Ramit Sethi in his blog I will teach you to be rich, writes an excellent piece on Sucess and the Shrug effect. He talks about how, when we compare ourselves with a famous person – lets say a CEO, we tend to put ourselves behind and compare, find excuses to prove why we are not there as the CEO and then shrug it off. Very well written.
Some snippets from the article:
CEOs don’t just magically flip a switch and start wearing a fancy suit one day, directing their staff to do this and that. Getting to the top isn’t about knowing how to execute a leveraged buyout, or negotiating anti-dilution provisions, or whatever. (This is true for both CEOs and other successful people in other domains!)It starts earlier. For that CEO, it probably started when he took a paper route in junior high, or started a Web site in high school, or designed an interesting product in college. It started by knowing how to get in touch with the right people and learning–through lots of experience and failure–that senior executives are just people. They’re regular people who started their path to being extraordinary by taking small steps.
He defines the shrug effect as :
Pointing at someone successful, attributing it to external factors, and shrugging because you don’t have identical qualities.
Read the full article here.