Photo Credit: Clay Larsen

The winter holiday season is by far my favorite. With the fall school semester ending just in time for a much needed break from all my academic rigor, I love coming home to my mom's cooking, my brother's jokes, and two weeks of wide open, unstructured time. While rhapsodizing over how much I was not looking forward to resumed classes in January during dinner out with my parents and brother, the conversation turned to what our old friends from high school were doing with their lives. Halfway poking fun at me and brother, my parents asked if we felt like we could measure up to our old classmates at a reunion, given that over 5 years had passed since our senior years in secondary education.My brother and I agreed that Facebook had done a wondrous job of solving half the would-be problem, seeing as we already knew at a glance what most of our former classmates were up to. Though we were confident that our post-high school endeavors were just as successful as anyone that we went to school with given most of us are either college students or new grads, we both expressed mixed feelings when it came to one former classmate in particular.A track and football phenom with a presence in the school hallways that's usually seen only in dramatic teen movies, this classmate was a few grades above us and had gone on to play professional football for the NFL. Neither I nor my brother were more than acquaintances with this classmate during or after high school, but we'd since received a slew of updates on his success from Facebook feeds, friends, ESPN, and the occasional magazine. Apparently he was doing pretty well.In between discussing our former classmate’s recent football stats and speculating on the fate of his career since being traded to a new team, my brother and I expressed the ironic nature of his success given his demeanor in high school. While his triumph posed no problem for my brother and I as everyone in our high school fully expected this individual to play professionally given his talent, we did express a bit of cynicism towards the whole ordeal because, in the simplest terms, our classmate-cum-football star was kind of a jerk in high school.While my brother and I readily admitted to not keeping in touch with this particular classmate and thus can not attest to whether or not his post-high school maturity had given him a change of heart, our entire discussion gave me a chance to reflect on my own views of success and whom I felt deserved it. In short, I was shocked to come to the realization that I had silently been a bit of hater all of these years—not just to this classmate in particular, but to any person whose success I mildly resented because I didn’t like who they were personally.How many times have we sat gossiping with our friends, talking about what a great injustice it is that so-and-so “made it” even though she may have a bad attitude or a poor personality? As I sit here at the dawn of that fresh, clean slate known as the new year, contemplating all of my goals and what I did and didn’t accomplish in 2010, I realize the real injustice is that we don’t spend enough time focusing on our own hard work.I can say what I want about my former classmate—perhaps he was a bit unpleasant in high school and maybe there were other students of strong character who I would love to see reach the same level of success. That said, who is anyone to say that he didn’t deserve his fate when, above all else, he put in hours no one else would work and made sacrifices no one else would make in order to achieve what he wanted to achieve? If there's anything I've learned from studying other successful people and tracking my own progress on my goals, it's that success is a function of how hard you work, not how nice of a person you are.I say this not to discourage anyone from maintaining a pleasant personality, of course, but I have realized from my own mistakes in 2010 that our culture sometimes puts so much emphasis on individual character traits—“Oh, she so funny/smart/good looking/rich/skinny”—that we completely neglect the power of good ol’ fashioned, hard work. Despite what shows like Jersey Shore or Keeping Up with the Kardashians would have us believe about becoming successful, 95% of people will only get to where they’re trying to go if they pull up their sleeves and simply do the work that is required.As you enjoy the freshness of New Year’s Day and contemplate who you’d like to be once this time roles around next year, I implore you to think seriously not just about the goals you want to achieve, but the work you’re willing to do. If there is anything that you have lingering disappointment about—perhaps you didn’t lose the weight you wanted to or you didn’t hit your hair goals as you expected—I can guarantee that a strong work ethic will be the single differentiator between last year's mistakes and this years accomplishments...no matter what your personality is like.