Success is something everyone wants to have and sometimes focus on a little too much. When defining "success" what comes to your mind? Maybe it is having millions of dollars and being the head of your own company or maybe it is being in the center of your social limelight. In a career-oriented society, it is natural to place such a large correlation between your job, success, and happiness.

But once we learn to separate happiness from our definition of success, can we be truly happy. This is why you find students miserable in their major and adults in their job. They believe having a career that society defines as "successful" will lead to lots of money, prosperity, and ultimately their happiness when in reality, this is generally not the case.

In the last few weeks, I have been having doubts in my choice of major. Something just doesn't feel like it fits correctly. Like every other student, I concern myself highly with my future career and the means of obtaining the highest salary that I can. I soon came to the realization of how skewed of a view this is. My naïve self strongly connected success in my future career to my future happiness. I will be in my career presumably eight hours a day for five days a week, why in the world would I settle for anything less than something I am passionate about? Looking through my own lens of what brings me happiness has drastically shaped my perspective on the direction I am going to take.

This is not to say to some degree that success cannot associate with feelings of happiness, but the two should be separated more than they tend to be. Success is not the key to happiness, but happiness is the key to success.