What does success mean to you?

Since our first day in school, we have been provided with measures of success. Most students don't question pursuing good grades and college spots before they are in the hamster wheel of a traditional career. If you want to take control of your career and life, you must be clear about what kind of success you pursue.

Here are 4 typical ways to define success to get you started:

Money

Money is the most common way to measure success. After all, it is the medium to translate your work into all the necessities and comforts of modern life. However, making it the end-all-be-all of your life traps you into comparing yourself with others, a comparison you are always bound to lose.

Lifestyle

You can focus on what money actually can buy you if you abstract from the number in your bank account. All of us have dreams about how we want to live. Reaching that dream lifestyle or making progress toward it is a measuring stick that is individual to you.

Time

How you allocate the 24 hours all of us have in a day will most impact your happiness. To many people, success means being able to devote as much time as possible to what really matters to them. Maximize the time free from constraints if this sounds like you.

Freedom

Most people are stretched by work, social, and family commitments. Having the freedom every morning to decide what matters most is the kind of success most difficult to obtain. Yet it is also the most fulfilling type.

Now it's your turn. How do you measure success?