Maggie Ritchie: Do not judge yourself by the traditional rules of success

Eleanor Ross argues that our society is obsessed with always being the best and that it not only sets us up for failure but is making us deeply unhappy.

Competing with co-workers and comparing our lot with friends’ lives on social media is unnecessarily stressful, says Ross, and it made me think back to the times measuring myself against others made me feel like a failure.

There were the early years of motherhood – so cruelly and aptly portrayed in the television series of that name – when everything from cooking up batches of organic mush to wearing Mother Earth slings and pushing fancy prams were weaponised by middle class mums at the toddlers’ group that I somehow thought was mandatory to attend.

My boy was smart and funny and curious, and into everything, so I had to be on castors to chase after him. He didn’t sleep through the night until he was three thanks to colic and who-knows-what, chuckling in delight when he worked out the lock on the child gate that was supposed to keep him corralled in his room, and singing ‘sleeping time’ right back at us with a big grin when we tried to follow a so-called sleep guru’s advice. The smug boasts of babies sleeping through at six weeks were daggers in my sleep-deprived heart.

Anxious to do the best for my much-longed-for son as an older mum, I dragged us both to music classes for toddlers to sit with little girls in pink tutus obediently shaking tiny maracas. Sensibly, as soon as he could walk and talk, he made a beeline for the exit, saying loudly: "This is rubbish". I had to agree with him and gratefully gave it up as a bad job and left the disapproving stares behind.

I wish now I’d relaxed more and not assumed I was losing in some mysterious parental competition where the rules changed depending on who was doling out the advice. One wise head, a lovely older Irish woman who came from a big family and who doted – and still dotes – on my boy, saved my sanity when she told me to ignore the parenting experts because "the baby hasn’t read the books".

So, Eleanor Ross’ arguments made a lot of sense to me – at first anyway. Then I thought about it more and realised that I have been striving for perfection and professionalism all my life, and I do the same for my son. And I don’t regret it one bit. I was simply going about it the wrong way as a mother who already had her career and life sorted and was used to being in control. I know now nobody has the answers and every child and every parent is different, and that’s okay.

I used to chafe at the memory of bringing home my school test results of 98 per cent to my dad, only to be met with the cool response: "What happened to the other two per cent?" I resented it at the time but having someone expect more from you isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like many others, working hard and trying to do my best is in my DNA and, while it hasn’t necessarily made me happy all the time, ambition has pushed me to achieve my goals – the trick is making sure they are the right ones.

Being the perfect middle class mum with a spotless home and placid child was never going to work for me, and instead I changed tack and concentrated on the important stuff – loving my son unconditionally and letting him be himself.

Everyone defines success a different way and finds it in different arenas, whether at work, through hobbies or their family. I now know what it means for me. Marriage, health, good food shared with family and friends in a safe home make up the sustaining bread of life, but we also need to dream. In my case, I realised my childhood dream of becoming a published author, but success is not static, and there will always be better books to write.

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