Outliers - Book Review and Excerpts

Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell wrote his third book ‘Outliers: The story of success’ after extensive research and many interviews of extraordinary successful persons. An Outlier is a person who has achieved something statistically extraordinary. 

‘Outliers’ is a light read and informative book. It makes a point that no one in this world can succeed alone. Everyone needs factors and support of people going in their direction. This book is a good read if you are looking for some answers to the question of success.

The main ideas expressed in the books are:

·       “Self-made” success is a myth. The myth of the “self-made man” is the belief that the successful person has earned his/her success through talent and hard work. This belief lacks foundation. Many unseen factors influence a person’s success, and most of them lie beyond that person’s control.

·       Innate qualities are important but once you reach a certain threshold, increased abilities no longer help you succeed.

Skills and traits are necessary foundations for achievement in a field e.g. you can’t become a leading legal expert if you have no logical reasoning skills. However, once you’ve reached the skills threshold, marginal increases in innate reasoning abilities won’t advance you. Other things – social skills, connections, or even a lucky break – will.

• ·       Hard work is an important factor in the success. The author talks about the "10-000 hour rule", where he claims that to be successful and excellent at any skill, you need a practice of 10-000 hours. 

Not everyone has the opportunity to spend this much time practicing something. First of all, you need the opportunity to start early so you can get in as much practice as possible and secure a head start on the competition.

Also, you or your family has to have the resources to support you; it’s hard to find time for work or chores when you’re spending 40 - 60 hours a week practicing something.

Depending on what you want to do, you might also need access to expensive state-of-the-art equipment.

• ·       Encouragement from family, friends, coaches, teachers and kind strangers you meet on the street helps too.

• ·       The month you’re born in can have a huge effect on what you achieve. Your “relative age” – how old you are in comparison to others in a developmental group – can make or break you.

• ·       How you’re brought up can radically impact how successful you become.

• ·       A far more important factor is whether you have practical intelligence.

Practical intelligence is “procedural” knowledge: knowing how to interpret and work social situations to get what you want – in other words, knowing who to ask what, and when. The ability to interact with and negotiate with authority figures can help inch people closer to their goals.

Wealthier parents instill in their children a feeling of “entitlement” more often than lower-class parents do. In general, they do this by paying more attention to their children, or by at least providing their children with enriching activities that promote intellectual growth.

They teach their children to demand respect and to “customize” a situation to suit to their needs. In other words, they teach their kids practical intelligence.

By contrast, poorer parents are often intimidated by authority and let their children follow a pattern of “natural growth” – there’s less pushing, prodding and encouraging than in wealthier families. This means children from poorer households are less likely to be taught practical intelligence, which radically decreases their chances for success.

• ·       Being in the right place at the right time matters. Many successful software tycoon were born in the years between 1954 and 1956.

• ·       Where you come from – geographically and culturally – can have a particularly large effect on what you achieve.

In Western countries students give up on math problems far sooner than students in Eastern countries do. Asians are generally good at math and it’s part of their cultural legacy. If we recognize the importance of cultural legacy, we can help more people work towards success – and prevent failure.

·        

• If we recognize the reasons behind uneven playing fields, we can create more opportunities for people to succeed.

In schools instead of sitting back and allowing the children of wealthier parents have access to more opportunities, we can create special programs open to students from the extremely low-income area.

Extraordinary success is the result of an often-unlikely series of opportunities, lucky breaks and occurrences that combine to create the precise conditions that allow such achievement.

About the author

A Journalist in New York times, Malcolm Gladwell found success and fame with three best-selling and widely acclaimed books in his achievements. He is known for his honest and direct style of writing. Two of his other books are ‘The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference’ and ‘Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking’ etc. This book was published by Little, Brown and company.

You can purchase this wonderful book here

Body Intelligence

Body Intelligence

Orison Swett Marden 

The author of that marvelously interesting book, "Cell Intelligence" says: "The cell is a conscious intelligent being, and by reason thereof plans and builds all plants and animals in the same manner as man constructs houses, railroads, and other structures."

Scientists now believe that the cells which constitute the various organs of the body,—the brain, the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, etc.,—have what is called "organ intelligence," and that these cells are susceptible to mental suggestion for the health or disease of their particular organ.

