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Recommended: Meaning of success
Jigsaw puzzles. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. The goal is already laid out on a cardboard spread, but one has to be skilled and prepared for the challenge. Puzzles can be tricky and time-consuming as well, taking hours upon hours to finish. And just like puzzles, success can be described in the same way. True achievement can take many years of difficult work and dedication. However, it can also be meager and less rigorous like getting an A on a term paper. Everyone has their successes and achievements. It may be grandiose or it may be miniscule. But no matter what, it took time, dedication, and grit to obtain each accomplishment. One way that one could see success is being rich and well known. In the novel Outliers:
Generally speaking, success isn’t just about what you accomplish in life, it’s how you accomplished it and the impact you
Malcolm Gladwell, in the nonfiction book Outliers, claims that success stems from where you come from, and to find that you must look beyond the individual. Malcolm Gladwell develops and supports his claim by defining an outlier, then providing an example of how Stewart Wolf looked beyond the individual, and finally by giving the purpose of the book Outliers as a whole. Gladwell’s purpose is to explain the extenuating circumstances that allowed one group of people to become outliers in order to inform readers on how to be successful. The author writes in a serious and factual tone for the average person in society of both genders and all ethnicities who wants to become successful in life.
The quests for gold at the end of the rainbow, the hopes of thousands to one day live the fabled American Dream. Worldwide, everyone who is capable looks for their chance to strike it rich. Some of the most successful people today, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs and OK! Magazine’s Richard Desmond, have risen from tough backgrounds (Serafina). Growing up in abject poverty, these individuals found ways to push past the glass ceiling in their respective fields. Interestingly, many of them share similar obstacles on their way to the top.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that there is no such thing as a self-made man, and that success is only the result of a person’s circumstances. However, throughout the novel Gladwell points out that your circumstances and opportunities only help you become successful if you are willing to take advantage of them and work hard. From a twelve year old living in the Bronx, to those who were born at just the right time to become millionaires, one thing is the same throughout; these people because successful because they seized the opportunities they were given. The advantages and opportunities that came from their circumstances would not be important if they had not grasped them. Every successful man is self made, because he has seized the
In “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell organizes his argument for their being a rule for overall success by showing statistics of people who are defined as being successful such as Bill Gates, Billy Joy, and The Beatles. He also uses a Berlin music academy to help prove his rule. He presents an argument that Bill Gates and The Beatles and the violinist attending the music academy may have been born with innate talent but that is not the sole ...
...your own personal idea of success. Gatsby's ideas of successful maybe have become corrupted with greedy but that does not mean it lives on now. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (Fitzgerald, Pg. 189) striving for the real American dream of personal success.
The definition of success varies around the world, but according to Malcolm Gladwell its achievement can be broken down into a few components. Although Gladwell never truly establishes credibility in his book Outliers, he still backs up his proposed theories with reputable studies and sources which intrigue the audience to keep reading.The purpose of Outliers was to enlighten people about the different elements of success while also informing them of real life situations where seemingly less than likely people beat the odds and became the powerful figures that they are today. The intended audience is anyone who is looking to become successful or who is perhaps interested in the idea of success itself and wishes to learn more about it. Understandably, a secondary audience could be high school students who are about to venture out into the world on their own because with this book they will hopefully start paying attention to different factors of their lives and seizing opportunities that they may have otherwise passed up. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 Hour Rule and also how I.Q. does not amount to much without creativity. He also speaks of how chance opportunity comes into play and that the distant background of a person still reflects how they handle situations in their present day life. Gladwell’s Outliers successfully informs the reader about the different components that add up to success with probable theories and credible studies to make for an interesting and motivational read.
Malcolm Gladwell’s overall purpose of Outliers: The Story of Success is that success is largely determined by an individual’s socioeconomic and sociocultural environment, and individual ambition, effort, or talent, are less significant, contrary to the societal notions associated with success. In other words, success is not something that someone randomly gained; success is earned through opportunities that develop dedication, interest, and skill over time. By doing this, will one become an outlier, or “something that is situated away or classed differently from a main or related body,” (Gladwell 3) that distinguishes great from good and best from great, as exemplified by “The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that the and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.” (Gladwell 39) Gladwell also acknowledges societal norms such that “All of the fourteen men and woman on the list above had vision and talent,” (Gladwell 62-63) to assert hard work, ability, et cetera can lead to success, but a social environment that offers such opportunities immensely increases the likelihood of success.
