Throughout the life of any man or woman north London, there is an indescribable amount of desire to be successful. Thoughts of Lamborghini’s, Ferraris, or a home on an island too foreign to pronounce contribute to sleepless nights. One’s whole life consists of buying bigger objects and becoming better in hopes of reaching the point where one can say “I am a success”. Success, especially in north London, is not a fixed point rather it is a progression in constructing a lifelong project plagued by an unmatched desire for peer gratification. Success, then, is not the measure of the common three central factors: appearance, status, and career. It is the legacy that is produced by a life well lived that encompasses these factors.
Before one can even speak to another person, judgment has already been passed based on their expensive suit, lustrous watch, and designer shoes. How can one be able to scale another’s level of achievement by the shirt on their back? Whether acknowledged or not, success is initially measured in appearance, one will work tirelessly to obtain the perfect wardrobe and nicest car to put on a display. This stems from the fact that an abundance of material possessions, new or expensive, displays wealth; commonly identified with success. In Laurence Shames’ Sweet Smell of Success, the reader observes as Shames tackles the idea of keeping up appearances:
…record numbers of young people continue to flock to law school…because it is considered a safe ticket…by external standards they will be ‘successes’. They will own homes, eat in better restaurants, dress well, and in some instances perform socially useful work. (Shames)
As Shames expresses, many young men and women seek MBA’s as an escape route to ensure a field where...
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...uccess is a forever unfinished project in the lives of every north Londoner. Through one’s appearance, merit, and career there is a search for gratification amongst one’s peers. However upon deeper inspection, success is seen not to be their modern wardrobe, polished reputation, nor their big office job. For success, it is the totality of all these and more. For success, the journey truly is the destination.
Works Cited
"Ecclesiastes." Biblehub. Biblos.com, n.d. Web. 22 Feb 2014. .
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Shames, Laurence. "Sweet Smell Of Success Isn't All That Sweet." New York Times 12 April 1986, n. pag. Print.
Tzu, Lao. "Lao Tzu." BrainyQuote. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2014. .
Success is the chance to go out there and use the resources available to take advantage of opportunities that most people do not. Usually, things happen in life and it can prevent the process of obtaining success. In the readings, “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara and “Horatio Alger” by Harlon L. Dalton conveys the message that success is not always an everyday thing and it takes opportunities for it to become part of life. In “The Lesson”, an angered girl named Sylvia is taken on a field trip to a toy store with Miss Moore to learn a valuable lesson. The lesson is to become successful in society because it is the only way to make it to the top. On the other hand, “Horatio Alger” shows more of a realistic viewpoint where success is not as easy
... understanding amongst his audience and enhancing his instructive tone. When the speaker meditatively states, "As the Yuppie was to the 80s... maybe Abraham Lincoln could be for the coming decade" he utilizes his academic tone as well as the analogy of Lincoln to the Yuppie, to effectively emphasize the fact that he views Lincoln as paragon of his own definition success, as arising from hard work, which further develops ethos through his allusion to the prominent historical figure that is Abraham Lincoln. By employing both an illustrative allusion as well as a thought provoking analogy as well as his scholastic tone the author is able to make the audience more likely to accept his definition of success as deriving from hard work and sound work ethics due to his development of common ground which results in general understanding of his assertion within his audience.
We all understand what success is, but what allows for a person to become successful? Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book Outliers to study this topic and settle once and for all why some people are more successful than others. Gladwell uses the success stories of people throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to discover just exactly what it is that allows for one to be successful. He explains that there is much more to becoming successful than just natural talent and skill. Gladwell states in Outliers that success is the product of the time we were born, our dedication, and most of all where we come from.
...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.
