WARNING: this post is repetitive..
Malcom Gladwell, the author of Outliers, has the idea that people are successful due to opportunities they are given and whether or not a person takes advantage of these opportunities. Because of this, I believe that Gladwell would disagree with the statement “success is the ‘disease of me.’”
All of Gladwell’s examples of an “outlier” have lots of success in their stories. So in theory, he could say that without success, they would not be an outlier. I think that if he truly believed that success can bring a person down, he would have included a story about someone who had all this success and then they crashed and burned; but he didn’t.
As for my personal opinion, I think that success can SOMETIMES be bad for a person. I guess it just depends on their ego. If it’s someone with the growth mindset, I really don’t think that it would affect them that much. However, if someone with a fixed mindset has success, then I think that it would cause them to just be satisfied and not try as hard on the next time. Most (if not all) outliers have the growth mindset, so success wouldn’t affect them.
Like my last essay, I’ll end with a quote. "The two hardest things to handle in life are failure & success” (it was anonymous). Isn’t that the truth? Like I said earlier, I don’t think success is bad all the time, it depends on the person; which is what I think Gladwell thinks.
Like I said on Toby's success can cause a major ego trip. But you're right, if the person has the right mindset than they will be able to have success and not act like they are better than anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI also think that different people handle success in different ways. Some, like Lindsey said, let success go to their heads. However others, usually people with growth mindsets, use success as motivation to keep trying hard in order learn even more.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you talked about Gladwell not writing about a successful person "crashing and burning." Like you said, that obviously shows that he sees success as a positive thing and would not agree with the quote, "success is the disease of me."