Success In Chapter One Of David And Goliath

Aaron Vang
10/19/16
English 098
Position Essay Being successful doesn’t always mean going to school and getting a degree. People can be successful in their own ways, they just have to find their passion. Everyone defines success differently. To some, it may be earning a lot of money and to others, it's spending everyday with their loved ones living happily. A lot of people misunderstand what leads to success. Success is more than just being able to fill your bank account with loads of money, it’s about being satisfied with the lifestyle that you have. Of course having money makes you happy, but it can’t buy happiness, love, respect, or even trust. Everyone is born with their own unique talents and is better at a specific skill compared to
others, but they can still learn and practice other skills. Just because someone is better than you at something, that doesn’t mean you should put yourself down and quit. Everyone learns differently and learns at a different pace, you just need to find your best way of learning. Doing what you do best, and motivation will lead to success because it helps you be the best person you can be. Doing the best you can and working hard to reach a goal is a factor in success.
In Chapter One of David and Goliath, Gladwell tells how Vivek Ranadive and his daughter’s Junior High basketball team came out victorious against various teams. Even though his twelve-year old Anjali had never played basketball before, she tried her best to learn and worked hard to improve. Many of the other teams that the Redwood City, Ranadive’s team, had to face were more experienced with playing basketball, so Ranadive had to use an effective training method to allow the girls to do their best. To have the girls do the best they can do against a more experienced team, Ranadive trained his girls by “following a soccer strategy in practice,” by making them “run and run and run,” so they can be “more fit than the others” (29). By training them hard, it allowed them to do the best they could do because practice has adapt their body to more pressure and strength. Practicing a skill over and over can enhance the mind and body and will eventually
succeed. Similarly, in the class reading, Malcolm X, A Homemade Education, Malcolm X tells readers how he succeeded because of his motivation to read and write.
His motivation started when he met a man named Bimbi. Bimbi was far more educated than he was, which lead him into feeling jealous and determined. Because Malcolm X was in Prison, he was limited in learning how to read and write. He can only look at available books from the prison library. He read what he could and skipped the worlds he didn't know, which he found was was very frustrating. When he finally got a hold of a dictionary, he began to study and memorize the whole dictionary by copying down words everyday. Soon enough, he realized that he can remember each word’s meaning. With his newly gained understanding of these words, he began to read from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and became extremely interested in black history and slavery. To him, succeeding is to learn how to read and write literature. He became really successful by motivating himself to keep on reading and studying the dictionary. He took advantage of his resources and used his time in prison wisely. However, he had a lot of time in prison so he learned at his own
pace. Success does not come overnight, it requires time. To achieve any goal, you need effort and time. It’s not all about just working hard, but working both harder and smarter. People have their different personalities, skill sets, and life experiences. Everyone is different, therefore, everyone defines success differently. You might find that someone else’s weakness is your strength. It's possible you might start with a job that you're not passionate about only to find out what your true passions are. It's possible that you might end up in a career that you never planned to be in because your decisions and definition of success may have changed overtime. You just have to find and create your own path to success with what you do best and motivation.