If, for instance, there should be a disease tendency lurking in any part of your body; if your digestive organs, your heart, your kidneys, your liver, or some other organ, should not be functioning normally, by sending encouraging, energizing, uplifting thoughts, the suggestion of health and wholeness, to the community cells, and by living rightly, you can neutralize the disease tendency and bring the organ back to normalcy.

The real basis of all forms of mental healing is the fact that the cells of the body are all alive and intelligent; that they respond to our thought, to our intelligence, to our suggestions to them. 

It makes a great difference to the mental healer to know that instead of sending his thought into a mass of dead cells, every one is not only alive, but is just as responsive to his mental attitude as an intelligent child would be.

Your discouraged, pessimistic thoughts have robbed you of energy and pep; demagnetized you for the very things you are trying to attract,—health and prosperity.

Mental healers simply changed the trend of the patient's mind, turned his thought from abnormal, diseased conditions to healthful, wholesome conditions.

The important thing is to keep out of the mind all enemy thoughts. The moment any of these gain entrance, and are permitted to remain, they begin to tear down and destroy. 

They play havoc with your efficiency, with your health and happiness. If anything occurs during the day to disturb your poise or your self-control, if you feel angry impulses rising within you, recollect yourself as quickly as possible and get control again, for nothing is more hurtful to the whole man or woman than mental inharmony of any nature.

Never allow yourself to think weakness, poverty or poverty-stricken conditions into them or want or limitation of any kind. You are God's child; think accordingly. 

Think in keeping with your immortal inheritance. Think big, because you are big. Think generously, because you are made to express generosity. You are not made for a tiny economy, but for largeness of living; you were made for the life abundant, not for the pinched, stunted, starved life.

Thinking health, thinking happiness, thinking truth, thinking power and perfection, prosperity, success, into the little cell minds of the body will, in the future, be a very important part of every child's training.

Right thinking, making the cells work in the right way, of construction instead of destruction, will banish from the earth two of the greatest handicaps of the race—disease and poverty.

Good Cheer & Prosperity

Good Cheer & Prosperity

Orison Swett Marden 

Good cheer is one of man's greatest benefactors. It has helped him from giving up to despair even when starvation has stared him in the face and all mankind seemed against him.

When a man chooses good cheer for his companion he never talks of hard times or carries a picture of poverty or want in his mind.

Have you never noticed that, as a rule, it is the cheerful, hopeful, optimistic people who succeed, and that it is the sour, morose, gloomy natures who fail or plod along in mediocrity, who never amount to anything?

More cheerfulness will help you all along the line of success. It will help you to bear your burdens; it will help you to overcome obstacles; it will increase your courage, strengthen your initiative, make you more effective, more popular, more helpful.

It will make you a happier, more successful man or woman; it will transform and beautify the humblest and homeliest surroundings.

Cheerfulness means poise, serenity, a sane, wholesome, well-balanced outlook on life. The cheerful man knows that there is much misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life.

He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright side of things has a great advantage over the chronic dyspeptic who sees no good in anything. Shakespeare says: "A merry heart goes all the day, a sad heart tires in a mile".

If we are cheerful and contented all nature smiles with us; the air is balmier, the sky clearer, the earth has a brighter green, the trees have a richer foliage, the flowers are more fragrant, the birds sing more sweetly, and the sun, moon and stars are more beautiful.

Money itself has very little to do with happiness. Some of the most wretched men and women I have ever known anything about have been very rich. They could have everything that money could buy, but their money didn't bring them happiness; it didn't bring contentment or harmony into their homes.

Epictetus, the pagan philosopher, proved in his life the truth of his own words — "A man can be happy without wealth, without family, without office or honor, without health, without anything that the world seeks after."

Rich people are no happier than poor people. With them it is largely a question of shifting anxiety and worry to other things.

The man who smiles and sees the best in everything and everybody is the man who draws the best out of others. He attracts others and wins out in life, while the gloomy, sour face repels everyone.

Cheerfulness is a medicine. It promotes health. The habit of cheerfulness lubricates the human machine and it greatly increases and sharpens every one of the mental faculties. It improves every function of the body.

Cheerfulness keeps one young; it is one of the secrets of eternal youth.

One who admits to himself and others that he is sick is indeed sick; but one who declines to make such admission, and cheerfully goes on as if he were well, conquers many an ailment, which if he had succumbed to it, might have proved serious.