“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
-Herman Cain

Do you remember that high school superlative “Most Likely to Succeed?” When you look back in your old yearbook, you see the boy and girl that were the most academically achieved as the winners for that superlative. To me though, I would have to say the kids who knew where they wanted to go in life and knew what they were doing after high school were going to be the most successful to me.

If you were to go out onto the streets of a populated city and ask multiple people what they thought a successful life was, you would receive many different responses. Some people would reply back and say that having a great paying job, two and half children, a large house and multiple nice vehicles was the way to be successful. Some of the people would say that having a job that you love, having people who love you no matter what you do, and living life day by day is another way to be successful. There are many different ways to be successful; it just depends on what type of person you are.

To me, being successful has to do with internal contentment. Being successful to me would be having the job you love doing, regardless of the amount of money you make, and loving the lifestyle you have created for yourself.  Making goals for yourself and achieving them is success.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be defined by your career, money or materialistic things. Overcoming obstacles in your life and not dwelling on them can make you succeed in life too.

When I was 3 years my biological mother abandoned me and my 2 year old sister.  When she was pregnant with my sister she chose to do drugs. While my father was at work she would have other men come to the house. She would leave me and my sister in the bathtub while she would go off to some other part of the house and do drugs and entertain her friends. After she left, we moved into my grandparents’ house.  For 4 years, me and my sister lived without a mother. When I was 7, my dad met a woman and we moved in with her. She became my “mom” very quickly and eventually adopted my sister and I. I’ve had a lot of reasons in life to blame my past for my failures and blame my parents like I hear criminals do as their excuse for this bad behavior. The truth is, those people need to take responsibility for their own actions. Bad things do happen to good people but you can’t just use those bad things as a crutch for the rest of their lives. They need to say, “yea, the things that happened hurt and isn’t fair, but I’m better than the situation I’ve been given and I can still succeed in this life”. It’s all about attitude. It’s all about looking at what you do have and being grateful. You must make your own happiness wherever you are in your life, with what you have. No one is responsible for your happiness.

Success doesn’t have to be about having a lot of money.  Sure you might be able to have more expensive things, but does that really matter if you’re not going to be happy with your life? Material things can’t replace the happiness of your family or the activities your family enjoys together. There are families that live in simple homes, living simple lives that are happy. There are rich families that have mansions to live in and private planes to take them anywhere they wish, but they are not happy. Everyone has different tastes and wants in their lives. A rich lady may never be happy because she is unable to bear children. As I know from experience, some women may have child after child without regard or concern for them. Some people will never be happy with anything they have or receive because they are not happy with themselves. They are constantly trying to fill the void in their life, in their own heart, but never succeeding.

Success is not measured in what you have and how much you have of it, but it is measured by how much happiness you have in your life and how you make the most of it.