what you are describing here is quite a common statement for a person of that age.  when i was a young adult, that is how i viewed the world, too. 

it wasn't until i matured that i came to understand that money and possessions really don't play all that big a role in being successful. 

but it was something that i had to learn for myself... at that age, you know everything, and telling someone what to think or feel is an excercise in frustration.

While I think I always recognized that a person needed a certain amount of money to be 'successful', to have a decent house, good food, medical care (incuding dentist and optomietrist), and a few luxuries,  I don't remember ever aiming for the big pay cheque (or the man who could bring one home), the big house or the fancy car.  Living within my means and living well, with friends to play cards or dance or listen to music with was all I needed.  And of course books to read, and opportunities to write.  

My kids are pretty much the same.  Seelerboy especially never seemed too interested in the secure job that would bring home the big bucks.  Yes, he would have liked to be able to support himself and perhaps find a partner and raise a family.  But he choose courses at university that he was interested in, enjoyed himself, explored religion.  And is now teaching in a Korean university.  Not success by many definitions, but I have heard good things about him.  The same with Seelergirl - other than to be able to give her children opportunities she doesn't seem to be impressed with wealth or the trappings of wealth. 

Granddaughter - I hope our values rub off on her.  She is quite impressed when invited for a sleepover at a school friend's place to find a swimming pool in the back yard of the very large house and to hear about their March break spent in Hawaii.

To me, success is living well, enjoying what you do, having friends, giving to your neighbourhood, your church, and your world.  

I have a neighbour who constantly tells me about how well her four children are doing.  I should be pleased.  It is what they always wanted - what they were brought up to want.  I don't mention to her that her first born - the apple of her eye - was one of the most disliked kids in my son's class.  And she knows about her daughter's lonely life since her divorce (she has a great job and didn't suffer financially).

Speaking as someone of this age group -- only a couple years from 30 *sigh* -- I think the definition of success all depends on the "community" of young adults you are talking to.

For myself, and most of my friends, being successful means being happy.  It doesn't mean huge paycheques, huge houses, and fancy cars.  Most of us still live at home or have modest apartments/condos/houses and, for the most part, we aren't paid big bucks.  (My one friend that is paid quite well does not want to leave his job because the work makes him extremely happy -- so he's doing it for the feel-good factor, not the money.)  We all drive sensible cars, most of which are more than a few years old and were largely purchased used.  But we are all doing work that we love or trying to get to that place -- either by attending university or working in a "stepping stone" job that will help us get where we want -- and the actual paycheque doesn't matter so much, provided a living can be made off of it.

My ex-girlfriend had a very different idea of success.  You went to school to get a high paying job (even if you hate it), then you bought a big house, a big SUV, and then you started making babies.  Nowhere in her definition of success was there anything related to happiness.  This was one of the main reasons why we broke up.

A few people I went to high school with were that way too -- all they could talk about was money and cars and getting huge jobs and blah blah blah.  I see them on Facebook -- they have what they wanted and I don't think they're happy.

Well part of being successful is not living on the street.   According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs we need to have food, shelter, and feel safe before we can work on our higher needs of being loved and self actualization.  The people who are concentrating on the big job and the big bucks haven't met their food and shelter needs obviously so cannot work on true happiness.  They got stuck on the way up and are not truly happy.

Money may not buy happiness, but it certainly helps :3

And Beshpin, good tunes!  Nice seeing Seth Green and all those creative people :3

Success is something that someone finds out by living life.  I have found that I don't fit in with the 'your job is your identity' crowd.  I believe that there is a tribe for everyone*, there is no one size fits all.

Like I chafe around people whose measure of success is marriage, kids, a mortgage, a high-paying job, a car, that's not me.  But there are people who enjoy it.  I also realise that some people find Spirituality in different things, like some people may totally get drippy over cities, while others may really get down in Nature.

I think the important impetus is for the person to find out if the life they are living is their own or if they are living someone else's life/culture/society/tribe?  And go from there...

* the internet is a good tool for this :3

 I think for young adults , who have struggled often to get good paying jobs and achieve the middle class life, it is success to have gotten there.

It is easy to forget that this generation of kids didn't get companies coming to universities to recruit, they didn't' have 5 or 6 job offers on graduation to choose from, they didn't buy their first car new for $3000.  It has been a bigger struggle.

Sure happiness is success but we also know that having financial security is part of that happiness.  If you worry about every penny and worry about putting food on the table and a roof over your head you are not doing well

Material success is slavery. It is by definitiion dehumanising, to oneself and the unlucky people one interacts with.

The rewards of material success are very often disappointing and misery-making. Money doesn't care who has it or how they got it. 

Real "success" is finding and cultivating meaning and delight in one's own life and the livesof others.

I've met young people who are achieving "real success" and others who are pursuing "material success". I don't think it's a generational thing. I thing older generations have made a nasty, craven, noisy society that's made vacuity the norm. Many young people are trying to fashion something far better.

I'm 37 and first of all I'd like to thank you for calling the under 40 crowd young!

I know a lot of people who judge their success by how much they have.  They rack up credit card bills buying "the right" stuff...jewelry, cars, houses, clothes, furniture, vacations, etc.  I also know a lot of people who don't.

