What is Success? There are many situations in life where we have to learn from mistakes. Sometimes we make the mistakes, but also sometimes other people make the mistakes. My friend Willy, makes many mistakes that we can learn from. He does not listen well, he compares his life to others, and he is not realistic with his goals. Willy’s biggest mistake is that he is too prideful and it prevents him from taking a job which would help him support his family. All of Willy’s mistakes stem from his distorted idea that we have to be well-known in order to be successful. It is important that we come up with a realistic idea of success and do not fall prey to ideas such as Willy’s.…
It is possible to be born into a successful family, but it is not possible to be born successful. The responsibility of being successful falls greatly upon me as an individual. While others can give an opinion, theory, or share their beliefs it is ultimately up to me to make my own decisions. At most I can adopt someone’s beliefs, I can imitate their actions, or even mimic their behaviors, but no one else is responsible for what happens in my life. It is up to me to put forth the hard work and dedication to reach the level of success that I desire. It is my personal responsibility to choose the path for my life and I choose success.…
Interaction Between Personality and Environment A theory that an individual’s behavior is most likely based on factors such as personal convictions, personality, or inherited genes is a common belief in nowadays’ society. This theory seems like reasonable and logical because it is quite natural that a person’s behavior follows his or her characters. Malcolm Gladwell, however, in his essay, “The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime,” examines those factors affecting peoples’ behaviors and comes up with his own theory. Gladwell believes that the environmental conditions have the most significant influence on how one behaves. Throughout his essay, he presents a few different studies to help persuade the readers and to substantiate his argument. However, those cases and Gladwell’s theory are quite radical because they are only implied to certain situations, not to all circumstances and criminal cases. Even though environmental conditions have a more substantial impact on people’s behaviors, it is the interaction between personality and environment that actually determines the criminal actions.…
Jingwen(jeanie) Feng Professor Heard English 92/93 05/05/2014 What Outliers Show us about Success Many people believe that success has a direct correlation to one’s intelligence, ambition, and personality traits, but in fact, those are not what someone successful. As described by Malcolm Gladwell in the book Outliers, the successful become that way as a result of many factors that come their way. Gladwell shows that surrounds the successful are their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experience of their upbringing. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of success is correct because success not only need to intelligence and hard-working, and also social environment and opportunity as same as important.…
Success is an integral part of a good life. Everybody wants to be successful and everybody has the potential to be such. The familial environment that I grew up in and the habits that were instilled in me set me on a successful path. I consider myself to come from a successful family. My father was an esteemed judge in Iraq (I say was because he is no longer alive; he was killed after the break out of the war in Iraq in 2003). My mother graduated college with an engineering degree and taught electrical engineering at several high schools in Baghdad. Growing up between them, it was never ok to be lazy or careless and being successful was the optimum way of life. I was always encouraged to do well in school and give my best effort in everything.…
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that attacks the most common notions to why people are successful. Gladwell presents the idea of an “outlier”, one who does not fit into the normal understanding of achievement, and gives various examples of these outliers. He questions the notion that success is based soley off of hard work and pure talent and in turn presents the idea that a majority of success is based on external factors out of our control. Gladwell argues that those who are the most successful in their lives are the result of the various opportunities, timing, and culture. He also argues that success is also the result of practice is which he explains his 10,000 hour rule.…
In “The Sweet of Success Isn’t All That Sweet,” writer Laurence Shames emphasizes that people should accept failure as a having positive instead of purely negative attributes [is this really his point? Simplifying it thus changes his meaning]. Shames’s purpose is to clarify the true meaning of success and what people can learn from the process of becoming a successful person, rather than what it looks like when a person ends up with what society may label success. Shames adopts an ironic tone and uses an organic arrangement to define what the true meaning of success is [his statements are intended to apply to all of Western or at least North American society, not just his readers].…
Next is a poem titled Successful Failure by Robert William Service. In the beginning Robert says ”I wonder if successful men are always happy?” When I was reading this poem I thought just because you have everything does not necessarily make you happy. The most successful people may have great wealth and nice belongings, but Robert makes a point in saying success can also be a failure. In the simple thought that maybe not being successful in everything is also a good thing. “Let cottage comfort be my lot with well-worn britches” (William) success is…
Success isn’t always amounted by how much fame or wealth you have but having a healthy family. One example who illustrates success are graduating students because they have been aiming to graduate from school for 12 years. On a June morning, the graduates can finally say they have successfully completed high school together as friends of the class of 2016. For the high school graduates, success means that they have received their diploma, but with this the greater accomplishment of making long-lasting high school friendships. Success can also be witnessed in the father of a suburban family household because his success in life may be coming home to a loving wife and two children.…
Who I Want to be When I am Older Every human historically and presently, thrives for the same thing, success. Some seek it through monetary values, while others perceive success as the amount of power one possesses. Ralph Waldo Emerson however, offered a new perspective of the meaning of success. He claimed, “To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children… to leave the world a better place, to know one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded”. Emerson’s words of inspiration have got me thinking. Perhaps life’s luxuries are not based on what we own, yet who we are as a person. All the wealth in the world could not buy the respect of others, nor true happiness, and certainly not the courage to change society. I believe Emerson has brought a greater meaning to the concept of success, and with striking compassion, attitude, and demeanor, I aim to achieve Emerson’s definition of success.…
Success comes to those who will and dare is a phrase which indicates that we can change our life independently. A great author said, “A man is not retired as long as he is seeking”. Self-confidence, dedication, determination, will power, patience and discipline are the ingredients of success.…
Success and Disaster Success is considered to be a positive accomplishment. However, success can often lead to personal failure. The more successful some people are, the closer they lead themselves to disaster because he or she is human, and all humans make mistakes even if they are tiny or large. Success can lead to misery and isolation by taking away some things people love in life. Successful people's decision making and judgment can also be clouded by their success. In all, success is a positive characteristic, but success can also lead to personal disaster.…
The Thinkers 50: Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell is the writer of books and for New Yorker Magazine. His books are generally categorized under the category of “Self-improvement”. However, in my opinion, he is not one of that self-improvement trashes. You can see that he does really research for his books. Just take a look into his “cites”. Even this made him different them from those I called trash. He is not putting an exact way on you, he does not tell you what to do, as if you are beginning to use a new software on your computer. He just narrates the stories and researches the reasons behind them, then convey you those as they are. And so readers can take parts of his writings which work for themselves.…
Malcolm Gladwell’s arguments center around an idea he calls “thin-slicing.” Thin-slicing is the concept that our unconscious can take lightning-quick bits of experiences and use preconceived notions about behaviors and situations to interpret them. Our unconscious thin-slices the world around us on a constantly– every person we meet or even already know we thin-slice. In times of panic, our brains rely on those split-second decisions based on what we have unconsciously observed. The reactions that we have from thin-slicing are sometimes called one’s basic instincts: the inkling inside of you that you may or may not understand. This is where Gladwell gets into the idea that even when your unconscious brings these thin-slices to your conscious attention, you probably still won’t know why you feel the way you do about things. The little connections that your unconscious brain makes are behind a set of locked doors. It’s a bit off-putting to know that your brain is doing things completely unaware of what in this class we would call one’s I-function.…
A person may say that he is successful even he don’t have everything that a typical person yearn to acquire, as long as he is happy with his achievements in life. Moreover, the success of a person must not be enjoyed alone, but it must be shared with everyone around him. Ultimately, if he came to a point that he already attained what he aimed, he must not forget to recognize the guidance and support of God as well as of those who were the reason what and where he is…