Getting the most from life

What is it you want out of life? Sounds like a question your professors would ask the first day of class, doesn't it?

Many people answer quite simply. They want to be rich, not have to work and to be successful. But what does it mean to be successful?

Success is something like happiness. Neither can be measured, except by the individual. The only way to judge if one is happy or successful is to look inside one's own self. These things depend on what we desire in life and how accepting we are of our circumstances.

Let's take for instance someone who only wants to be a multi-millionaire. If in life this person only rises to middle management and never breaks a salary cap of $60,000, he probably would not consider himself a success story. But to one looking in from the outside, this may be an ideal situation, the epitome of success.

Success is only what we want it to be. It is simply an idea that we can manipulate and form into our consciousness to make our lives simple or difficult.

Ken Hanson is the opinion editor of the Daily Forty-Niner.