When we first took the decision to home educate the children, we were doing so in response to changing circumstances in our lives. Things had become too challenging, we were at breaking point, and we needed to make some changes in order to regain equilibrium. It was this initial decision that had us swimming upstream against the norms of society and triggered a reflection on what our definition of a well-lived life was. When you start to consider this question in any depth, you realise that perhaps what you are measuring yourself up against, and what society is expecting of you, is different to what you would write down on paper if you were being honest about what you wanted out of life.

The Courage to Live Authentically

In Bronnie Ware’s book on “The Regrets of the Dying,” she summarises her interpretation of what most people regret at the end of their lives, from her experience working as a palliative care nurse. Poignant commentary from a beautifully empathic writer, to make us stop and consider how we are spending our precious time, before it is too late. Bronnie documents five common themes including “I wish I hadn’t worked so much” and “I wish I had allowed myself to be happier,” but the one that resonated most with me was “I wish I had had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

I wish I had had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

If I ever consider getting a tattoo, a permanent motto inked onto my body, I think it might just be this one. This has definitely become my mantra to live by. After losing so much life to chronic health issues, I no longer want to conform to what others expect of me. I know that it was contributing to illness. The pressure to conform is extremely debilitating if it comes at the cost of authenticity.

Breaking Free from Consumerist Culture

The life we were living before was very much defined by Western models of success, the consumerist culture that equates the purpose of life with the accumulation of wealth and material possessions. We were very much invested in this, working incredibly hard to pay for a house, two cars, furniture, trampolines, gadgets, toys—everything that we thought the kids needed, everything that the prevailing culture told us was necessary to be happy. We were encouraged to feed the beast by soothing our discontent with more and more things that we wanted but didn’t need. But instead of making us happier, it left us feeling more and more restricted and dissatisfied with life.

I felt ashamed for feeling this way, but at 37 years old it felt like I had achieved most of the metrics of success that life was asking of me. I was married, had two healthy children, a home, a car of my own and many beautiful possessions to my name. I had won the education race by achieving both an undergraduate and postgraduate Master’s, and had won the job race by working my way up through the ranks as an NHS pharmacist. All that was left for me to do was to keep working in the same job until the day I retired, squirrelling away as much wealth as I could in order to pay for a few cruises and then my care in old age.

From the outside we definitely looked like we were winning, and in a lot of ways we were, but the reality is we were in huge debt.

From the outside we definitely looked like we were winning, and in a lot of ways we were. We had so much more than many people in this world ever own, and we were ticking all the boxes in the global race. But the reality is we were in huge debt. The things that we kidded ourselves we owned, such as our cars, the house, the office space, were owned by the bank more than us. Every month we paid eye-watering amounts of interest just to retain our levels of comfort. This is normalised in society, that debt is just a way to fund happiness and comfort. As this is what everyone has to do to survive, then it is normal. But the “successes” were not bringing the contentment that they were supposed to.

When Identity Crumbles: The Health Crisis That Changed Everything

When my health deteriorated during pregnancy and I found myself unable to work, I swiftly found out that these achievements, these accolades, actually count for very little. I had conflated my education, my career and our savings with my self-worth as a person and my purpose in life. I was no longer able to distinguish my value from my achievements, finding it hard to see what I brought to the world and how this fitted with my purpose.

I soon realised that in following what was expected of me at school and in seeking a worthy career, I had developed personality traits that no longer served me in a purposeful life. I had been very blinkered, driven by individualist thinking and competitive ideals that this world celebrates, in order to get the results I needed. Unhealthy perfectionism and people-pleasing shaped my identity as a person in order to fit in and thrive. It was essential to my survival as an A* student that I learned to please my teacher, perform in the tests and develop a formula to allow me to compete and come out on top.

I had unconsciously ignored what I felt inside in favour of succeeding in the ways I knew how: pleasing my parents, my teachers, my employers at the expense of my own authenticity.

