Success, Money, And Money : The Idea Of Success

Success is a concept that is constantly altered and has a different meaning from person to person. The stereotypical definition of success would be someone who has a high-paying job or is in the upper-class. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success, approaches the concept of success in a different and unique way. Gladwell discusses how opportunities, cultural legacy, and hard work all coincide with each other to produce real success. He uses mostly logic and multiple unrelated anecdotes to support and provide evidence for his statements. Gladwell's main argument is that although hard work and talent are essential for success, one’s given opportunities and cultural legacy is what really

Today, in America there are many people who struggle to get their dream job and live an American dream but due to the fact that everyone is applying to the exact same job they cannot accomplish the dream they have always dreamt of. This means that there is plenty of competition between people chasing the same dream. In “Money and Success: The Myth of Individual Opportunity” Gary Colombo discusses how many people live in the myth of an American dream. People assume the American Dream will make them happy by having the dream job and being like everyone else. While Colombo talks about how the American dream is a myth of having money and being successful, Diana Kendall discusses in “Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption” how the media doesn’t just portray the different social classes differently, the media glamorizes the one and show the other one unfairly and make it seem like if one is poor it is the end of the world. The Higher social class is considered to be rich and successful, and believed to have everything “handed to them”. The middle class is mostly considered the working class and are those who have a hard time getting what they want, but are still able to do something for themselves and their progress. And then the lower class is portrayed as being in poverty in society and not considered to be well off just because of their education and job status. Yet many Americans work and study their hardest to achieve the American Dream and still are

There are many different understandings of what success is. Some relate success to money, others relate success to happiness, but it all depends on the type of person.

The definition of success differs from person to person. According to the “Poolside” Cadillac commercial, success is having a large house, nice family and a new car. How is that success accomplished? According to the mainstream media, success is achieved through hard work and perseverance. Not by taking extravagant vacations, or working for only a few hours a day. Success for others on the other hand could be having a large amount of free time. The media gives examples of what they think success is, but ultimately it’s up to the person to decide what is success is.

When most people (here in the US or anywhere else in the world) hear or talk about the United States, a common theme is living the “America Dream”. The “American Dream” is the idea that children will have a higher standard of living than their parents and in 1940, 92 percent of them did. But by 1980 that number decreased to 50 percent, in terms of absolute mobility. The term “successful” is a universal term and applies different for every single individual because everyone has different levels of success, some are higher then others and there can be some barriers in the way. There are many stories and evidence that have proven this theme but in the fine details there are many other things that come into play when it comes to becoming “successful”.

To be successful has many interpretations, whether it be your own, from the dictionary or societies’ definition. Within Outliers author Malcolm Gladwell explains that being successful has nothing to do with what kind of person you are, so whether you’re intelligent and hardworking or lazy and aloof, it depends on your circumstances growing up. Whether your parents happen to be immigrants, you’re one of the smartest men in the country or you practice like there’s no tomorrow, your own personal success, according to Gladwell is defined by the conditions you grew up in; the idea of being successful varies from culture to culture and because of that there is no definite meaning of successful other than one’s interpretation.

Success is a funny thing. Some define success as having a lot of money or a high power career. Others define it as how happy a person is within their life. No matter how success is defined, Margaret Mead's view on success applies. "But while we often rejoice in the success of people far removed from ourselves-people who work in another profession, live in another community, or are endowed with a talent that we do not especially want for ourselves-we tend to regard the success of people close at hand, within our own small group, as a threat" (Margaret Mead). Mead traveled the world studying different cultures and would be able to observe this behavior in cultures outside of America. Her statement isn't specific to one culture or another; it

Being successful in life is not always easy, because of different ways that success can be achieved. With many theories out there on success, it is hard to figure out what is needed to be done to gain success. In everyone’s lives there are many different beliefs out there that can lead to it. In the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, there are numerous theories that are covered with examples of successful people. They clearly show how success can be done in not just one way but in many others. The most known people that are considered to be successful are billionaires and celebrities. They all have gained success in their lives in their own diverse ways. A good set of successful people in the world today to talk about are Mark Zuckerberg, Whitney Houston, and Nicholas Sparks. These people all come from different backgrounds before gaining their success. Malcolm Gladwell discussed many theories in the book “Outliers” that can relate to the success of the people mentioned above. The true knowledge behind success can be achieved in numerous ways.

