How to Be a Successful Woman in Life

The subject of how to be a successful woman in life is important when planning for the new year! But before you can put down those goals on what you want to do, you’ll have to decide what success means for *you.*

That’s not always easy, and it changes as we go through life.

What Does It Mean to Be a Successful Woman in Life?

Getting A Bearing on Perceptions of Success from Reddit Responses

Getting a little background on this, I went on Reddit and found one list with 20 or so responses on what it means to be successful in America. (I tried to hyperlink the post, but Reddit disallowed the link. Apparently they want people to go through the front door of their site. Fair enough. You’ll just have to take my word, then.

Not all the successful people on Reddit were happy. One choice response said “In a nutshell, I’ve already achieved most of the important goals of adult life, but the more I have the more lost I feel.”

A respondent said “Welcome to being 26.”

Okay. Being successful means different things to different people and at different ages. In order of the most votes, I found success meant, in this somewhat unscientific study, making money, being happy, being social, loving and connecting, having accomplishments, and finally, lifestyle, work-life balance, and stability.

Looking at this, I thought “Oh dear, they *have* got it backward.” Money is not that important. Happiness sought by itself often brings disaster. But the less popular choices, social life, love and connection, accomplishing things, and life work balance: those are much more promising. I think.

Success-o-Meter

Just for fun, I put all those qualities of success from Reddit in a table so you can rate yourself. To get ready, I wrote reflections on each measurement.

1. Money: Rate this on how well you feel you are doing. Just enough? Maybe a five? It’s a relative score, so you could feel pretty flush even if you’re not one of the 2 percent. If you have way more than you thought you would, or more than you need, or more than you deserve, maybe 9 or 10?
2. Happiness: When you wake up in the morning, do you want to jump out of bed? You say to yourself, “another beautiful day in paradise?” Then a high number. If, on the other hand, you can’t believe your life has gotten like this, maybe less than five. It’s a global score based on your perception of how much fun you’re having today.
3. Social Life: Do you have a lot or friends? Your phone is always ringing? You belong to clubs and groups and there’s somewhere on the town you go there and everybody knows your name? Or you have a close knit family and they are your whole world, and all you care about? Or not?
4. Love and Romantic Life: “Relationship” is a huge scorer on search engines, BTW. If you’re in one, good, unless you want out, which is bad. Do you have something going or at least some prospects?
5. Accomplishments: What did you mean to do when you started out in life? Did you mean to be a concert violinist or a motorcross racer or that guy who’s been to more than 100 countries, or just, as Zoolander said, “Be really really really good looking?” How’s it going? Rate your progress on your own goals for yourself that you started out when you became an adult.
6. Lifestyle: So how are you prospering? You live in a penthouse in New York and you go out wearing a white mink … or you live on the wrong side of the tracks, your clothes are from Goodwill and people can tell … or maybe you’ve evolved beyond all that materialism and your lifestyle is … itenerarnt backpacker through Europe. Rate yourself on what you want to have your set up be, and how close you’ve gotten to that vision.
7. Work-Life Balance: This is an emotional one too. Rate whether you think you work too much. Or, more rarely heard, whether you don’t work enough, which also causes some pretty big problems.
8. Stability: How sustainable is the whole project? Can you keep this life going at least over the medium term? How much effort is that going to take? Do you feel safe in the relationships, financial arrangements, and work tasks you are doing?

Okay on to the Success-o-Meter. Here are your metrics. Give yourself a score from 1-10 on each.

Success-o-meter	Score Range: 1-10	Your Score
1. Money
2. Happiness
3. Social Life
4. Love and Romantic Life
5. Accomplishments
6. Lifestyle
7. Work-Life Balance
8. Stability

Totaling them up, if you’re over 40, well, you’re above average. If you’re over 60, I’d say it’s a good year.

My number? Let me find one of those famous scraps of paper I keep around here. I got a 54. Really, Susan? I have to admit, I’m a pretty easy grader. Nevertheless, that “1” I gave myself for love and romance didn’t help. But … that’s where I am. No point in lying about this. Growth areas for me are Love, Lifestyle, Money, Happiness.

