I’ve noticed that many in the GLBTIQ community are quite successful people in their chosen endeavours, as evidenced in the 25 Most Influential Gay and Lesbian Australians awards.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious of course those mentioned on the GLBT sucsess list will be sucsessful… thats the point of the list. Perhaps a better judge of whether GLBT are proportionally more sucsessful than their heterosexual counterparts would be to find a similar list that includes both groups and then do the requiste number punching in terms of evening up the population percentages. You’d probably have the add the male/female factor in as well since the majority of sucsessful people are men in these lists and there are more gay men than women which is not true for the heterosexual population…. I’d do it myself but it sounds a little too much like hard work 😆 😆 Guess I’m not the ‘driven’ type.

I find this an interesting post as I’ve read it directly after getting there’s on suicide and poor educational outcomes among among gay and lesbain youth. I think its more of a “made it” complex than anything else. When any minority, coloured people for example, acheive significance they tend to recieve more publicity, attention and credit than those who are not from a minority group. One of the major factors in the US president elects campaign was that he was a black man. I think he deserved to win on merit and his acheivements were not easier because of his racial herritage but thousands of people cried in the streets the day he won, the outpouring of emotion was incredible and it was in part because he was black. He was paraded as a black man who had “made it” and espoused as a role model for other black people. Of course none of this detracts from the validity of the acheivement, whatever it may be, but generally we hear more about the acheivements of minority groups than of those who are not minority when you consider the population percentage of that group (the current concensus for gays is about 5.5%).

Deciding whether a person is sucsessful first depends on your definition of sucsess. Sure we can look at employment and business sucsess, even financhial sucsess as indicators of sucsessfulness in life but there are many other factors such as relationship sucsess, spritual sucsess and self actualisation that are not so obvious but would also be worthy indicators of sucsessfulness. Most people are sucsessful in at least one area of their lives and to claim a multi-millionaire busisnessman who has terrible relationships and whose self worth he measures in dollars is more sucsessful than a garbage collector who has been in a 20 year relationship and is respected by all his friends is more or less sucsessful than the other is to have a dicey defintion to begin with.

Just my thoughts… hope I didn’t rain of the parade 😉 😆 😆

Is that a stab at me Sandy?

It wasn’t meant to be but if the shoe fits… 😉 😆

Also, darling, just quietly success is spelt with a double “C” but I promise not to tell anyone You are so cute… 25 and you still can’t spell…. adorable

Oh kindly shut up! 🙄 😆 😆 No one’s perfect. Im just lucky my only flaw is so arbitrary 😉 😀

Hi Paul, no I don’t think Sandy was implying you at all.

Hi Mobile Guy, nice to meet you. Sandy is my daughter and we delight in giving each other a hard time. She often tells me what I lack in interpersonal skills I make up for in Prada 😆 😆

I would probably be deemed very successful in terms of my business and financhial life and I’m begining to realise I used my work as an excuse to spend less and less time with my wife esepically at night (funny that). It was also one of the few things I truely enjoyed for a long time and I felt like I was just “me” at work and I didn’t have to try hard to meet others expectations. It probably didn’t hurt that I owned the company so I didn’t have the same worries that other gay men and women often do.

My life was going systematically downhill for a long time and work gave me a sense of purpose, achievement and success that I wasn’t getting from my interpersonal relationships (no Prada either incidentally). This may be the same for other GLBT individuals. Work is something we can all do regardless of our sexuality and work has tangible rewards that give us fufillment in the here and now.

Yes, I think that gives clarity to the situation. Not that I intentionally set out to be a workaholic 🙄 but maybe I need to review why and how I can refocus my energies on other activities that will give me what I’m seeking, using my core beliefs and values as a framework.

but maybe I need to review why and how I can refocus my energies on other activities

could we give you more to do for freedom 2 [e] 😆 😆 😆 😆