Flom was a Harvard Law School grad working as a partner at the respected New York firm, Skadden & Arps (116). In this chapter, Gladwell explains that three main factors played a role in Flom’s success – ethnicity, demographic luck, and family work ethic. Flom grew up in Brooklyn during the Depression, and his parents were hard-working immigrants from Eastern Europe (Gladwell 116). Flom learned his work ethic from observing his parents and respecting their determination to provide for their impoverished family. As a Jewish lawyer in New York City in the 1950s, Flom was presented with the perfect opportunity to become successful because the larger, more traditional law firms would often pass the undesirable cases down to the firms they considered mediocre (Gladwell 124). As a result, Flom was able to gain his ten thousand hours of practice and become successful because of this opportunity. Along with the other examples from this chapter, Outliers shows that someone’s background – their culture, generation, and family history – can provide some of the most worthwhile opportunities to become successful
Success. Society tends to correlate “success” with the obtainment of a higher education. But what leads to a higher education? What many are reluctant to admit is that the American dream has fallen. Class division has become nearly impossible to repair. From educations such as Stanford, Harvard, and UCLA to vocational, adult programs, and community, pertaining to one education solely relies on one’s social class. Social class surreptitiously defines your “success”, the hidden curriculum of what your socioeconomic education teaches you to stay with in that social class.
The world in which Lily grows up in is one where money is the standard by which everyone is judged. In a setting like this, “money stands for all kinds of things- its purchasing quality isn’t limited to diamonds and motor cars” (Wharton 66). Therefore, even small things such as the way a person dresses or the places someone frequents become of high importance as they are representative of how much money a person possesses. This materialistic tendency ...
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.
For a long time, the popular myth of success and that of gender have shaped humans’ minds and behaviors in a certain way. They set up a certain behavior model and provide people with an idealized reference for living their lives. However, people put too much emphasis on the bright side of these two widespread but outdated beliefs, and surround themselves in ideal images constructed by the myths. With humans and society marching on, the age-old and deep-rooted myths are not completely suitable anymore. The old fashioned myths have become certain clichés. They sometimes conceal important social realities and convey a false image of what people really think and do. The dissonance between myth and reality sometimes disillusions people and may bring worse outcomes to the society. Wayne Dyer, an internationally renowned author declares, “What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.” Although part of the myths is still valuable and instructive, in order to make them more tenable, people need to be cautious and critical and be aware of their weakness. Success should be defined not only by wealth and reputation, as the current myth states, but also by personal happiness, which can be achieved through the combination of honesty, hard work, opportunities and s...
America is recognized around the world as the land of opportunity and the pathway to success; the idea of being successful in our time however is grossly misguided. A natural assumption or belief that everyone has is that people aspire to be successful; a consensus on what that actually means on the other hand appears to be socially evading. Throughout modern time the characterization of success has become convoluted; no longer is achieving a favorable or desired outcome the customary definition. Its mainstream depiction has been aggressively promoted by the more prominent social class. To become part of this social class is the aspiration of many people. However, its pursuit is negatively affecting many lives physically and financially.
Moreover, this concept of free will and becoming financially self-reliant is still prevalent in modern society. The mid-twentieth (20th) to the early twenty-first (21st) century has become the age of entrepreneurship, where peoples from all nations no longer desire to work “for the man” but create their own legacy of prosperity. Likewise, it is a period in time that has redefined the way in which those from all walks of life can obtain success and wealth. Hence, the evolution of reality TV stars, YouTube sensations and rappers from being ordinary individuals to becoming fashion designers, actors and CEOs. However, our definition of success is not only defined by wealth it also includes having a life of meaning that is similar to that of Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. and Malcolm X. Certainly, I am speaking of a life that encompasses the ability to change our world for the better.
Online MBA. Online Guide to Women in the Workforce: Past and Present. n.d. 15 November 2013 .
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.
Even though the definition of “success” has a very nuanced meaning depending on its culture and context, highly successful people typically exhibit the same universal characteristics. For despite common belief, successful people are not affiliated with some exclusive club and it has to do more with attitude than superior I.Q intelligence. Therefore, many people have the ability to learn about how they can be successful and do better than they are now. Due to having the privilege of interacting with successful people on a daily basis, I gradually coined my own theory of success. In addition, interviewing successful college students for the basis of the EPE course project has managed to further support and strengthen my theory. Yet rather than just being applied to an academic setting like a college or school, theses theories can be slightly modified to be applied in other aspects of life as well. It should be worth emphasizing that exhibiting some of these traits are likely good indicators of being a successful person, however there are a lot more not mentioned. For due to their vast variety, it would be extremely difficult to talk about each of them individually. As a result, I have taken the liberty of grouping them into broader categories and have listed them in no particular order.