Reevaluating Success
Success can mean many things. You can be successful in your career, studies, family, financially, or emotionally. Each one requires dedication, focus, commitment, and patience. The book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell has made me reevaluate the way I think about how to become successful and what it means to be successful. For my sister, it is how she was able to overcome her cultural legacy, and find herself a path where she was able to put in the effort to build a career, and also how she would meet her husband and start a family.
Luana is an accomplished yoga and acro-yoga teacher. She is also into reiki, a healing technique, and meditation groups, acupuncture. She was driven by the wish to improve people's quality of life, using techniques that can provide them the opportunity to be active, healthier, and recognize the pure happiness and love inside themselves. Looking back at how her career path developed, and a**ociating it with the concepts in the book, I can identify factors that lead her to success, “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Bill Gates turned out to be a brilliant computer programmer, because luckily he was sent to Lakeside High School where he had access to a time-sharing terminal, he was living a walking distance of the University of Washington, that had computer time during three and six in the morning. These events gave him incredible opportunities to develop at a young age, and a huge amount of knowledge in programming, which eventually proved to be very useful and important for the future of technology. These opportunities match how my sister got into acro-yoga.
When she moved to Los Angeles, she was living within walking distance from Venice beach where she found a group of people who uses to practice acro-yoga every Sunday. After trying it, she was interested to know more. A few months later, there was an opportunity to take a yoga teacher training cla**. She had enough money and time, so she decided to take it. She practiced every day for over a year, and that gave her the experience she needed. When she moved back to Brazil she was proficient at it. She wanted to practice it, but cla**es were expensive. Since she had her degree and training, she decided to open a small cla** with accessible an price or the option to exchange service as a payment. It went better than expected.
The reason for that I found in “The Three Lessons from Joe Flom”, in chapter five. The second lesson, demographic luck, (Gladwell 129), tells the story of how Ted Friedman was able to get a good education and good jobs to help him to pay for school. He was a child of Jewish immigrants, growing up poor, and did not have big expectations about future, but, luckily, he grew up in a time in America, that, according to Gladwell “It was possible to take responsibility of yourself and put yourself through school if you were willing to work hard” (Gladwell 137). When my sister moved back to Brazil, people in the big cities had started to look for something to relieve the stressful routine and improve their quality of life. Yoga was something new, and people were finding out that helps to improve the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of your life. It enhances concentration, and this helps to ease mind from worries and relieve stress which leads to a more peaceful life. All these things my sister was able to offer to people during her yoga and acro-yoga practice, making her job meaningful. During her cla**es, she focused on pa**ing her knowledge to other people with love and dedication by speaking in a level that creates union between her, the teacher and her students. Yoga is challenging, it takes a lot concentration and persistence. When she was also a student, she understood how it is easy to create a gap between teacher and students.
The “mitigated speech” (Gladwell 194), is a common issue between those of high authority, and commoners. Chapter seven “The Ethnic Theory of Planes Crashed”. The story of some pilots who were incapable of expressing their real urgency and necessities, because of a fear of their authorities. This fear is caused by the cultural legacy that believes that “subordinates must respect the dictates of their superiors” (Gladwell 208). This creates a dangerous cultural gap that can result in tragedies. In my sister's case, it would result in student's failure and, consequently, in her own failure as a teacher. She worked carefully on the ability to communicate at a level that expressed clearly for those who were listening. An open and clear communication that allowed to create connections with her students was also something that lead her to success.
I found Gladwell's concepts useful to explain facts that lead my sister's life to a successful career. She was luckily living in Los Angeles and had the opportunity of being taught for one of the best teacher in America. The demographic luck was an important part of her success as a yoga and acro-yoga teacher in Brazil. People were searching for a new lifestyle and something that would relieve them from stress. My sister had just moved back from USA offering yoga cla**es, which could give them the feeling that they were looking for. She had the financial support to travel and learn from one of the best acro-yoga training program in America. She had developed the ability to communicate with her students in a level that built respect, influence, and truth. Her job is meaningful, she has been working on her own spiritual evolution, self knowledge, autonomy, and keeping a positive mind. She find joy in transmitting her knowledge to others, and in this way, helping people to get better. Yoga is her pa**ion and reason to keeping working on herself and helping the other with her experiences. Many factors led my sister's career to success. She worked really hard inside of her and outside to get where she is. She had to stand for her dreams, and speak up for her beliefs. She overcame fear, self judgments and challenges. She hold on her beliefs, daring to create something new. The greatest opportunities and the fact that she had the gut to take it, led her life to a successful path.