How Our Choices Determine Our Succes: The Outliers and into The Wild

Choices and success is a cycle; an interconnected cycle. It is the most important united cycle of all time. Without choices, there would be no success in this world. There would be no Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, or anybody who has demonstrated what this society would consider a success. They are successful because they made the choice to become an entrepreneur. Average citizens also have control over their level of success. They make day to day choice which facilitates their next action. The sum of their choices may determine the level of affluence and triumphant. In spite of a human's erroneous tendency to dodge blame, it is inevitable to proclaim "I could not help it". Individuals have control over their outcomes, their future, their destiny, their life.

In Jon Krakauer’s biography Into The Wild, Chris McCandelss is introduced. Chris McCandelss was an interesting guy, however he made fatal choices on his life. A scholar, enrolled at Emory University, with a distinguished taste in majors (history and anthropology) with a 3. 72 GPA. He had come from a family of prosperity. It would be expected for him to make a great deal of income from a prestigious job, but that was not the case. He decided that he would run off into the uncivilized, uncolonized world. It shall be known that Chris died in Alaska alone, in an abandoned bus. However, it was not Alaska’s fault for his demise, nor was it any other human’s fault. Chris was his own downfall. Krakauer complies some evidence to what led Chris astray. In chapter four Krakauer states “Detrital Wash extends for some fifty miles from Lake Mead into the mountains north of Kingman; it drains a big chunk of country. Most of the year the wash is as dry as chalk. During the summer months, however, superheated air rises from the scorched earth like bubbles from the bottom of a boiling kettle, rushing heavenward in turbulent convection currents. Frequently the updrafts create cells of muscular, anvil-headed cumulonimbus clouds that can rise thirty thousand feet or more above the Mojave. Two days after McCandless set up camp beside Lake Mead, an unusually robust wall of thunderheads reared up in the afternoon sky, and it began to rain, very hard, over much of the Detrital Valley. ” If Chris would have done research in the area that he desired to find a thrill and freedom, he would have known that at certain times of the year, it is known to have harsh conditions that will lead to an unfortunate experience. His choice of not studying the climate of Mojave controlled his outcome.

Also, on page 5 Krakauer writes “Still, Galien was concerned. Alex admitted the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior, which in April still lay buried under the winter snowpack. Alex’s cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof or well insulated. His rifle was only. 22 caliber, a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animal like moose and caribou, which he would have to eat if he hoped to remain very long in the country. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass”. Chris had control over his life. He made the decision to venture into Alaska to achieve his independence. He knew he was going to do this, he had it planned ahead as Krakauer notes “When they arrived at his apartment, it was empty and a FOR RENT sign was taped to the window. The manager said that Chris had moved out at the end of June. Walt and Billie returned home to find that all the letters they’d sent their son that summer had been returned in a bundle. “Chris had instructed the post office to hold them until August 1, apparently so we wouldn’t know anything was up, ” says Billie. “It made us very, very worried”, yet he didn’t buy a better rifle, better equipment, or anything that he would obviously need in the wilderness.

In addition, Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: A Story of Success also proves that individuals are the ones at the control center of their life. For example in chapter two of Outliers: The Story of Success Gladwell presents “everyone practiced roughly the same amount, about two or three hours a week. But when the students were around the age of eight, real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty they were practicing — that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better — well over thirty hours a week. In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice. By contrast, the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours”. The individuals controlled their success, their outcomes, their life. Their choice to practice more resulted in them becoming better.

Again, in chapter two Gladwell also claims “Masterwork was not composed until he was twenty-one: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for ten years. ”. Gladwell further implanted the solid proof that individuals control their life, Mozart controlled his success by channeling ten years of devotion. In the end, two very stellar writers have told the story of two very different types of people. The stories were directed at the music people and a person who was an amazing student with much probabilities and possibilities to excel at life. Mozart made the choice to devote a whole decade to his passion, inspiring many more to enter the music field, with a split in destiny. Some chose to follow Mozart in scheduling time to practice so that they could be the best, while others made the choice to not care and end up at the bottom of the music ranks. McCandelss went into the boondocks without essentials he would need. The crazed fed-up student was not much different than the music people because they all had the authority and control to make their own decisions. They all have their own destiny and life at their fingertips.