Standards of Success Are WEIRD

Feelings of inadequacy are familiar to anyone exposed to self-help media and the capitalist grindset mentality that pervades everything. Not only in our professional lives but also in our personal lives, we are expected to be driven by productivity ideals and to maximise our potential — potential, of course, being defined as how useful we are to the capitalist system.

The self-help industry is worth 70 billion dollars as of 2026, encompassing numerous seminars, courses, and books that guide people toward becoming a “proper”, “ideal”, or “fully actualised” human being.

The most memorable self-help book that shaped my young adulthood was The Defining Decade by Meg Jay, which I read when I was 16. I am now 22. My views have changed significantly since then, having followed the author’s advice exactly and dealing with the consequences.

In The Defining Decade, Meg Jay argues that your twenties are the most crucial period in your life for shaping your future trajectory. She suggests that our twenties should not be spent on partying or self-indulgent exploration, but on building networks (not friends), developing skills (for employability rather than passion), and maximising our CV and portfolio.

In theory, she’s right. If you spend your twenties reading her book and applying her principles, you’ll likely have a better chance of landing a well-paid job than a struggling artist driven by their emotional whims.

She refers to the collection of all these things — networks, skills, academic achievements, personality — as identity capital. Identity capital is the value or worth of a person assessed by their usefulness to the capitalist system. She promotes the development of a marketable personality, meaning someone admirable and enviable in the eyes of others, a high-status individual seen as valuable by employers and community members.

Meg Jay does not argue her points in bad faith. Instead, she sees these actions as ways to maximise an individual’s potential. However, it is important to note that maximising our potential implies that these potential benefits us. Yet, we often find that the benefit is not for ourselves, but rather for those who exploit us from the comfort of their seventh mansion.

Following the “rational” advice in Jay’s book, I picked a major I wasn’t fully passionate about but was decent at (or so I thought in high school), and that could earn me a good income. I tried to make friends with wealthy people I didn’t respect because I believed that was necessary to build a proper network. I also aimed to develop skills I wasn’t necessarily passionate about, but that would look impressive on my CV.

This approach has taken a toll on my mental health and left me feeling like something was missing in my life. There was a constant sense of an unfulfilled creative drive needing an outlet, or else the restlessness wouldn’t cease.

I felt completely inadequate, that despite working hard and battling not only the struggles of daily life, finding and maintaining a job, and studying, I was not passionate about, being surrounded by people I wasn’t compatible with, I still felt like a failure, no matter how hard I tried to escape that fate.

Now that I am 22 and more mature than my younger, teenage self, I have rethought the principles guiding my life and have arrived at a more self-determined conclusion that does not depend on consuming media and other people’s ideas about what makes a good life without critically assessing them.

I’ve realised that the feeling of inadequacy never truly disappears, no matter how much self-help material you consume or how many self-development courses you complete. No matter how many achievements you rack up, toxic shame will always follow if you don’t critically assess the success benchmarks you’ve accepted as fact without evaluating them against what you genuinely want for your life.

While Meg Jay has her own idea of what makes a good life, that doesn’t mean the things she finds meaningful are the same as what you find meaningful. By reading her book, you might achieve success like hers, but ultimately, you will have achieved her definition of success, not necessarily yours.

So, you need to define your own standard of success. Ignore what others or even experts think. Not because they are wrong, but because they aren’t you. Their advice may only suit people like them, but you are your own unique individual.

As a woman of colour living in Indonesia, a developing country, the most effective way to combat feelings of inadequacy—such as not being high-achieving enough—is to remind myself that my standards of success are based on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) values. For my belief that I am a failure to be justified, several assumptions must be true:

Premise 1: Success (wealth and status) is fairly earned through meritocracy. We live in a democratic, educated, and egalitarian society (both financially and in other aspects).
Premise 2: I possess the same privileges as my competitors.
Premise 3: Success relies on the accumulation of wealth and status.
Premise 4: Success is guaranteed with intelligence and hard work.

My rebuttals to these premises:

Rebuttal 1: Wealth and status are not distributed based on merit. Most countries are not meritocratic, and certainly not in Indonesia, where the middle class is not only collapsing (overeducated if they are lucky, but usually still underemployed), but is also significantly poorer than food bank recipients in First-World countries.

Premise 2: I do not hold PR or citizenship in the country where I am studying (Australia), which makes it very difficult to secure a long-term, full-time job. Even in high-demand sectors like aged care, the requirements for obtaining a graduate working visa, TR, and PR keep changing.

Recently, they doubled the application fee for a graduate working visa, showing a high number of workers competing for limited jobs. But mostly, my mental health issues have seriously impacted my ability to build relationships and perform well at work and study.

Premise 3: Success differs across cultures. In America, you’re considered cool if you stand out, have niche interests, and are “unique.” In Japan, you’re respected if you blend in and don’t stand out like a sore thumb.

In Indonesia, dedication to your religion and family, helpfulness to others, and being well-liked are valued. If you live in a village and your neighbour is having a wedding, helping out with the preparations for free is expected—your neighbours will. So, one culture’s standard of success may be vastly different to another culture’s.

Premise 4: I am very hardworking in overcoming my limitations and improving myself. My starting point is far behind neurotypical people. What appears as “laziness” to those who don’t understand my situation is actually the result of a lot of hard work.

Hard work isn’t just expressed outwardly; it also involves enduring significant pain and internal struggles that others can hardly relate to unless they’ve experienced them. The countless nights I fought, trying not to take my own life. The number of prescriptions I had to take, switch, and endure the side effects of all over again. The days I still showed up, sick and barely hanging on — oh, I’m about to vomit!

These experiences have made me someone slow to judge others. If a girl comes across as rude or offensive, I assume she might be autistic instead of getting angry at her. If a guy in my group disappears or doesn’t submit his work, I don’t get annoyed; I check in to see if he needs support.

Finally, I feel better emotionally about the idea that a God is watching over me — even though, as a child forced to be religious, the more I read the Bible (at my mum’s insistence), the more I scribbled at the margins of my rebuttals to homophobic and misogynistic passages. I was around 12 then.

But now, at 22, I’ve come to find spirituality comforting. Specifically, the idea that everything bad that happened to me in the past was part of God’s plan to help me grow into a more developed and mature person.

In retrospect, I wish I could have matured healthily, but I probably had to take the scenic route. However, along this scenic route, I encountered plants, animals, and stunning views I might not have otherwise seen.

Without my tough experiences, I’d not be as understanding, empathetic, or as deep in my grasp of the human condition (even as I recognise my current limitations in perspective). Unprocessed suffering only leads to more suffering, but processed suffering can build understanding and character.

Confronting a fundamental aspect of the human condition—namely, suffering—as a form of autonomy linked to it. Perhaps this is why many artists, writers, and musicians often tend to be melancholic.

It is sorrowful, frustrating, and even infuriating to endure these experiences, and yet, after surviving the ordeal, the soldier, as he lifts his head above the trenches, finally perceives the beauty of the sunset—a view more breathtaking than any other.

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This post was previously published on An Injustice.

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