Qualifications Vs Qualities

Sometimes, I think am too over qualified to do my job and I should do something great. Immediately i think, am i qualified enough to do that “something great”.  So I started searching for few successful people and read their stories.In fact, I went through the list of successful people in various fields, i realized that most of these guys started of as what society considered them unqualified. It’s not  their qualifications that made them successful but their qualities – Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Mark ZuckerBerg etc

Looks like society is fooling us into believing that all successful people are exceptions. It is forcing us into taking the safe path of qualifications. This is just leading to some kind of boring homogeneity in society. Graduates are saddled with huge student loans unable to pursue their passions as their whole qualifications will go waste if they do something different. Relatives look at your qualifications to decide if they should give respect to yo or not.

I see some people thinking that ABC-The IIT/IIM  or  an XYZ-The Stanford/MIT Grad being equal to something like Alexander-The great or Sachin- The Master Blaster and that should automatically guarantee them to some special treatment. Qualifications are not the ones which define you, it’s the qualities you possess.

Qualifications are just some labels given to suggest a person have undergone a relevant training/course, but in no way guarantee that a person can do it better than anyone without qualification. In fact, most of the times, they are bad proxies for real talent.

In fact, I feel these qualifications can be a burden/liability to some and some sort of limitations to others. I myself thought many times, “C’mon, I’m an IITian, this business idea is too silly for my qualification”. I have seen few people not wanting to join a particular company as it has no “Qualified” people running it.

That’s why I like sports/arts. These are the fields which have never allowed the concept of official qualifications to creep in. In these fields, qualities matter more than qualifications. Imagine, if Indian cricket has a “qualification” rule mentioning that “every player should undergo cricket-Basics-1,2,3 and the Cricket-Advanced courses 1,2,3 before qualifying for international matches”, we wouldn’t even have seen greats in international cricket. In fact, most of the time, qualifications are as irrelevant.

The truth is,
We are never qualified to do anything and degrees/certificates won’t change that.
We are never unqualified to do anything in the first place and degrees/certificates won’t change that either.

If you want to do anything, just learn it, practice it, dive into in, eat it, drink it, and sleep on it. I guess that’s the only way great things were achieved. Only the qualities that you acquire/develop in real life experiences will make you qualified.

I agree, qualifications can bring you some sort of safety, but Qualifications and greatness were never tagged together. Never. Atleast, don’t let lack of qualifications deter you from doing anything.

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