Some people may be born into a family with wealth, and that is acceptable. Some people on the other hand, are not born into a family with wealth, and that is acceptable too. The work that families have done to get to the level they are in, are just a cushion. People should try to build their own reputation or success. Even if people work toward their goals of success, it could take years to reach, it isn’t something that happens over night usually. The way they act or present themselves in certain circumstances will determine if they succeed or fail. As much as people want to control every step toward that, there are things that are out of everyone's control. Every action they do, every decision they make, they can not control everything. There are certain things that can put a halt toward success, things many do not see coming till it happens. Oedipus had no idea that he was the one causing the sickness that was spreading through his kingdom. He was doing well as a king, but certain things can change that. His curse put on him when he was younger, was out of his control. The priest reminds Oedipus of his success depict the sickness surrounding them, “You saved us from Sphinx…”(40). Success may be the one thing you can control, but at the same time have no idea what could come
... description an outlier on all five points. He was a man that came from nothing; his life was full of struggles that could have led him to fail. Even through uncontrollable circumstances seemed to hold him back; they also guided him down the correct path he needed to succeed. Einstein was intelligent enough, he made use of the “Matthew Effect”, the “10,000-hour” rule, “demographic luck”, and he had opportunity (Gladwell 15, 35, 129). Through a review of these effects on a persons success offered by Gladwell it is now easier to understand how a person like Einstein did in fact become such a success.
In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell analyzes numerous success stories in an attempt to understand the circumstances that make certain individuals particularly exceptional. Through his analysis, Gladwell strives to find an explanation for why some people succeed, while others, despite their persistent efforts, do not. He questions the validity of conventional attitudes towards accomplished figures—that these figures simply rise to fame as a result of sheer talent and ambition—and points out that the superficial summaries leave out crucial details. As Gladwell studies the lives of these “outliers,” from piano virtuosos to software moguls, he indicates that their success stemmed from a variety of components, including fortunate
Nearly everyone has the desire to be successful in their lives, whether it be measured in the amount of wealth a man owns or the accomplishments he has made in his life. Therein lies the most common, the success in a man's profession. There are multiple approaches to this connotation of success where a wide range of techniques can be applied. One might think that the only way to reach a particular level of success is to take on a competitive nature and achieve that coveted position of number 1. However, being competitive does not necessarily insure that a person is ‘successful.’ They must be competent in their field to reach the top spot. An example of these two sides can be found within Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman using the characters Willy and Bernard.
Throughout the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, the author, defines what he thinks is success. Gladwell defines success by using small stories of real people, who eventually became successful, such as the Beatles, Bill Gates, and so many more. The author also at the end provided and anecdote of how his mom became successful.
The toxicity of success is portrayed through famous literary works such as The Great Gatsby and The Death of a Salesman, while dealing with an overarching theme of American success. F. Scott Fitzgerald beautifully portrays a wealthy upper class society in The Great Gatsby, which has extreme corruption, hidden by it’s allure, while much of this upper class is pompous and selfish, as well as being so heavily judgemental that is it difficult to be accepted by these people. Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman uses the narcissistic Willy Loman to shine light on the capitalist, middle class America, who’s life revolves around superficial success, which represents the overall flaw in the capitalist system: proclivity; this leads
There are few words that possess a positive connotation to the extent that people will become invigorated and inspired just at the mention of it; Success is one of these words that cause an elaborate collaboration of emotions, which is usually summated by the emotions of elated happiness and paralyzing fear. Along with the emotional reverberation that the mere mention of the word causes, it is also plagued by numerous interpretations. Many times the cerebral vision that society pictures when contemplating success is a prodigious amount of money, with luxury cars and private jets to boot; however, this is a very superficial viewpoint of success, and many of the wealthiest people that inhabit the world are also the least successful. The ways that success can be defined are near infinite, but compiling a large sum of physical possessions is definitely not one of them. Success is the participation in activities and recreation that prompt you to live a life enriched with enjoyment, altruism and a feeling that what you have done and are doing in life is helping to benefit the entirety of society.