Dustin R. Green 02JAN2009 MY DEFINITION OF SUCCESS The definition of success varies from person to person, but it can be summed up with this: if you set a goal, and, through effort on your part, you accomplish what you set out to do, you are successful. One cannot determine success by how much money one has, nor by how many people one surrounds him/herself with, but by one’s happiness with where they stand in life. I am mainly interested in two types of goals: short term goals and long term goals. Short term goals are goals that can be achieved soon after setting them. Examples of short term goals include: painting a picture, going to the movies with your friends, or, if you think really short term, feeding the dog. Examples of long term goals include: learning to speak a foreign language, retirement, and owning one’s own business. Without goals, we have no base to plan our lives around, therefore leading to failure. The only way to be successful at attaining your goal is to have a plan. The way I learned to plan is to set a goal and work backwards from that goal to figure out what it is going to take to reach that goal. Say, for instance, your goal is to build a house. Building a house costs a lot of money and chances are you don’t have that kind of money in the bank, so you take out a construction loan. Next, you would decide on the floor plans you want built. Then you need to hire a construction company to build it; upon hiring the construction company, you set up a general time line of the work. And voila! When the company is finished building, you have reached your goal. Recently, I have taken an apprenticeship with TCB Construction. The job title that best illustrates what I am doing would be “sales representative.” I go out with a salesman and learn how to measure the roof, bid and sell the job to the customer using both words, and competitive pricing. As I type this, we are on the way o Jersey, AR to measure a commercial roof for the Arkansas...