YOLO BABY!
You only live once, so go fast and keep it movin’. Each clock tick compels you. Idle time’s wasted time. Always be climbing, never be satisfied. You can rest when you’re dead.
Cool, worthwhile people are in constant motion and always crushing it.
Only boring, lame people don’t abide by this infinite ambition. They’re the unwashed masses who lose at life by being unexceptional, content… normal. How sad.
If you don’t stand above you sulk below. If you’re not first you’re last.
….
Yeah… no. Not at all.
That’s horrible. And wrong.
It forces anxiety on every moment and shreds psyches. It creates artificial urgency and makes us feel inadequate in the process. It fuels the obscene classism and runaway wealth inequality that’s made so much of history the raging dumpster fire it’s been. And it keeps us from focusing on the really important things in life.
We have the power to change this, but to do it we have to change the way we understand, and value, ambition and success.
Sure it goes against our base psychology and challenges human nature itself, but hey fortune favors the bold. Plus let’s face it, human nature needs some work. 😬
I know it’s a moonshot. I doubt anything I’m about to say will change anything. Still, it needs saying. Things aren’t good – we’re reaching a breaking point. We need to try something else if we want life to get better.
So let’s start with a new rule: we shouldn’t automatically look up to people with ambition or achievement, and we shouldn’t automatically look down on people without them. We need to understand them in context.
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First, a key distinction. There are 2 different types of ambition: ambition of purpose, and ambition of placement.
Ambition of Purpose is what moves you. What you freely, excitedly pursue when you don’t have to worry about anything else. It’s love-driven – done purely for its own sake. Whether the people you care about or things that speak to you, it’s the good stuff. The sources of passion and meaning that feed your soul and make you whole. What makes you feel really, truly alive.
This is NOT about Ambition of Purpose. We should always be connecting with people, bettering our presence and deepening ourselves. These are the roots of fulfillment and the keys to living our best life.
…unfortunately, for most of us, ambition(s) of purpose don’t pay bills or run logistics.
So this is about Ambition of Placement – what’s pursued for money, power, security, status, attention or access. Unlike ambition of purpose, ambition of placement is fear-driven – done to not suffer… to have enough of something.
Because it meets our basic needs, it gets most of our attention. It’s why when we talk about ambition we usually mean ambition of placement. It’s near-impossible to achieve or enjoy higher-level fulfillment if we’re wanting for food, shelter, safety, social access, health care or other basics.
This stuff’s also way easier to see. A nice place in the right neighborhood, prestigious job, cash to burn and status are all shiny social proof – things everyone wants and envies. We’re animals – our instinct screams from the deep that life’s a bestial competition where whoever has the highest status and biggest/nicest pile of stuff wins. That’s how all other animal life works, so “that’s just the way it is.” Our stuck-in-the-jungle evolutionary psychology at work.
… But other animal life’s also a brutal, desperate existence. It may be cool for primitive creatures whose only real goals are staying alive and making babies, but, and I can’t believe I actually have to say this, WE shouldn’t be OK with stuck-in-the-jungle thinking. Like, at all. We’re a lot more advanced than other animals… we shouldn’t be benchmarking our being against theirs. We can do better. We need to do better.
So let’s try something new.
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We need to understand that ambition’s expensive. And by expensive I don’t mean money – I mean life currencies: our time, our energy and our attention.
These are precious, limited resources.
Whenever we decide to be more ambitious, we’re forced to spend more life currency. Going after more means having to do more… which means a thinner spreading of our ourselves across each new obligation.
People are very finite, very imperfect beings – we can’t give real, quality investment to much before things go sideways. Over-investment in even one thing (like a job) can easily ruin us for others. And many different things need certain amounts of currency in order for us to get the most out of life.
We live in a fast-moving time of nigh-fanatical optimism where it’s just naturally assumed that being more ambitious and doing more is always better than not. That if you just want-it-and-will-it hard enough and budget every second of your time correctly, you can do everything endlessly, constantly advance and eventually have it all.
Not true.
Ambition’s far more expensive than we care to admit, and we’re not as endless as we like to think. We need to start acknowledging these realities for what they really are.
Ambition always looks awesome on paper, especially in American media. But most of its practical, day-to-day realities are pretty boring and often pretty brutal… kinda the opposite of awesome. And it’s not a 50/50 sorta thing…it’s more like a 95%+ boring and ~1-5% awesome thing. We live in the day-to-day… not the highlight reels we see on TV and social media.
