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Draft one
For me success means I am happy, content with my life and where I am in life. The wells of life I believe are: personal growth, wealth, health, service, and relationships. Each of those categories have three subcategories.
There is personal growth in terms of character, knowledge, and habits. To live a successful life you must grow in character to become a better person, must strive to gain knowledge, and need to be aware of your habits and not let them control your life, rather have your habits add value to your life.
I define wealth in three different ways: economic, career, and inner wealth. Having a stable income is important so you can live a comfortable life and support those you love; a career that’s wealthy in passion and interest is important for you to feel driven and have a purpose in society; and lastly, inner wealth is things such as maintaining a healthy mindset, internal peace, and knowing yourself and what makes you happy
You mustn't forget to also watch out for your physical, mental and emotional health. Eating well and exercising regularly are proven to make you happier, so does laughing, stay connected with friends and people who bring positivity to your live. Maintain good relationships, whether it's friends, family or your partner. Humans are social creatures and it’s important for us to feel as though we belong, and surrounding yourself with people who hold the same values as you and add new perspectives develop your character . In Gatsby’s case, he only really focused on his love life and didn’t really care about friends, most of the people coming to his parties didn’t even know him: ”Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all” (Fitzgerald 41).
Lastly, service. The video that Mr. Pangier played in class showed that the people who were famous for being good people were the ones who helped other. So to be successful, I believe in service to others, yourself and your environment. Strike a balance between pleasing others and pleasing yourself though, everything I mentioned has to be balanced, if not, then one of those key components of happiness and success may “run dry” like Gatsby’s. “[Gatsby] paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald 161). He was so focused on filling up his “Daisy Well” that he completely ignored all other wells, and ended up dead. So have many dreams and don’t end up dead like Gatsby, find your balance.
There is personal growth in terms of character, knowledge, and habits. To live a successful life you must grow in character to become a better person, must strive to gain knowledge, and need to be aware of your habits and not let them control your life, rather have your habits add value to your life.
I define wealth in three different ways: economic, career, and inner wealth. Having a stable income is important so you can live a comfortable life and support those you love; a career that’s wealthy in passion and interest is important for you to feel driven and have a purpose in society; and lastly, inner wealth is things such as maintaining a healthy mindset, internal peace, and knowing yourself and what makes you happy
You mustn't forget to also watch out for your physical, mental and emotional health. Eating well and exercising regularly are proven to make you happier, so does laughing, stay connected with friends and people who bring positivity to your live. Maintain good relationships, whether it's friends, family or your partner. Humans are social creatures and it’s important for us to feel as though we belong, and surrounding yourself with people who hold the same values as you and add new perspectives develop your character . In Gatsby’s case, he only really focused on his love life and didn’t really care about friends, most of the people coming to his parties didn’t even know him: ”Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all” (Fitzgerald 41).
Lastly, service. The video that Mr. Pangier played in class showed that the people who were famous for being good people were the ones who helped other. So to be successful, I believe in service to others, yourself and your environment. Strike a balance between pleasing others and pleasing yourself though, everything I mentioned has to be balanced, if not, then one of those key components of happiness and success may “run dry” like Gatsby’s. “[Gatsby] paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald 161). He was so focused on filling up his “Daisy Well” that he completely ignored all other wells, and ended up dead. So have many dreams and don’t end up dead like Gatsby, find your balance.
draft two
What is success? That’s such a loaded question, where would I even begin? I first thought to list the different components that make up success for me, such as goals, family, and health, but that’s not personal enough. So instead, I’m going to tell you a little story, a story about me and when I first learned to use a remote control. I was only about two or three years old, or so my mom tells me, this, is where my story begins.
