"Work, work, work, work, work, work..." While this may be everyone’s new favorite song in the club, it’s unfortunately the mindset that many children, teens and adults have today. There seems to be this incessant struggle for success that plays an overbearing factor in life.

Think about it: at a Little League baseball game, moms and dads alike can be heard screaming from the sidelines at their little boys to get a home run so that they can be a winner. A 16-year-old pulls an all-nighter for an English essay because that A will get them into college, which will help them find a job. A mother of two works full-time to support her kids, but stares at the clock from her desk, counting down the minutes until 5 p.m. and the endless years until retirement. Why is it that society focuses the idea of success around winning, prestige and money? If success means wishing the precious seconds of your life away, I don’t want any part of that. This is something I’ve learned this year, and I think it’s important to pass on to others.

I used to be the girl that would cancel plans because I had too much homework to do. I would stay up into the early hours of the morning typing away at my laptop, the pervasive sound of crickets invading my ears, telling me I shouldn’t be awake. With each letter I typed, it seemed as if my dark circles grew darker and the bags surrounding my once youthful eyes became heavier, trying to pull my eyes shut. As the night turned into morning and the stress weighed heavy on my heart, the following words entered my train of thought: I wish it were Friday.

While this phrase is said by everyone nearly every day, I had never really thought about just how sad that statement was until I got to college. I had never realized the extent to which I was wasting my life away over a homework assignment that would be lost in oblivion in a year. I had never noticed how fleeting life was until I was sitting in my dorm room on a Saturday night, slaving over my textbooks, when I heard the sound of laughter seep under my door, slap me in the face and practically spit, What a loser. That was the moment I realized that there is more to life than work. In fact, there is so much more.

There are the moments when you take spontaneous trips to the ice cream shop with your friends and devour a waffle cone bigger than your head, treating yourself after a long day of work. There are the trips to the river to watch the sunset change the sky from shades of blue to hues of purple and you wish that you could freeze time and forever feel that relaxation calm your every worry. There's the belly laughter on a Friday night with your family that makes you wonder how you were lucky enough to grow up in a house full of love and make you thankful that for once in your life, you put down the textbook. There are the late nights where you stay up with the person you consider your other half, whispering into the wee hours of the morning about your hopes, your fears and your secret dreams and forgetting about the essay that’s due next week.

While I could write an entire list about what’s more important than the stress you acquire from work, it can pretty much be summed up in one word: happiness. So society -- why don’t we redefine success to achieving happiness? Not power, not prestige, not money you get from work -- but genuine happiness. Let the little boy play baseball because he loves the feeling of swinging the bat, not the win. Let that teenager go out on a Friday night with her friends because she's worked so hard during the week and deserves a break. Let that mom go home to her two kids on time because the apples of her eye are her validation in life that she’s doing something right. Let people find their happiness and bask in the light of their own smiles because this, my friends, is success. While working hard is definitely important, so too, is your soul.

You only have one short life to live. Don’t spend it counting down the moments until it’s over. Go out and do something you love every day. Even if just for 15 minutes -- please, put down the work and find your happiness.