feeling successful

Both my parents had an unassailable conviction in their own success and , in a way, this was indisputable: they, both of them in different ways, quite literally had nothing when they came to Britain.  Whatever they came to possess in the way of a house and a lifestyle, albeit a skin-of-the-teeth one, was theirs.  They owed no-one.  They never borrowed.  They dutifully paid off their mortgage.  Therefore what they had was acquired in a direct cause and effect relationship. 
For me they had ambition, and, in their terms, I failed constantly, and continue to do so to this day.  No matter how successful any individual venture of mine, most of what I have done has existed outside the direct capitalist model of investment and return.  It is uncountable in financial return.  I've put more in than taken out, ergo negative returns, ergo failure.