CNBNews

Truly happy people can be more effective people. No matter what your current situation is, you can be happier, learn how to motivate yourself, put yourself on a positive and realistic road to success, or reinvent yourself into the kind of person you want to be.

Take notes and jot down any ideas you get along the way. These resources are simply a starting point to set goals for yourself and to improve your outlook and your life.

The best way to think of these resources is that they are intended to be a "bridge builder", leading you to further detailed and customized study that will help you learn more about yourself and lead to other educational experiences, and also to professionals, who are highly trained and experienced to help you. Reference to these resources is only the first step. It is not an end in itself.

(The Camden County College Advisement Center (856)227-7200 can help you find transfer programs and a wide variety of career training to help you find success. *Be sure to ask how you may be able to attend both Camden County College to obtain your Associates Degree and then transfer to Rutgers-Camden for your Bachelor’s in selected fields - and attend both institutions for free or for half-price.)

It's important to your success to seek out a variety of opinions. By the time you finish, you will have had many, including mine. But that's not enough. You need to consult with people who know you best and also with others who are familiar with areas you have an interest in. All the advice you're going to get from others is not going to be good. You might also not agree with all of it either. Just take it all in and evaluate it as you go along. Keep an open mind too.

The benefit of these resources, and any further courses of action it leads you to can only be determined by the actual steps you take to improve your life. Just reading about it, while highly worthwhile in creating the proper motivation and frame of mind to help you move forward, is no substitute for setting meaningful goals and actually doing something to accomplish them.

How long should you keep at this? Keep these two thoughts in mind as you go through life:

"Plan To Live To Be A Hundred"

The famous motivational speaker, Dr. Robert Schuller, said that this is the proper time reference. (It makes no difference how long you actually live.) The idea is to always have personally relevant goals, or a project, for as long as you live. This will give your life meaning - and meaning helps produce happiness and a feeling of success. (A feature on "Sixty Minutes" indicated that the population segment over ninety years old is the fastest growing one in the country. It's projected to quadruple in the coming decades. You might not make it to a hundred, but you might still get to be a nonagenarian!)

You're Never Done

"How will you know when your work is done?" The answer: "If you're still breathing, you're not done yet."

Always have goals, and keep them, even if at age ninety, it's simply to speak with two friends a week, check Google News (if it's still around by then), take care of your pet, tend to your herb garden, fill the bird feeders every other day, and watch the fifty-seventh season of "House of Cards". Keep Renoir's last words in mind: "I am still progressing."

The famed British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried on South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic, a region where, in his failure to reach the South Pole, he arguably set the standard for leadership, engendering loyalty, and team building. If you ever feel that you've have taken about as much as you can, or that you have failed at something and don't feel good about it, read Shackleton's Boat Journey by Frank A. Worsley, the captain of Shackleton's ship Endurance. It will hold you spellbound, and in wonder, about how much human beings can face and still come out on top, no matter how long the odds are, even though they may not have reached the goals they initially set for themselves. And what about the "You're Never Done?" part. Let it be said of you, as it was of Shackleton:

"Never the lowered banner, never the last endeavor." Keep fighting until the end. There is much in you to give and a great example you can set for others.

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To access the complete “Happiness, Well-Being and Success” website:

Log in to ccc.webstudy.com

User Name: happiness  Password: success

Click: Happiness Course

Then “Timeline”, then “Expand All”

To register for Professor Danks’ online Management, Legal Environment/LawI or Business Law II courses throughout the year, check the Camden County College website for course offerings: www.camdencc.edu. Register through the Registrar’s Office or WebAdvisor.

CNBNews Note: The author is an assistant professor of business at Camden County College, Blackwood, NJ and is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia and Gloucester Catholic High School alumnus Class of '63