begin with two beliefs–”that the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.”
The above is taken from a recent post on Malcolm Gladwell’s blog from writer David Brooke’s New York Times column on Gladwell’s third book, “Outliers.”
The Foundation
The foundation for success rests on a belief that the future must be superior to the past and that you have the ability as an individual to make it manifest. The Future is Bright (TFiB) Manifesto speaks to the point that Generation Y has the greatest opportunity (more than any other previous generation) to epitmoize ’success.’
Nature v. Nurture
Talent has been described as intangible force as well as merely consistent excellence. These two sides both tackle the issue of nature v. nurture. Talent as an intangible force is closely related to the genes that we inherit from our family as supposed to talent as consisent excellence which would share a similarity with how we are raised and the environment we encounter. Thus the reason nature has become challenged by Gladwell where in his book “Outliers” he examines how social forces trump the individual prowess of a person.
Obama
Barack Obama ties into this discussion of success since if Gladwell is correct, then much of US policy must have been off-track for decades. Brooke’s is an advocate of self-initiating individuals that take their destiny into their hands without allowing social environments to be a determining factor of success. With Obama in office many policy makers may begin to reject policies built on the ospus that people are rational individuals that utilize their full potential regardless of surrounding hardships. The good that will come out of this new paradigm is an onset of ‘policies that foster relationships, social bonds and cultures of achievement.’ Individuals that attend great instituions of learning benfit from a structure that promotes excellence and fostering of the ‘strengths’ of an individual. It is the social forces and parenting that give each child an opportunity to succeed in the US. However, the argument of Gladwell becomes troublesome for those that have studied intention-mainfestation or learned the ability to alter their reality through thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Maxium Achievement
Personal development professional Brian Tracy and persons like him have become wildly successful and famous for helping individuals tap into their stored human potential. Tracy teaches his students to achieve their goals by changing their attitudes and approach to dealing with life’s issues. Fundamentally it comes down to changing the feelings that an individual has toward something they want to achieve. For example, if you want to be a writer of Gladwell’s calibur you will need to have a burning desire then a belief that you will reach this goal. This dependency on one’s inner abilities would not be enough for Gladwell to attribute to success but merely a (lesser) factor in the success equation.
Pulling it Together
Synthesizing arguments from Gladwell and Brooke’s leads to my own conclusion that our environment is shaped by the nurturing of our parents while in addition our nature must change according to the advantages that we receive as a result of our early achievements and the confidence that we receive from those in our environment that see something ‘special.’ However this concept of special is solely a subjective take on characteristics that a person may contribute to an individual that they take a liking to. This explains why (many times) children from higher socio-economic backgrounds are given violins as supposed to why children from lower socio-economic backgrounds are given basketballs. Thus next time you get ready to instill a random thought into an impressionable young person’s mind, think about what you are telling yourself with regard to how you feel about that young person’s future.
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