The idea of sustainability is important in being a success. You don’t want to have a life that is going to run out of gas, so to speak, burning through your money, or your relationships. You want to have a continuing flow of relationships and resources. This is a type of success.

Similarly you don’t want to have a lot of drama, a lot of emotional ups and downs. You want to have calmness at least some of the time. At least I do. That is success: the ability to enjoy the quiet things in life which are often the most precious.

Successful people get respect from those who surround them. The reason they get respect is because they do what they need to do for them and while they do that, they do not cause problems for other people. I would go so far as to say successful people understand that other people have needs too and they take a moment to step around when they’re in someone’s way. They figure it out when what they’re doing is going to hurt someone else. Because of this successful people have a place in this world. This might be a kin to that blog post I wrote what type of man are women looking for.

But the question is not just “successful person.” It said “successful woman.” And that brings up a big question. Where on the success line is that quality of woman that is unique to women, that is motherhood.

Do You Have to Be a Mom to Be a Successful Woman?

The quick answer is no of course not. But I can’t just leave it at that because I just read on another Reddit about a young woman who was 37 years old and wanted to know: should she have children? Other women (the Reddit was “ask women over 50”) joined in and began to argue. It got rather ugly. One lady said: “my children will have to take care of you when you’re old!” And the other side (childfree type?) shot back: “Thinking about who’s going to take care of old people is hardly a reason to have children!”

Although, all other things being equal, I would vote for having children for most women, I have to give the argument point on this to the childfrees. Having someone to take care of you when you’re old is *not* a reason to have kids!

Honestly friends, I felt a little ill. I feel that people who don’t want to have children probably shouldn’t if they can avoid it. But… Do I think they’re successful without them?

Success is Deeply Individual, and Cannot Be Generalized

It depends on what else you can do with your life. Clearly it would have had a negative effect on the welfare of the Earth, her personal fame and success, and perhaps other measures, had Mother Teresa, back when she was young, decided to stop working on the Missionaries of Charity project and become a biological mom.

Additionally some women feel they can’t be a mom because the type of energy you need to be a mom is something they don’t have a lot of. We all know that children who are not parented with love and care often grow up to cause more problems than they solve.

But for women who have the opportunity to have children and the resources have children and aren’t engaged in some important humanitarian mission that makes them unavailable… I wonder.

Is There a True Test of Success in Modern Culture?

Perhaps it is necessary to take a step back from all this. The ancient Greeks used to believe that the true test of a man was going to war and the true test of a woman was motherhood. It seems clear to me that we no longer think of going to war as being the test of manhood. And now that so many supports exist for mothers, from daycare to vaccinations to surrogacy … motherhood not the same thing as it once was.

So I reiterate, yes, you can be a success without being a mom. It’s the only fair conclusion. I would caution the 37-year-old that as Anne Lamott and other single, late-starting moms have stated, being a mother even at the 11th hour is often a highly rewarding experience. Huge numbers of women consider motherhood their most important success.

But That’s Not the Sine Qua Non of How to Be a Successful Woman in Life

But the core of success for a woman I believe is to be a positive force in the greater world, to be true to herself and her values, to take care of whatever has been given to her to be responsible for. Whether that is simply her own life, a family, a business, a career, or whatever. And to be a stand-up person. Women bring to the world a sensitivity to others, skill for creating beauty and peace, a defensive posture over vulnerable types, and a spiritual discernment that is unique to us. And like any person, a woman still needs to do what she said she will do, be where she said she will be, and be careful how she speaks. I try to do these things, they’re not easy.

For women who face grievous unexpected problems, whose lives have been affected by bad luck, perhaps simply going forward with courage and determination is enough to consider yourself a success. In the deep epistemological sense, we don’t know our true importance, purpose, or goal: what we decide is “success” is an approximation, a construction of our psyche. I still believe that being honest, caring about your fellow person and how your actions affect them, and doing what you think is right, is almost identical to being a success. The rest is just window dressing, commentary, as they say.

So that is my vision of how to be a successful woman in life.