Very few people would consider spending an entire weekend in a lecture hall as a great privilege. Yet that is the only way I can describe a recent weekend: I was part of a team hosting an inaugural conference at the University of London for underprivileged youths.
The London Youth Conference 2013 was a cross-university event that sought to bring together speakers from a range of fields to share their thoughts on what success means in the 21st century. It got me thinking about what success means to me personally, and led me to a surprisingly simple conclusion.
Many people identify the concept of success with achieving their goal - getting to the top, basically. But I recall reading about a successful basketball player who was asked what he wished he'd known when he first started the long climb up the ladder. "I wish someone would have told me that when you reach the top, there's nothing there," he replied.
At the end of the day, success isn't about making the largest amount of money, becoming the most famous person or even gaining a huge number of impressive achievements. So what does success mean to me? Success means being comfortable with yourself as a person. That is not to say you should not try to improve yourself. What it means is that you should make sure you have your priorities right.