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Created: 16 June 2016

Retreat NSW

Spiritual Retreat Centre

An outlier is defined as Something that lies outside the main body or group that it is a part of, such as a distant island belonging to a cluster of islands. The term was popularised recently when Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book on the subject of what leads to success. In researching successful people he found that “the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work.”

Gladwell argued that all successful people experienced various strokes of luck. Carl Jung and others would prefer replacing the word luck with synchronicity, the idea that when you go after something in life; the universe tends to meet you half way. Gladwell also spoke of timing. Bill Gates was a young man when the first do-it-yourself computer kit arose. Were he a little older, it is likely he would have been too settled in his life to take a leap of faith and launch Microsoft. Shakespeare argued that each of us encounters a particular threshold moment in life, where we must choose to boldly take a risk or remain safe. He maintained that the decision shapes the course of our life: