How Will You Measure Your Life Essay

1. Identify some of the challenges that Chris Gardner faced when trying to sell his bone density scanners.

We as human beings all strive for success. We use success as a measure of everyday life.

I feel that in order to achieve personal success in our society you need 3 key things. For one, you need to have determination. In our culture, we seem to have a universal ideology along the lines of “keep going, and you will succeed eventually.” I feel that these idea’s are incredibly true, and have been shown to be effective every time. A good example of this trait in one of the texts we read is in the Odyssey when Odysseus needed to get back home, and despite the odds being against him, he never gave up. He always kept going, and when the going got rough, he got back right up and started over again. Another trait is intelligence. Because we have gone away from warrior culture in modern times, academic success is more than mandatory to achieve

We cannot let our work and living conditions limit our success, we must take control of the situations in our lives. As much as we have all heard it, we need to keep a positive attitude and mindset, or at least try to. This is probably the easiest way to take control of the situations you are in; keeping a positive attitude has been known to increase your physical and mental health, which can really only benefit you. In a study performed by the University of California, Riverside, in which productivity, happiness, and overall physical and mental well-being were analyzed in working individuals, it was concluded that a positive attitude and outlook has a great effect on one’s life. Generally positive, or “happy people,” were found to be more satisfied with their jobs, to perform tasks better, and less likely to be unemployed and more likely to be physically healthier and live longer than their less happy peers (Joy). Positive people being less likely to be unemployed allows these individuals to accumulate more money, which makes the general public happier nowadays, and this ultimately makes the dream of having success more easily attainable. Happy individuals being found to be healthier and to therefore live longer than less happy individuals gives these happy individuals more time to attain the “American Dream” as well. Keeping

Michael Redhill, author of the story “I Witness”, states that “The true measure of success in life is how well we connect”. According to him, interaction with members of the society and establishment of valuable relationships are the key concepts to achieving the optimal life. Although this may be a way to interpret success, there are countless other ways the word can be defined, unique to every individual. For some, it is calculated by social status; for others, success is solely determined by their happiness.

Having the desire to be successful is one thing but without the doing the little things you will never get there. Successful people are committed to doing something every single day. Regardless of what is going on in their lives they work on their craft. They overcome the daily battle between procrastination and motivation. Every day, most people have a list of things they want to do; need to do; or should do; and what they don’t want to do. It’s these daily choices that are influenced by our discipline and

20-21- “Should we claim to be humble, though, we have already started down the slippery slope of arrogance. To speak (or write) about humility so that others may learn can itself become a prideful act.”

The most universal goal every human has in common is the pursuit of happiness or “creation or construction of happiness” (Achor, 78). To be able to fulfill this wish of becoming happy, people often think the key to achieving happiness is success. In the book, The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, he debunks this theory of success leading to happiness by illustrating the reverse theory of success. Through dozens of studies and experiments as forms of evidence, the author argues that an individual needs to achieve happiness in order to be truly successful. Achor 's argument is valid in that happiness should come before success because there is a clear advantage to being successful in an individual’s work life, personal sphere, and liveliness if they are happy first and foremost.

578). de Vries suggests that humility is “mysterious and eludes literal interpretation” therefore it is “not possible to identify, or grasp, in its entirety the phenomenon of humility” (p. 578). Equally, Castledine (2011) states, “The trouble with humility is that it is a very humble virtue to have and one that cannot be easily rated in the same way as other values in life” (p. 527). Likewise, Srokosz (2013) suggests, “humility is difficult to define and a clear scientific understanding of humility does not exist yet” (p. 103). Similarly, Crigger and Godfrey (2010) review of literature offer two reasons for the lack of “scholarly interests in humility”: (a) original meaning of the term humble, “narrow sense of having a low estimation of one’s self and being of little value, the notion of humility conflicts with modern conceptions of the self” and (b) its religious affiliation “may also dampen the benefit of acquiring or nursing humility, particularly in the US culture…” (p. 311-312).

In this course I have learned many different theories, the ones that I think are most relevant to my life (autobiography) include; Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Daniel Levinson and Roger Gould.

Personal success is defined by how content and enjoyable your life is. That is not to say that challenges and disappointments aren’t included in this. A rich, eventful and challenging life doing what you enjoy and positively affecting others seems to me to be just about right. Find a job you love and you’ll never work another day in your life. I know I won’t. In my

What is the meaning of life? Well known Greek philosphers such as Socrates and Plato believed that our purpose in this life was to gain knowledge in preparation for the next life. Other Philosophers such as Epicurus believed that pleasure is the main goal in life. After giving these ideas lots of thought, I have come to my own conclusion that the true meaning of life is far more complex than either of these; far too complex for any human to fully comprehend. In fact these two different philosophies are only part of the grand picture. If it were that easy for men to figure out our lives wouldn't be so messed up now. The meaning of life revolves around many different things. I

My life has been a crazy roller coaster with many events that have affected my life all in different ways. There have been times where my life has been at its highest peak in the world then it falls down, right into a deep valley. From the time my lovable younger sister came into my life to when my grandpa had a near death experience, I have learned many valuable lessons through the rough times as well as the more happy times. When I was a young girl, my mom had always told me the same thing over and over again. I never really thought about how a few words would have a deep effect on me in a short amount of time.

Many people have grown up to be successful individuals with happy, elegant lives. Others grow to not have the luxuries but they still consider themselves successful because they are morally straight. Everyone’s definition of success is different, but through the various definitions of success, all successful people became that way because of their families. The reasons why family is directly related with success in later life is: family can push you to do things you would not do on your own. Family will always be there for you, and family prepares you to care for others.

Before this class I never put thought about my family goals because I believed it was not important at this point in my life. However, during the class after discussions and reading Meg Jay’s book especially, I started to understand the importance of work-life balance. Meg Jay’s advice and the story she shared about Emma really resonated with me. Meg Jay stated that, “the foregrounding of the individual in relationships has caused us to forget about one of our