How do we measure success in life?

The money in the bank? The days we feel happy over sad? The people we have around us? The qualifications we achieve… or is it something different?

Is it when we achieve a level of stability and safety, that means when the storms come at our ships at sea, we don’t sink?

What happens when we achieve stability, but it’s not safe? A family, a home, an income that covers the needs of the family… but is emotionally unsafe?

We might be able to exist, but deep within us is a feeling of unsatisfaction, unease, and unfulfillment of achieving safety in our lives.

It is, of course, easier sometimes to make the distinction of what might need to change when the situation is physically unsafe… perhaps because very often physical safety can be measured by others in a more distinct way. Easier to prove at times, easier to accept within the societies we live in (but that is a musing for another day).

What happens then, if physically we have stability and (emotional and physical) safety, but our sense of safety fails to catch up? A sense of safety is often not given as much thought as emotional and physical safety, yet it is a basic human need, an essential foundation for human flourishing and wellbeing (Pessi et al., 2025).

Building a sense of safety requires stability and continued safety, but this can be difficult to achieve if you have experienced trauma (Lynch et al., 2024). When our brains have been wired to be on constant alert for danger, even being safe can feel unsafe.

This might be especially true if someone has not experienced safety, so then the same concept of safety is not experienced the same. How can it be sensed and known as safety if it’s new, and if we are overwired for detecting danger? So then, a safe space or person can feel unsafe to begin with.

The growth of safety needs stability; stable, connections and relationships, stable finance, and all the areas it can affect (food, home, health management).

BUT the stability also needs to be safe. Stability does not automatically mean safe. You might have a consistent, stable relationship with someone, but if that relationship is not, or does not provide safety and a sense of safety, the benefits are limited, and it could also create harm in the long run.

The same works for accommodation, or home. For example, a care-experienced person has a stable home or accommodation. They are house, great TICK. But is consistent safety looked at? Is it suitable to provide safety and a sense of safety, or is it just stable?

Does the accommodation come with limitations on space, location, or enough finances to access hot water, electricity, and food?

You experience a safe relationship: someone who hears you, provides space to safely regulate, and offers emotional safety. But the stability and consistency in accessing that person is limited. We remember that key person, long into adulthood, and while we experienced a sense of safety and healing there, that experience provides us with a lifeline of hope to return to as a memory. The healing is limited, and it doesn’t protect us from the lack of safety once the access is limited or ended.

The basic need is met, but the ability to thrive, grow and heal is limited by that lack of consistent and stable safety.

I don’t believe we inherently go into the world with the aim of creating or being within situations that unstable and provide a lack of safety for ourselves (I won’t comment on some in this world who wish to create this for others…), and yet at times we also have to choose to step into spaces that might be unstable and unsafe to move forwards.

For example, choosing financial instability and the risk of increased lack of housing stability and safety, to gain emotional safety.

So what does it all mean in the wider context of life?

Are we still successful, or viewed as successful even within facing instability and a lack of safety?

Does the perception of, or the hope for, stability and safety provide enough of an emotional safety net for us to function long enough to gain it, and regain the underpinning sense of safety. Or can we have a high enough sense of safety around us in our networks and family to know that the risk of instability and lack of safety will be worth it in the long run?

Is being able to take the step without knowing the outcome showing success in of itself?

I would say the perception of the level of success truly sits at an individual level, as we are the ones living the lives we live, within the constraints, enabling factors, and choices we have made.

But the systems, services, networks, and families can also provide or take away the required safety and stability in it all.

Through clarity of communication in expectations, providing support set out in the way it’s intended and needed, by approaching with curiosity instead of judgement, amongst other things.

I find myself reflecting on these questions not only as a researcher, but as a person.
Much of my doctoral research has focused on the relationship between safety, stability, financial need, and wellbeing. I have spent years exploring what care-experienced people need to create successful transitions to adulthood and the ways systems can support or undermine that process.

Yet these questions are not confined to research.

Two years ago, I made a decision that prioritised emotional safety over stability. It was not a decision made lightly, and it came with uncertainty, risk, and loss. More recently, I have found myself at another crossroads, choosing to step into independent consultancy and build something of my own rather than face the instability of employment.

In many ways, both decisions have involved the same question:
How much instability are we willing to tolerate in pursuit of greater safety?

I do not yet know exactly what the future will look like. There are no guarantees. What I do know is that safety and stability are not always found in the places we expect them to be.

Sometimes stability is not safe.

Sometimes safety requires us to step into uncertainty.

And sometimes success is not measured by arriving at certainty, but by having the courage to take the next step anyway.