The movie that was my latest obsession at the age of two/three wasn’t a Disney movie, but a Warner Bros. animation called “The Quest For Camelot”. In our living room, we had a white couch placed in the middle, in front of that, was our outdated chunky TV. In the shelf beneath the TV is where we kept the VCRs, you know, those black rectangular tapes that play videos, before DVDs were a thing. For the next hour and twenty-six minutes I would be glued to the TV. As kids, we learn by mimicking, I’m sure you can remember a time when you learned something by watching others. Well, there’s this one musical scene in the movie that I always ask my mom to replay over and over again, it’s when the lead female jumps onto a rock at the climax of the song. At the beginning of this scene I do the same thing every time; as the girl starts to run towards the rock, I climb up onto the armrest of the couch, and as the song reaches its climax, she pounces onto the rock as I leap of the side of the couch. I ask my mom to rewind and hit play over and over again. You can imagine how annoying that must have been, so eventually through watching my mom, I learned how to rewind and hit play myself.
That is success. Success is when you accomplish something, for me that was rewinding the film so I could jump off the couch. We all have to start somewhere if we want to achieve something, even if that something is a really small goal. It’s important to have goals to add direction to your life. I believe the small things you succeed in can help you achieve larger success. Learning how to use the remote control gave me more freedom and confidence, I could do more things on my own, I was growing up. Success is like growing up, when we succeed in things, we grow in confidence, knowledge and experience. Failure is a part of the process in reaching success, so through failure we also grow. That story of how I learned to use the remote control, is just one of many little success stories, and those stories are what add up to make a successful life. So just because a goal seems small, doesn’t mean it’s insignificant.
Changes made:
I decided the other draft was too rigid and not specific enough to me. So, instead I went with a story as an example to explain what success is to me. I always change my mind on how I define success, so it’s really hard to make up my mind as to how to write it.
The movie that was my latest obsession at the age of two/three wasn’t a Disney movie, but a Warner Bros. animation called “The Quest For Camelot”. In our living room, we had a white couch placed in the middle, in front of that, was our outdated chunky TV. In the shelf beneath the TV is where we kept the VCRs, you know, those black rectangular tapes that play videos, before DVDs were a thing. For the next hour and twenty-six minutes I would be glued to the TV. As kids, we learn by mimicking, I’m sure you can remember a time when you learned something by watching others. Well, there’s this one musical scene in the movie that I always ask my mom to replay over and over again, it’s when the lead female jumps onto a rock at the climax of the song. At the beginning of this scene I do the same thing every time; as the girl starts to run towards the rock, I climb up onto the armrest of the couch, and as the song reaches its climax, she pounces onto the rock as I leap of the side of the couch. I ask my mom to rewind and hit play over and over again. You can imagine how annoying that must have been, so eventually through watching my mom, I learned how to rewind and hit play myself.
That is success. Success is when you accomplish something, for me that was rewinding the film so I could jump off the couch. We all have to start somewhere if we want to achieve something, even if that something is a really small goal. It’s important to have goals to add direction to your life. I believe the small things you succeed in can help you achieve larger success. Learning how to use the remote control gave me more freedom and confidence, I could do more things on my own, I was growing up. Success is like growing up, when we succeed in things, we grow in confidence, knowledge and experience. Failure is a part of the process in reaching success, so through failure we also grow. That story of how I learned to use the remote control, is just one of many little success stories, and those stories are what add up to make a successful life. So just because a goal seems small, doesn’t mean it’s insignificant.
Changes made:
I decided the other draft was too rigid and not specific enough to me. So, instead I went with a story as an example to explain what success is to me. I always change my mind on how I define success, so it’s really hard to make up my mind as to how to write it.
final draft
The Three Lessons to Success
A Crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a Pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it.
He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair.
Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher.
Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher.
Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher.
Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher.
Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher.
Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher.
At last, at last, he saw the water mount up near him, and after casting in a few more pebbles he was able to quench his thirst and save his life
(Aesop 1867).
That was the story of The Crow and the Pitcher, one of Aesop’s fables. The crow wanted water, and when he found the water, he was met with a challenge. Instead of flying off when his beak didn’t fit, he tried to be smart about it, he kept persisting until he was successful. He didn’t complain that his beak was too big or too short, he focused on what was in his control and didn’t waste time blaming his beak or the pitcher. I believe this story teaches us a lot about success, it shows three important things to keep in mind when striving for a goal: Don’t play the ‘blame game’, always keep the goal in mind, and understand the importance of hardwork and sacrifice.
