"Success is the Disease of Me"

Malcolm Gladwell uses the entirety of his book, Outliers, to show that success is the result of special circumstances that allow a person to have an advantage over others (Gladwell, 2008, p.24). Therefore, I feel like Gladwell would have mixed feelings about the phrase "success is the disease of me." On one hand, a disease is usually brought on by a certain set of circumstances happening in the right order at the right time. On the other hand, disease has very negative connotations that imply a bad condition. Gladwell would probably agree with the first statement but disagree with the second one.
The first statement refers to success and disease being a result of several circumstances that happen in the appropriate ways. Gladwell points out several situations in which a person became successful due to a large amount of work and some special circumstance that allowed them to get an advantage. Disease works in a similar way. For a person to contract a disease, they must be exposed to the microbes that causes the disease, allow the microbe to enter their body, and the antibodies must be unable to stop the disease before it spreads. The likelihood of all of these happening is low but still very possible. In this context, the ideas of success and disease are quite similar. They require quite a bit of good (or bad) fortune.
However, the word disease implies that success is a bad thing. While some people may say that success leads them to do things they shoud not, most people wou8ld not say that success is bad. Most would agree that it is quite the opposite. In today's society, the word disease has extremely negative connotations. The prefix dis- usually means not and when added to the rest of the word, it basically says not ease or no ease. Success may not be easy to attain but, in this sense, the ease refers to feelings after success is attained or not attained. It's quite a complex way of thinking about the idea of success but I feel like Gladwell would understand and agree with these ideas.
It could be argued that Gladwell would completely disagree with the idea of success being a disease. He may reject this idea of success being a disease because humans naturally strive for success but definitely do not strive for disease. However, I believe Gladwell would take a deeper thought process than this. He would consider both sides of the issue instead of just thinking about one and saying that that is the explanation.
The phrase "success is the disease of me" would evoke mixed feelings in Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers. He would agree that success happens by chance, with some hard work too, but would not agree that success i8s a bad thing. The interpretation of this phrase depends somewhat on the person's mindset. If they had the fixed mindset that Carol Dweck describes in her book Mindset, a successful person could say that success is a disease that makes them have to try harder top prove themselves worthy (Dweck, 2008, pg. 35). The growth mindset would not see success as a disease but would instead see it as a way to be challenged by newer, better things (Dweck, 2008, pg. 35). I doubt Gladwell thought much about the mindsets when writing his book but his writing tends to lean towards the fixed mindset. He says that some people are destined to be successful, which is definitely a fixed mindset idea. Therefore, it is possible that Gladwell would strongly agree with the phrase "success is the disease of me." It all depends on the way he interpreted the meaning and how deeply he thought.

Dweck, C. (2008) Mindset:The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books. 35-38. Print.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 20-30.Print.