Losers Who Become Winners

×

Expand

Photo by Julia Amaral - Getty Images

Successful Business Team

Do you know how Freud, the father of modern psychology, birthed his groundbreaking theories on human personality? In large part due to cocaine. Thinking it was a “magical drug,” he was addicted to it for several years, and the vivid dreams and images he experienced while intoxicated piqued his interest in the unconscious mind, repressed wishes and human sexuality. Psychoanalysis was born. 

Or consider how Einstein made the modern era’s greatest leap of scientific genius, his general theory of relativity. As a child, he didn’t begin speaking until four years of age, and his primary school teachers said he would “never amount to much.” While a successful student later, he struggled to gain traction in academia. Finally, a sympathetic friend helped him secure a job as a clerk in a patent office. So, for a time, he was relegated to mindless work that, coincidentally, afforded him the hiatus to cogitate about the mysteries of space and time. Had he been otherwise occupied with trying to climb the academic ladder, who knows? 

Now, these gentlemen’s contemporaries probably regarded their circumstances—drug addiction and a rubber stamp job—as ominous signs they were on the road to insignificance. To be sure, plenty of folks with such a rocky start drive down that existential dead end, but a surprising number don’t. In fact, for many, setbacks and failures help pave the way to eventual success. 

No Future?

For example, prior to achieving fame and fortune, Oprah Winfrey was demoted from her job as a news anchor because the media overlords concluded she “wasn’t fit for television.” Before rocking the world, the Beatles were rejected by Decca Recording Studios which concluded they had “no future in show business.” Walt Disney was fired from an early job at a newspaper for “lacking imagination.” Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. I could go on.  

All this suggests we are woefully poor at predicting someone’s future based on their present, and that we frequently mistake early miscues as proof positive that someone is a loser. Remember that the next time you find yourself writing off a non-conformist, a struggling artist, an under-performing student or even a criminal. 

If Einstein had listened to the voices around him during his youth, who were decidedly downcast about his future, he might have remained a patent clerk. Had Freud believed the acerbic criticism heaped upon him and his revolutionary ideas, he might have snuck off into obscurity to keep his head down and lick his wounds. So why don’t these kinds of folks throw in the towel when many of us might? 

Historians who have studied Freud, Einstein and other highly creative and successful humans believe intellectual renegades possess two saving graces—intense curiosity coupled with free or even wild thinking. Rather than accepting the academic and conventional wisdom of their time, such people courageously explore alternative ways of seeing and being in the world. Their innate inquisitiveness and drive to persevere, despite setbacks, allows them to brush off the naysayers and press on.  

Often enough, this predilection emerges in behaviors or lifestyles that are considered unconventional or even outrageous. Now, this type of curious freethinker should not be confused with the flamboyant online influencers and narcissistic celebs who use weirdness as an economic and ego-feeding engine. The personal quirks and peculiar lifestyles that accompanied the likes of Freud and Einstein were behavioral artifacts of their nature, not contrived showmanship or “Look at me!” egotism. Their critics were so blinded by bias and arrogance that they failed to see beneath the surface of the eccentricities that such people often display. 

So don’t be too quick to write off those you reflexively label as “losers.” Tomorrow is uncertain and people can be very unpredictable. 

For more, visit philipchard.com.