Success As The Disease

With a subtitle of "The Story of Success", Gladwell's Outliers would seem to be pushing the idea that success is the key to everything good in life. Someone who would write a book with a title like that, would not agree with the statement "Success is the 'disease of me'", so Malcolm Gladwell would not agree with this statement.

Gladwell does not believe success could be a bad thing for an individual. He believes that success is what everyone should reach for in their lives. He also believes success depends on where a person is from and what opportunities that person has. He seems to paint a picture of success being wealth and prestige, and does not realize that the meaning of success means different things to other people. Gladwell would agree with a statement claiming that failure is the disease, however.          

The idea that failure is the disease is supported by Gladwell’s example of Chris Langan’s attempt to go to college. Langan did not graduate from college because he lost his scholarship due to his mother’s neglect to fill out the correct forms to renew the scholarship. His failure to correctly fix the problem to speak to faculty that could help him resulted in him dropping out of college. Gladwell sees Langan’s avoidance of authority as something as a failure. Langan lives now with his wife and formed his own organization called the “Mega Foundation” that allows gifted people to develop their ideas. This seems perfectly successful to any other person; Langan is happy and living his life to help others. Gladwell, however does not mention Christopher Langan’s organization. He just states that his story of dropping out of college is “heartbreaking”.

I agree that success is the ‘disease’ to a certain point. If a person relies on just success of the past and not work forward to the future, having a fixed mindset, then that person will not get very far in life. Gladwell’s view of failure being the disease is also agreeable. If one fails and only focuses on the possibility of failing again, then he will not be able to succeed in the future, due to fear. However, you do learn from your failures. Look at Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, and Walt Disney. All three men failed in their journeys to greatness, but had growth mindsets, so they were able to not be defined by failure alone and continued to work hard to succeed.