When I think of my youth and my early adult years, I am able to identify a number of significant influences that moulded me as a person. They consumed my consciousness, my behaviour, my aspirations and my sense of well being – and dictated the bulk of my years.

Only in maturity have I been able to reflect on those years and determine whether my life has gone the way I wanted it to go and whether having lived those years, I am content with what I have experienced, aspired to achieve and actually accomplished.

The first of these influences was the need to feel that I was as good as my peers and that I could match it with them. That I was as smart, capable and appealing as they were - that I was fun to be with and someone whose company was sought over others. I wanted to be respected and admired. I wanted to be considered charming, intelligent, successful, and sociable and “a good catch” by girls, and later by women. I wanted to be and have what I thought one needed to be and to have in order to enjoy all the good things that life has to offer. What my peers and others thought of me was fundamental to the way I thought about myself. It was my way of validating my own existence. I had little respect for my own judgment, and desires, and felt that if everyone thought I was worthwhile, then I must be a worthy person.

Not to have this acclaim was to have failed. Failed not only in the eyes of my peers, but also of society and myself. I therefore existed entirely within the perceptions that others had of me. My reference as to whom and what I was, was external to myself and relied on the vagaries and foibles of others.

The second influence was the need to live up to the expectation of my parents. Not that they had anything but the very best intentions for me in their hearts, but they were human, and being human, had their own expectations, aspirations and desires for me, their precious child. They were of a time when parents “knew” what was best for their children. And the children, not having experienced life with all its perils and peculiarities, knew nothing – or at least not enough to know what was in their own best interest.

My parents had a view on good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate, on a suitable career and an unsuitable career, on good friends and bad friends, on a good marital match and a poor marital match, and so on. Not once did they ask me what I wanted, or wanted to do, or was excited about, or interested in, or who I loved and cared for. Not once was I able, without the fear of the loss of their approbation, able to pursue my own desires.

The third influencer was my school experience. I had the misfortune of attending an exceptional private school that had a firm view of what its graduates were to attain at the end of their schooling years. Unfortunately, the school was synchronized to my parent’s view of career and success – rather than to my own skills and interests. I was dragged through 12 years of schooling never entirely interested or immersed in the subject matter that so consumed every day of my life.

Not only were my peers and my parents assessing me, but I was being formally measured at school against a benchmark that appeared irrelevant to me. This measure was also used by my peers and parents to categorize me as a non-achiever. Once again, my self-worth was being moulded by other than myself.

The last and probably most obvious influencer has been my various employment environments. When a range of organisations employed me, I was forced to think and act in a way that suited the understandable needs and expectations of the employer. My self-worth was significantly shaped by the progress I made through the firm, the attitudes of my managers and even of my subordinates.

Performance measures, even poorly formulated ones, were used as the criteria upon which to rank individuals. These ranks changed the way people regarded other people in the firm, and the way that management regarded them for promotion and career development. I had to earn a living to support my family so in order to earn a living; I had to work for someone who determined what I did, how I did it, and how I would ultimately be rewarded for it. Failure to attract a reward equated to failure to fulfil a boss’s expectations. Failure to fulfil these expectations meant that people shared the view that I was “less capable” than others who could fulfil. My self-image invariably, and understandably, mirrored the perceptions of those I worked with and whose opinions were critical to my “happiness”.

Even when I was my own boss, customers, bank-managers, subcontractors, suppliers and others were influencing me and my behaviour and attitudes. Perhaps in the self-employment environments I experienced, these influences were a little more subtle than in the formal employee environment, but their effects were just as debilitating to my self-image.

It must be said however, that as debilitating (to the real pursuit of my happiness) as these influencers may have been, they also had their positive legacies. They enabled me to recognise the realities of other people: their hopes, objectives, attitudes and subjectivities and the reality and pragmatics of living with others in a community and a society. Through these experiences, I have been able to develop an ability to relate, communicate, endeavour and “succeed”. Succeed along the guidelines established by others – rather than succeed according to my own definition of success and happiness.

And it was that realisation that lead to the creation of the VisionCircle Movement and its attempts to enable people to seek their own definitions of happiness.