After having completed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I know have an entirely different look on success, and why some are more successful than others. Gladwell’s argument of the importance that the world around us has in our level of success is nearly impossible to refute given the evidence that he displays, often using the stories of real successful people from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, to The Beatles. Gladwell argues that the environment in which we are born into or otherwise find ourselves in will lend us advantages, or disadvantages. Many of these are often undeserved, and have nothing to do with whether or not we’ve earned these at all, but rather just a mere function of chance. While we ourselves as individuals do have an obvious role in determining our own success, such as how much we practice, the time we devote to doing something well, and the level of sincerity to which we attempt to achieve our goals (just to name a few), the factors that our environment have towards our success are often just as important, if not more so, to note and take into consideration.
Going forward, I’ll be sure to remember that others will have “unfair” advantages that, for whatever reason, I may not, and that I myself will also have many “unfair” advantages that others will not. While there may be nothing one can do to alter some of these circumstances, we must understand that we do have some control over other circumstances and must do whatever we can to ensure that what we can control, we do. Overall, I greatly enjoyed Outliers and have learned a lot from it. I highly recommend it and will certainly look into the other works that Gladwell has written.
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