At the same time, I don't think it's all about being materialistic and shallow.  When you leave your parents' house to make your own way in the world, there is always the question of whether or not you can do it on your own.  "Stuff" is tangible proof that you CAN take care of yourself.  That's an important step in our growth as adults and it can become the focus of what we do if we aren't careful.

The trouble is that "stuff" is a hellish trap; credit card debt narrows options and life easily becomes a fatiguing, demoralising bondage to loathed jobs, image-enhancement and ego maintenance against impossible competition. "Stuff" turns remarkably quickly to "junk" and that sought-after promotion to further demands on a more fragile personal maintenamce system.

But it makes the world go round... in a hellish sort of a way.

I don't think we really can get off this "merry go round" , we can only notice how some "ride" it more than others.

If the young are materialistic, where do you suppose they learn it from? We all perpetuate the "lifestyle" and if anyone gets off, they are considered to be living in poverty and we assume that we need to bring them back to our standard of living.

It seems that we are failing to remind the young that happiness also comes from caring about the earth and it's people and requires responsibility. But this makes sense because we really haven't learned this ourselves. What we have created is who we are.

I don't know what success is.  My guess at success is reasonable happiness and security with the self without doing irrepairable harm to one's self, people around the individual, or the environment. 

 Ken Kesey   ( (  September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962),^[1] and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie," Kesey said in a 1999 interview with Robert K. Elder.^[2]     ))

 famously said  "You will be successful in life if you can abstain from causing death."

 Oh dear... we're causing rather a lot of it one way or the other, aren't we Jlin?

Such a wide range of thoughtful comments.  Thanks to you all for participating.

Success is indeed hard to define and is different for different people.  It seems that we all agree that we need sufficient income to feed and shelter our bodies.  What we need after that varies quite a bit.  One of the young women I was with declared that her life wouldn't be worth living without her jewelry and charge card holidays in Costa Rica.  One woman said she feels is entitled to have everything she wants and enjoys spending money more than anything else.  Another person said that it was vital to him to have a home in a 'good' area before starting a family.

  I think I was a bit surprised by the lack of acknowledgement that raising happy, emotionally stable children has value, along with nurturing marraiges, contributing to the wider community and preserving the world for future generations.

My spouse and I grew up poor and chose to continue to live modestly and well within our means - small, adequate house in a mixed neighborhood, economical lifestyle in general.  We have never taken a holiday to a resort area though we could do this if we wanted to.  We bought our first new car after retirement.  We pay cash for our purchases but did have a mortgage and car and student loans when we were younger.  

For us the thought of being deeply in debt is scary. 

Success for me is

being my authentic self (ee cummings quote on "being yourself" always cheered me on)

living harming as few people as possible (from sweatshop stuff to gas effeciency and planting plants)

living helping as many as I can

falling asleep easy

being proud of who I fall alseep beside and wake up next to

waking up and looking at the person in the mirror without tons of regrets and shit attached

being loved and being loving

not one thing on my list is "owned" or was "bought"

Good stuff to read here, as this is an issue I struggle with, and I'm ashamed to say so becuase I thought I was above all that in my 20's. At that time my idea of success was pretty firmly set, and YW your description matches pretty well how I thought. That all changed when I became a parent.

To me sucess now is keeping my cool and remaining calm, even if the bank balance drops to next to nothing. Success, for now, is to regain my previous footing in the mindset that money is not the most important thing, but rather contentment and confidence in persuing what I believe in and excell at. I hope reaching 40 will help me maintain that mindset. And I hope my 30something peers will come around as well. Their own boasts of success hurt.

again, this is something that comes with experience, imho...

when i was in university, i thought that raising kids would be a piece of cake.  i remember thinking how great i was going to be at it, because man i had all the answers.  not only that, i was going to change the world too... i was going to have it all.  and show everyone else how it was done... obviously the reason nobody else was doing it was because they were just too lazy.

now that i have been a parent for awhile, i know how wrong i was, and how really hard it is to raise a kid even half decently. 

like i said earlier, i wouldn't have believed this if you had sat me down and told me until you were blue in the face.  it was something i had to learn for myself.

How true!!!

Success to me is knowing  that your worthy of love.

It's a lot more difficult than you think..............

Love begets love.

Once loved, you can love. Like ripples on a pond your love spreads far and wide.

The most successful folks I know are those that love well.

Although I can't say this is the happiest time of my life because the source of much if my love is no longer with me, I consider myself successful because the ability to love, once kindled, remains alive.

Hmmm... : )

Do an extent, each of us has to define "success" for ourselves. For some it may well lie in material wealth and pleasure. For others, it may lie in how they progress in their career ("climbing the ladder/pyramid").

For me, it has more to do with finding a place in life where I am comfortable in my skin and happy with my life. It's about having some time to explore my world and having opportunities to learn and expand spiritually and intellectually. It's about finding new questions, not always answers.

Material wealth and a successful career may help support life success, but it's not what causes it and it's not necessary for it. By the standards of my family and society, I am fairly well-off (not rich, but certainly comfortable) but that isn't what makes my life a success. Indeed, in some respects, I'm still not sure that it is.

Mendalla