Background. The paper deals with understanding success in terms of generation value gap, transitivity and high social uncertainty as a component of self-determination of an individual acquires particular relevance, determining the vector of a person’s personal development.

The Objective of this research is to study the ideas of modern adolescents about success linked with self-esteem and assessment of their own success in significant spheres of life, i.e. education career and interpersonal relations. The study is based on the assumption that the notions of success as self-development will be associated with a higher level of self-esteem and assessment of success in adolescents.

Design. The study involved 500 adolescents (291 girls and 209 young men), students of the 10th and 11th grades of schools and gymnasiums (average age 16 years), Moscow, Russia. To study the ideas of adolescents about success, Adolescent Representations of Success (ARS) questionnaire was developed. To study the self-esteem of adolescents, the method of Dembo-Rubinstein was used in the modification A.M. Prihozhan, as well as a purposefully designed questionnaire to study indirect evaluation of success.

Results Three models of success that characterize the attitude of adolescents to the success are identified: success as social recognition, success as fulfillment of external social requirements, and success as self-development and self-actualization. The differences in the self-esteem of adolescents with different ideas about success are revealed.

Conclusion. The research confirmed the hypothesis and showed that varying perception of success in adolescents is closely related to self-esteem and evaluation of their own success. Understanding success as self-development and self-actualization is associated with a higher level of self-esteem and assessment of own success which promotes psychological well-being in general. Adolescents who share a model of success as fulfillment of external social requirements associate success with achieving goals with overcoming obstacles and satisfaction with results and place value on luck. For adolescents who are focused on the model of success as social recognition it is typical to place value on their personal authority among the peers, thus having high assessment rates of their success as a whole.

Currently the Ministry of Finance is working on the issue of gradual increase of the retirement age, while various specialists are actively discussing the pros and cons of this potential change. The issue of determining the characteristics of the labour force participation of elder people and their participation in society is complex and multifaceted. A retired person’s capability for activity, willingness to get enrolled in society vary considerably depending on health, psychological well-being, self-attitude.

The paper examines one’s self-concept as a generalized set of ideas about their own physical, psychological, social features As a central component of identity and selfregulation of the retired citizens.

The results of the study presented in the paper reveal the retirement age as a period of human ontogenesis, during which their self-concept is undergoing a number of changes. Based on the theoretical analysis and empirical research, the following periods of the individual development at the retirement age is proposed: early retirement, mid retirement, late retirement. Each of the periods is described taking into account age peculiarities of self-awareness and the self-concept. The paper shows the crisis nature of the self-concept development in people of the retirement age. It also highlights normative age-graded crises: the retirement crisis, the crisis of self-sufficiency, the crisis of integrity. The paper also highlights gender-specific features of the self-concept in retired citizens.

The study was conducted using a sample of 120 unemployed pensioners from the cities Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Oblast (Sverdlovsk region), Russia. To study the features of the self-concept of the retired citizens the following methods were used: «Who am I?» (M. Kun) for studying the content of the self-concept, the self-relation test (V. V. Stolin, S. R. Pantileev) for analysinge self-attitude of the retired citizens, the technique of personal differential for studying self-attractiveness, strength and activity of the retired citizens.

The paper discusses various approaches to the definition of «success» and types of success. It also presents the results of the pilot study of success representations in modern adolescents: semantic universals are identified, the notion of «success» is defined, the most important characteristics of success in adolescents are highlighted. Using authorized techniques the “definition of success” highlights the notion of “success” to be the most consistent characteristic of “the achievement of goals”. One of the most significant characteristics is “self-realization”. Adolescents also define success as the experience of “joy and satisfaction from the work done” and as “a sense of welldeserved happiness”. It is of particular interest that such category as “popular in the society” is the least important in determining the success of a given sample. The most interesting part of the research is to analyze particular cases of success in famous personalities who are significant for adolescents, i.e. representatives of show business, modern business (e.g. Bill Gates), or members of the family and friends. The sphere of politics is less popular, and the sphere of science, art and sports are so rare for adolescent sources of success patterns.

The research is able to communicate ideas about the success of adolescents with the experience of meaningfulness of their lives. Those adolescents who evaluate their past, present and future life as meaningful and loose enough do not feel the strength to manage their own lives, regard themselves as not very successful people and the very success is seen as volatile and rare. The image of success in adolescents who consider their life meaningful are positive and bright: they do not consider it such a rare and changing phenomenon, probably because more than once they have experienced success in various areas of their lives.

As a result, a correlation representation of adolescents about the success with the experience of the meaningfulness of their lives is established.