Consulting has been a real God-send for me, and has given me more freedom than the average worker. However, my real goal all along has been total independence via ownership.
I've been only partially successful in that, but the success has made it something that I wish to pass along to my children and grandchildren.
Sad to say, the pervasive culture seems to push them strongly towards "working for 'da man" as the preferred model. I struggle to convey the significant differences to them in practical terms that will actually help them escape "the rat race."
A while ago, I came to the conclusion that our society tends to push the idea of "success" to an extreme point, at which I am uncomfortable. Since then, I have changed the metric for myself from success to happiness. I consider my job as a parent to be to teach my children how to measure happiness and to tell them everything I know about what makes people happy and unhappy. I also think it is important to foster experience in activities which could lead to more opportunities for happiness.
I think you've made an excellent distinction between the two...