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The journey from good to great


In his famous book " Build to last" Jim Collins talks about the elements which make companies survive the turbulence of time and the threat of market randomness. He follows it with another book called "Good to Great" where he talks about how companies can actually become great. Though the books talk about the large corporations and macroeconomics it is interesting when we apply those principles to our day to day life.
We are all born with some resources and over a period of time they are used, modified and sharpened to form distinctive characteristics. These resources keep on changing and multiplying as we grow old. However the rate of change varies a lot from person to person. Utilizing these resources help us source our food, find a mate, and above all interact and survive among various alive and inert elements. We as humans are blessed with a lot of these resources and fortunately we are conscious about their presence. We can shape these resources to achieve our dreams and desires. Though these dreams and desires are also at times affected by the inherent resources but more or less our dreams propel us forward. So our dreams and desires are the driving force behind this dynamic world. If we all shed our desires I am not sure if we can be classified as a living being. So based on our dreams and armed with our resources we all start our journey.

The law of averages predict that for very large numbers the behavior of the system is directed towards the mean. So we all start as average people but may be with extraordinary dreams. The journey is about moving out of the average and join the group of achievers. So I will classify people as

Bad <---------------------- Good/Average--------------------------->Great

We all start as good people and its about the dreams which can take us either way. But surprisingly most of the people stay good all their life. There is no harm in it. In fact they are the one who decides who is bad and who is great. But the sum total of their effort is nearly zero. The bad are those whose dreams and desires itself is negative and they use their resources to achieve the same. Hitler can be classified as a bad person not because he was average but for his dreams and aspirations were dangerous to the mankind in general. Similarly if we look at the life of Mahatma Gandhi we can see how his desire and dream of free India propelled him to the heights of greatness. If we look at the life of both Mahatma and Hitler we will find signs of amazing journey from being average people to super stardom.

What I want to assert is that we all should try and make this journey in our life time. We have only one life and its no fun wasting it being safe and we all deserve our journey to greatness. So whoever we are and whatever we do never stop dreaming and never stop walking....

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