The blame game is when you refuse to take responsibility for something, and instead blame someone or something else (Whitbourne 2015). We all do it, some of us more than others, but nonetheless we do it all the same. A professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences said this in a post for Psychology Today:“Blame helps you preserve your sense of self-esteem by avoiding awareness of your own flaws or failings” (Whitbourne 2015). Blame acts as a defence mechanism, and it’s easier to blame someone than to take responsibility for one's actions (Whitbourne 2015). I play the blame game all the time, in fact, I play it everyday. Because I’m always late, I’ve become a master of excuses. It’s reached the point where even I don’t believe any of the lies I tell myself for why I can never be on time. By making excuses I’m hurting others and myself, more than if I had recognized my shortcomings and took responsibility for my actions. From personal experience, I’ve learned in order to be successful we must take responsibility and stop making excuses. When we blame others or certain circumstances for our failures, we’re putting the real problem behind a curtain, and if we can’t see what’s really stopping us, then we’ll never reach success.
The crow always had his goal in mind, his dry throat being a constant reminder. But unlike the crow, some don’t always have a reminder to motivate them in pursuing their goals. At the begin of the year I participated in a three kilometer cross-country run, I set a goal to beat my previous record. After I broke the two kilometer mark, I had no more physical strength left to keep me going. It was then that I realized the importance of my mental strength in achieving my goal. My body was burning, it felt like I was inhaling fire and I didn’t see the point in running anymore. I kept glancing to the grass along the side of the track and told myself I could just stop now and lie down on the grass, how good it would feel, the thought entered my mind every 10 seconds. In that moment I hated myself for setting that goal, for creating high expectations and putting myself in a position to possibly let others, and myself, down.
What saved me from giving up was the second lesson taught in The Crow and the Pitcher, I kept my goal in mind. It reminded me why it’s so important for me that I beat my previous record. Last year I felt discouraged when I heard people dismissed the work and effort I put into that year’s run, and instead attribute my success to good genes and long legs. I thought if I beat my previous time, then I would prove to myself that it’s my willpower and hard work that made me fast, not my body-type. This brings us to the third lesson taught in The Crow and the Pitcher: understanding the importance of hardwork and sacrifice. For every practice, I always ran faster and harder than before, even on mornings when I didn’t feel like it. Just like I had to make sacrifices to achieve my goal, the rich and famous Jay Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional novel, “The Great Gatsby”, had too as well: Gatsby worked “as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed” (Fitzgerald 98). We all have to make sacrifices if we want to achieve something, even if that accomplishment is as simple as a 3k run, or Gatsby’s obsessive pursuit for the American Dream.
I believe that we determine our own successes. Even if there are things out of your control that limit your ability to succeed, you should still always aim to better yourself and persist despite those limitations. Everyday you are given the choice to either play the blame game, or to focus on what you can control instead of what you can’t. If you are struggling to reach your goals, you are doing it right. A satisfying victory is only the result of hard work and sacrifice. Aspire to be the crow in The Crow and the Pitcher-- through not playing the blame game, keeping your goal in mind, and understanding the importance of hardwork and sacrifice. If you achieve this, you will find your pitcher of water.
Bibliography
Aesop, . (1867). “The Crow and the Pitcher”. Aesop's Fables (Lit2Go Edition). Retrieved
April 26, 2017, from
http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/35/aesops-fables/379/the-crow-and-the-pitcher/
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1995. Print.
Whitbourne, Susan Krauss. "5 Reasons We Play the Blame Game." Psychology Today.
Sussex Publishers, 19 Sept. 2015. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.
Changes made:
The night before the essay was due I got an idea before I went to sleep, so the next day I started over from scratch. I changed my whole direction that I took the paper and used people's opinions on my other drafts to craft this one. I don't have a third draft on here because I went through many draft between my second and final paper that I could no longer keep track of each version.