When my career imploded and I found myself at home full-time with two young children, I no longer knew who I was. The people-pleasing and perfectionism tipped over into motherhood, expressed in the unhealthy desire to constantly do things the “right” way. Surrounded by a lot of people that thought they knew best, many conflicting viewpoints and too much information, I lost sight of what was important—that all I needed to give the children was true, unconditional love.

The Awakening: Motherhood as Teacher

Being presented with a precious human baby, a perfect specimen of innocence and purity, stirred something deep within me. A desire to protect them, smother them with love and ensure they thrive in this world, no matter the cost to me. It threatened me, realising that the identities I had come to associate myself with had to be let go of. People-pleasing, perfectionism, competition, individualism have no place in parenting. Instead I had to reconnect with my heart, my intuition, and understand that we are the only people that can instinctively know what is right in a given moment for our children.

Comparison with others, or taking advice based on others’ experiences, is often futile. To standardise our mothering and all do it the same way, forgetting that every child is an individual, or compare our mothering assuming that we all have the same support, resources and circumstances would be ludicrous. But it is not difficult to see how these values have crept into the world of parenting, as with every other area of life. Work, education, wealth, parenting, holidays, even health have now become a competition.

The Problem with Competition Culture

The capitalist culture is fuelling the need to buy into consumerism, and this model only works if people are unsatisfied with their lot. It is dependent on individualism so that we compete with each other to “win.” As is apparent from the ever-growing wealth divide, not everyone can get rich, and so when one person wins, another loses. There is only so much money to go around, so if you take more, then your neighbour has less. To follow this model is to view everyone as a threat, as prime opposition preventing you from getting to the top.

Our lives are more comfortable, but without the community nature that humans are reliant on to thrive, they are meaningless.

These messages are sitting everywhere within our Western societies and start from an early age. When a society is fuelled by the drive to compete, to compare, to tirelessly serve their own interests at the expense of others, the economy may benefit, but we end up more divided, more lonely, more dissatisfied than ever before. Our lives are more comfortable, but without the community nature that humans are reliant on to thrive, they are meaningless. Soaring mental ill health in the Western world is testament to the fact that this culture may bring success, but it does not bring happiness.

Rethinking Education: Beyond Tests and Labels

Our current education system in the UK has also been shaped by this prevailing culture, encouraging unhealthy attributes which do not serve the individual. The race and competition mentality that education has become makes it only about the results and not the learning process. Children are delivered the message from an early age that if they cannot excel in every area that the curriculum mandates, if they cannot meet the required standards of measurement, then they are somehow failures.

When they spend the majority of their early lives engaged in academic study at school, with little time to expand skills in other interests or pursuits, it is easy to see the failure label being internalised and attached to themselves, becoming present in all areas of their lives. All of the pressure, the labelling, the constantly falling short of expectations can have extremely damaging effects on the developing human psyche.

When a democratic schooling system is aimed at delivering free education to the masses, using public funds to finance it, there will always be a fundamental mismatch in the values cultivated to ensure the system thrives. This type of economic model is reliant on rigorous testing of pupils as a way of measuring whether schools and teachers are performing in the way they should be. The schools need to be held accountable, and the only way to do this apparently is by rigorously testing the pupils.

Learning never stops. It is part of the essence of life; once we stop learning, we may as well be dead.

Education is a vital component in a well-lived life because without basic skills in numeracy and literacy, we would not likely be able to earn sufficient money to feed and clothe ourselves. In the underdeveloped world, it is often the lack of access to free education that prevents people being lifted out of poverty. But there is a difference between education and a life of measurement in the school system, a difference between what is labelled educational success in our Western world and how this may conflict with what is life success.

The word success is defined as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” When we consider that in relation to education, we have to consider what the purpose of an education is. When learning is fitted into a neat little box, where what we learn, how we learn and the deadline for learning is dictated to us by others, we come to view it as something only for the young or academically minded. The model assumes that it is only done in an academic setting and stops the moment we leave the system.