Success is a relative term. To a wealthy CEO, success is making his business one million in sales that day. To a child living on the streets, eating dinner that day is a success. What someone might not see though is that the child can teach the businessman a thing or two about about how to live life: humility. Realising that there is more to life than monetary gains, some people just need to appreciate meeting their basic needs. Furthermore, this easy lesson of humility provides the people living in wealth with a sense of how privileged they are.

Angela Locke is a writer for the feminist news journal off our backs. In this article, Locke is explaining how her life was growing up and becoming an adult while being poor. She also explains how her mother was born poor and smart and how

To begin with, success does not necessarily mean having the best home in a city, or owning the car of the year. Everyone’s view of success can be very divergent. It can all depend on where a person stands, or what their past was like. For example, there can be students who might be the first in their families to attend college and getting a college degree can easily turn into their American Dream, it may even be their parents’ dream as well. In addition, the view of Individual opportunity for an undocumented homeless man may differ from the views of an American with a college degree. Owning a home, having

One article with a story was “Boor Poor and Smart.” The author is Angela Locke, a writer for a journal that fights for feminism, off our backs [sic]. In most of the article, the author tells about how she was born into poverty and how her mother fought to get out of it. Her mother was not successful, but the author believes it is possible to get out of poverty and is very optimistic about her future. After that, the author tells us what her mother did right and what she did wrong. Thus, why she didn’t become successful. A quote from the article is, “Success is not only living by the values that you believe in, but being in some was recognized in the world for those values. Success is not is not only discovering your talents and your interests, but being able to make a living using them”

Most black and latino people have a lot of obstacles to overcome throughout their lifetime. For example, a black woman named Cheryl Mitchell went to public schools in Ocean Hill-Brownsville and attempted to go to college but had to drop out because of financial reasons. She is now a nurse’s aide and making an annual income of $16,850, which puts her over the government’s official poverty line. She also lives in a three-room apartment with poor ventilation and in a high-crime area (Mantsios, 291-292). She has had to go through a couple of struggles to be barely above the poverty line. This makes her just as successful as a white woman. Even though she is not making a lot of money, she has a job and is able to take care of her child and her elderly mother. Not to mention she is working and taking care of her family members all on

When people talked about the leaders of some famous companies, they firmly believed that these leaders leadership talent is born. In the book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”, Carol S. Dweck discussed the fix mindset and growth mindset how to affect themes such as sports, business, relationships, and parents. Leaders with fixed mindset feel that they are superman or a genius, consider that employee who has more ability be more useful than the person who work hard and want to grow. Also, they also believe their company will not be defeated and replace. On the other side, leaders with a growth mindset preferred many people can become an excellent leader by hard-working and learn how to select people: for their mindset, not their pedigrees. Although both mindsets can make a leader successful, the growth mindset person gained more success in business, since they have true self-confidence and think they are not excellent but try their best to learn, credit and nurture. They also know how to use feedback to strengthen their leadership and arrange the company 's employees appropriately. In the teamwork, they will work to solve the problem with staff quickly. They notice their improvement in their employees on the management side and also believe themselves can be educated in negotiation abilities.

At first glance, all of the articles that came up were definitions and quotes. Digging deeper, I found an article called, "What Drives Success," on the New York Times website. The article was written by Amy Chua and Jeb Rubenfeld on January 25, 2014. The article was about the different races and their levels of success. It eluded to the theory that children of immigrants are often some of the most successful people because they feel like need to validate their parents sacrifices. On the other end of the spectrum, white American parents are more concerned with building their children's self esteem and social skills. More emphasis is places on trying their best rather than succeeding. According to the article, the three traits that successful people often possess are a sense of superiority, impulse control, or a sense or inferiority. The google article I found was called, "Why Failure is Good for Success." I found it on the success magazine website. It was written by Paula Estrem August 25, 2016. The article was about how most people try to avoid failure at all cost, but if we don't fail once or twice we will never truly aim for success. Some employers today are embracing failure and specifically hiring people with records that reflect both success and failure. Coming back from failure shows perseverance and dedication. This second article I found related to the first one because they both talk about how people with a chip on their shoulder tend to be more