilling training and coaching business would be Louise Vesey’s personal nightmare.

The choices we each make in our lives are not simply a reflection of how intelligent we are, they’re a reflection of our whole selves – our intellect, qualities, values, motivators, capabilities, experiences and circumstances.

And I say, thank goodness we’re all different otherwise how boring would the world be?