Ambition is a strong desire to achieve something. It is a desire to focus our experiences in a certain direction. Everyone has ambitions, that is an inescapable fact of being human. Being ambitious is not positive or negative in itself, it just is. We can become more aware of and honest about our ambitions. Once we are conscious we can work to build a healthy ambition into our lives. How do your ambitions make you feel? What behaviors do they lead you toward?
Forceful Striving: the positive side of ambition
Focused effort
You will develop skill at getting things done, overcoming obstacles, working through various kinds of problems and difficulties. A useful ambition will have a clear purpose. That set path will make clear whether or not the ambition is beneficial to you.
Passion
Find something to strive for: a specific goal or a broader set of standards. Then channel this into energy (creative, physical, mental, emotional). Ambitions should feed into your passions. If you have a striving desire that does not fit into your passions and beliefs, examine why you want to achieve it. 99% of the time it is related to ego.
Resilience
The ability to recover from change or setbacks. Physical resilience would be how fast you recover from illness or injury. Creative resilience would be your ability to handle criticism or the failure of a project. A healthy ambition should lead you to activities that build one or more forms of your resilience.
Ruthless Striving: the negative side of ambition
Feeding the ego
Unhealthy ambitions feed the worst, weakest parts of ourselves. They turn on the animal instinctive qualities within us. We then start taking actions to make us seem more important and bigger. Our thoughts turn into ourselves. Suddenly you have created a giant imbalance in yourself, one that is self driven at all expense.
Putting yourself above others
In truth, none of us are above or below anyone else as human beings. With unbalanced ambition, you see the differences among people and you decide that better circumstances equals a better person. Then the ambition is to be at the top of the pecking order, and by extension everyone else has to be lower. This kind of imbalance is unhealthy because it is false and because we need other people to grow and experience life.
Bottomless want
The biggest problem with getting pulled into unhealthy ambition is that nothing is ever enough. With never-ending ambition it is difficult to enjoy your accomplishments. When you reach a goal, you become aware of higher and higher levels of accomplishment, of acquisition, of anything. While there is nothing wrong with working to improve yourself and your situation, if the improvement itself becomes the reason to do it, then you have a problem.
Your desire: is it a healthy ambition?
A sense of balance is key to managing healthy ambitions. Name the want that is driving your ambition. Then figure out why you have that desire. What will this do for you? What will it do for others? Is this desire consistent with your values, your larger purpose in life? Similarly, you should think about the costs of pursuing this ambition to yourself and those around you (family members, coworkers, friends, your community). If you have satisfied yourself on these counts, you most likely have a healthy ambition with a good grasp on how to manage it.
What to do when your ambition makes you uneasy
- Take a break from doing or thinking about the thing that is making you uneasy.
- Go for a walk or do any other convenient exercise.
- Take a nap or go to sleep for the night.
- Practice breathing exercises; breath work slows you down and short circuits ego influences.
- Center yourself and then ask, “What is true?”
- Switch to another task or type of activity.
- Think about someone other than yourself that you respect. How would this person think about the behavior you are engaged in? What would he or she think about how you are managing this desire?