Cheaters Don't Always Win: One Out Of 10 Business Cheats Never Prosper
President Bush 2.0 — cheater! Most medical students — cheaters! Steve Jobs — cheater! The list goes on and on. All three of these examples demonstrate how some amoral behaviors could actually advance your career. Even though President Bush had an unfair advantage, due to the faulty voting ballots in 2000, he still became the President.
Medical students may hide studying materials and give false information to their competitors while completing undergraduate studies to give them an edge, but they still got accepted into a medical school. Lastly, Steve Jobs may not have designed or thought of most of Apple’s devices (similar to most CEOs), but he still reaped the majority of the benefits!
This reality it the complete opposite of what we are taught growing up. Cartoon characters, like Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, are made to teach us that those who seek unfair advantages always lose in the end. I, on the other hand, have found this encouraged philosophy to be false in most aspects of life. For example, if you have been waiting for Whole Foods to finally sell their coveted pumpkin flavored bite-sized scones, why would you tell others (who love them as well) about the date they return to stores?
If you truly love and desire those pumpkin scones, there is no way on earth that you are telling other people about them BEFORE you get some for yourself! For those of you who believe that you would, you are lying to yourself. When a person truly has a goal in mind, he or she should do whatever possible to achieve it—even if it’s only to acquire scones from Whole Foods.
However, those who constantly criticize others about what they deem to be unfair, and what is or is not acceptable behavior, tend to be wimpy and insecure. Maybe this is not true for all, but definitely a good 80% of the people who I encounter day-to-day. For example, do you remember when camera cell phones came out? Teachers would expect you to write down the lengthy assignment information in your planner, but some of us realized that we could simply take a picture to reflect on it later.
There was no need to rush and scribble it down in unruly hand-writing that you would not be able to decipher later. Nonetheless, many other students (who did not have camera phones yet) would look at us with disdain. Some even had the nerve to accuse of us “cheating” because we had an “unfair” advantage and were not putting in an equal level of effort.
If the same result is achieved, why does it matter how someone approached the situation? Therefore, I do not believe that there are “unfair advantages;” there are only opportunities not commonly sought for or discovered yet. Those who fail to seek a more efficient method to achievement are left in the dust!
Based on my life experiences, and the accomplishments of others, cheaters frequently prosper. But, I do not feel that “cheaters” is the appropriate term for the people I'm referring to.
Risk takers, problem solvers, ambitious, out-of-the-box thinkers tend to prosper. If someone does not do something the conventional way, or has any sort of advantage, he or she is deemed a cheater; well, maybe some are, but others are not. Regardless, everyone should want to “get on that level.”
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