“The ease of having an ambition is that it can be explained to others; the very disease of ambition is that it can be so easily explained to others.”
David Whyte
I have been pondering David Whyte’s thought-provoking chapter on ‘Ambition’ in his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. It is so densely packed with wisdom, beautifully and poetically. Almost every sentence could be dissected with an essay on its underlying meaning.
Certain lines of wisdom seem to call out to us and catch our attention, depending on what we need in our life. It’s worthwhile reflecting on what you notice in the world and what occupies your mind, as they may be some gold to be mined from those underlying messages.
Ambition
The Cambridge Dictionary defines ambition as “a strong desire for success, achievement, power, or wealth”.
Ambition is something we all wrestle with. I have felt this now as I try to carve out a more fulfilling vocation as a content creator and coach in this positive change space.
On the one hand, I want my new vocation to be successful, but on the other hand, I find that pushing hard for material success can also get in the way of adding real value in a meaningful way.
As with any new endeavour, it is often unfolding right in front of us, and we adjust as we go. It’s hard to have a complete grand master plan when charting new territory. We don’t know what we don’t know, so how could it all be perfectly planned out.
- What are some of the big ambitions in your life?
- How do you balance your levels of ambition?
The ease and the dis-ease of ambition.
Our culture values ambition in the standard introductory question when you meet someone new – ‘What do you do?’.
If we feel accomplished with our career, we can easily explain to others what we do and what we are excited about achieving in the future. Alternatively, it can bring up negative feelings and shame if we don’t currently feel fulfilled in our career. We feel like we should have an ambition around our career, but maybe we don’t.
Another issue is that because we can so easily explain our ambitions, it potentially hides the real person behind that ambition. People are much more than their ambitions or career.
Maybe we are missing out on some goodness but summing a whole person up in a simple ‘ambition’.
Ambition is often a neat little abstract of something grand, which sounds good, but is totally devoid of all that is required to get there. It lets us off the hook in social situations. This means that we are at risk of sharing our bright ambitions to feel good about ourselves but not actually making any real progress towards that ambition. Which is more important?
- Do you find you profess an ambition to others, but you don’t really have a path forward to achieving that ambition?
“Ambition left to itself, always becomes tedious, its only object the creation of larger and larger empires of control; but a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves, breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place.”
David Whyte
This trap of success is something I am becoming more and more conscious of lately. Power begets more power so the sake of more power. I now realise that for much of my earlier career, I was pursuing the wrong goals. It was more important to be climbing the corporate ladder, but I was miserable and unfulfilled, as I was only doing it to be successful in others’ eyes. This was leaving me drained and unhappy. More material success is not necessarily better if you don’t have the time or energy to enjoy it.
“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
Stephen R. Covey
Maybe we should spend less time proclaiming our ambitions and more time pursuing the true vocation calling us. We should take the time to reflect – ‘is our ladder on the right wall?’.
“We find that, all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, an essence we could not understand until we had experienced the actual heartbreak of the journey.”
David Whyte
Part of the problem is that all the great, wise advice from our mentors often falls on deaf ears. The penny never drops until we actually come to this realisation ourselves after experiencing the heartbreaks from particular ambitions. Then we wonder, ‘why didn’t I just listen in the first place?’. The truth is you can’t just copy someone else’s purpose or formula for success. We need to figure it out ourselves. We learn from experience.
Reflection
- What are my current ambitions?
- Are they true to my heart? Or are they used as a way to appear successful in the eyes of others?
- What steps can I take for purpose realignment?