Continuing from Part 1 on Encouraging Lessons from the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, here are more lessons I found helpful and uplifting.
(As an aside: What does this have to do with culture? This book is very much about what makes up our society and what makes people successful in our society.)
3) Differences in success depend not on innate difference, but in how we act and are trained to act
Large sections of Outliers describe the differences that class has in the future success of children. While some see this as a disturbing sign that we need to change things, and I’m not saying we don’t, I see potential in this insight.
There is a certain way of acting that is accessible to everyone which brings about success.
Such ways involve: Learning to work in teams, learning to thrive in structured settings, speaking comfortably with adults, speaking up when the need arises.
The children have a sense of entitlement.
Gladwell readily admits that this word has a bad connotation, but what he and researcher Annie Lareau mean is that the children understand how the world works: they are comfortable with adults (and authority) and are willing to ask for favours, willing to customize their environment to their liking.
Lesson: We can all gain this sense of entitlement. Subtle rules exist in our society, and within them we can get a lot more from this world if we simply ask.
4) Growing up with a hard-knock life can be liberating
OK, this tip does have some qualifiers associated with it. If you grew up in a poorer environment, but your parents were doing meaningful work, i.e. their increased efforts paid off with increased success, you will have learned a valuable lesson.
More work will result in more success, eventually.
This lesson, however, is hard to learn if you and/or your parents have been in a pattern of very low-level work where no other work experience can be gained, and there is no opportunity to learn more or move up within a company.
As a Canadian citizen, but a child of (Korean) immigrants, I always notice this archetype all around me. I hope that what we have learned in our come-uppin’s is not that life is hard and that whitey will always hold us down, but instead that hard work does come with its rewards. Although things might have been easier if we were a different, class, gender or race and more, it is not fruitful to think like this because you are where you are and can raise yourself from where you are right now.
Lesson: Engaging in or watching meaningful (and hard) work makes it more likely to be successful in the future.
[tags]outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, lessons, encouraging, literature[/tags]
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