A Sacred Approach to Learning

The delivery of an education is thereby the most sacred thing we can do for our children. But to deliver this, we must remove our egos and the assumption that we know everything about the world, what is right for our children and what they should or need to learn. It must instead be a transaction of trust, one where we gently guide but also step back and give them the time and space to develop interests important to them.

Just as it is unhealthy to standardise parenting, to compare our parenting with that of someone else’s, it is not wise to bring this into the field of learning. Every child is different and unique, so their education must be too. It is not for us to dictate what they should or shouldn’t learn, beyond basic numeracy and literacy. Once they have these fundamental skills, it is life experience and access to tools and role models that will ensure success, or not.

Redefining Success: Authenticity Over Achievement

When we stepped away from the school system, we started to ponder what our own metrics of success were, what metrics we wanted to use to define and measure ourselves at the end of each day. We realised that for us it was less about the term success but more about authenticity, contentment and fulfilment. We wanted to step away from comparisons and competition to drive instead innate characteristics and qualities that would define who the children were as individuals.

If the kids truly understand who they are, how to care for themselves, what motivates them, what interests them and their value in this world, then they can live authentic, fulfilled lives. They can learn anything they need to. We want them to understand that living true to their values will give them a life of meaning and purpose. And when we have a purpose, we will continue to motivate ourselves to learn and grow to fuel it.

We are all here for a purpose, and that is not to spend the first 18 years of life with the sole intent of cramming knowledge and outcompeting our peers.

We are all here for a purpose, and that is not to spend the first 18 years of life with the sole intent of cramming knowledge and outcompeting our peers with the fear that if we do not, we may find ourselves unemployable. If I have learned anything in the last two years, it is that life is about more than what and how much you know, what grades you got in school, what job you do and how much financial success you have. If that were the point, then we would have it all sorted by the age of 40.

By working out what is important to me, what values I want to hold myself accountable to and what innate skills I possess that help me to fuel this purpose, I have been able to work towards creating a life of meaning again. Contentment and fulfilment is something that now fills my days, embraced through time spent nurturing my family, being creative, challenging my ideas and prejudices through writing and looking after my body.

Creating a New Way of Living

We are trying hard to move away from a consumerist lifestyle where we can as a family, embracing capitalism for the benefits it brings in the world but also trying to slow down and embrace simple living. Jimmy and I are trying to forge new work models for ourselves, ones that fuel our appetite for learning, allow us to continue to hone our skills and ensure we can balance the commitment of full-time parenting with a viable income stream.

Our interests, our hobbies, our family life are all wrapped up together each day, and we try to find the equilibrium between it all. Rather than work-life balance, we are aiming for work-life integration, a model based on the assumption that we are enjoying every aspect of our lives, where one aspect flows into the next and each seeks to honour our values. We aim never to dream of retirement because by avoiding burnout or unfulfilled dreams and living in the present, every day feels like a holiday.

Children are not lazy or idle creatures; they copy the role models around them. Our hope is that by showcasing to them how we are working and balancing life demands, slowing down and favouring a minimalist life over a consumerist one, we are teaching the children in the best way we know how—by example. We are trying hard to break free of the fear of failure: as parents, home educators, in business or in life.

Instead, we are trying to show the kids that when you adopt a growth mindset, one that embraces learning every day and remaining adaptable to life’s curveballs, failing is a certainty. It is not the failure that defines you as a person; it is your response to it. We want the kids to understand that we only need to measure ourselves against ourselves, our deeds, actions and decisions against our own values. Only then will we be able to know if we are growing in the right direction, fulfilling our unique aims. As Bronnie’s work demonstrates, everyone else’s metrics of success, failure or versions of a well-lived life do not matter. It will only be us at the end of the day, left to face our own mortality, that will know whether or not we have lived a life true to ourselves.