We’re plagued by over-confidence, taking on too much to look good. We’re living life in distracted burnout – constantly late for the next thing and not fully present. The obsession with having it all and winning at all costs is killing us. It’s a lot of why we’re so stressed out, cranky, depleted and depressed so much of the time.
More isn’t always better – often, it’s actually worse. We have to make careful choices with our currencies – and we need to understand ambition and achievement in context of their costs.
In other words, is the juice really worth the squeeze? Because often, it’s a wash, and often, it’s not.
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In order to understand this, we need to look at how ambition affects the achiever’s life as a whole – not just the shiny, outwardly-visible part.
Education – Many high-ambition pursuits require hardcore schooling, which requires huge investments of time, energy and attention during the most-formative years of life. This means less opportunity for the random, fun exploration and socializing that not only makes the best memories but also teaches the street smarts and organic social skills formal education either can’t or won’t. These things are the most important part of adult success in everything… basically of life in general. Most academics (especially the STEM subjects) strengthen the left brain at the expense of the right… which tends to stunt social development and numb emotional awareness.
Advanced education’s also wildly expensive. It saddles graduates with mountains of debt it’s taking longer and longer to pay off… if they ever do. This means they have to work that much harder to service that debt. As time passes the costs of education increasingly outweigh its benefits.
…and that’s just the prerequisite. Once the fancy opportunity’s gotten, it has to be exploited. And standout success means standout sacrifice of all currencies.
Time – Time is life’s most valuable asset, and prestigious/high-ambition pursuits almost always dominate the pursuer’s time. Long work hours are bad enough, but now the lines separating work and personal life are blurred. Often work follows wherever they go, looming over and inserting itself into what’s supposed to be free time. Having control over our time is really important. If work’s always there and what little free time’s left gets sunk into errands and recovery, the person’s life isn’t *really* their own. They’re essentially an indentured servant in a gilded cage, living for vacation and retirement.
Energy and Attention – These long hours often require an intense, shifting, unending mental focus and emotional discipline which amounts to an ongoing assault on both head and heart. Worse, there’s often little (if any) margin for error: one mistake or missed piece of information can easily cost hours of additional work, serious money, their job, career and/or reputation. It’s the psychological equivalent of tap-dancing on a tightrope – a huge level of ongoing stress that continuously drains energy and diminishes presence.
The typical result is a “there-but-not-there” state of being – a kind of mental fog that, while the person may be physically-present at something, means they aren’t mentally- or emotionally-present. Just showing up isn’t enough – people need leftover energy and attention to be able to really experience and enjoy things. Over time living without this leftover currency ruins social opportunity and damages mental health, emotional stability and general well-being.
Thinking and Feeling – What’s more, most high-ambition pursuits condition people into a sort of “work machine” mentality – to think in terms of the specific, technical knowledge they use to do their job. While this is good for their job, it’s usually really bad for compelling, connective social interaction. People deal with tedious logistical things enough as it is… they don’t want to hear about them in their free time. They want their mood elevated and emotions spiked, and talking about work and life maintenance rarely does that (usually the opposite – they suck vibe out of the air).
Human Ugliness – The more high-stakes something gets, the more competitive it becomes. The more competitive something gets, the more false pretense, passive-aggression, politicking, gaslighting, manipulation, lying, cheating, end-running, backstabbing and other behind-the-scenes lesserness comes with it. The more human ugliness you experience in isolation. The saying “It’s not personal, it’s just business” is a contradiction-in-terms – betrayal in business directly (and strongly) affects the personal. Living in these circumstances darkens a person’s world view and worsens their behavior – you can’t stay positive if continually exposed to negative.
All of these are serious, life-shaping costs that deeply affect different people in different ways. It’s just really hard to see most of the time because people hide it to look good… which is its own painful, lonely burden.
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2 PIECES OF SOCIAL GAMESMANSHIP TO BE AWARE OF:
(1) Some claim their ambition of placement IS their ambition of purpose. That what they’re doing for security and status is exactly what they’d freely choose to do if they didn’t have to worry about anything else. That they don’t mind its huge costs because their money-maker and life’s purpose are one-and-the-same.
Take this claim with a HUGE grain of salt. When you look closer and learn more about the person you find it’s rarely (like, Purple-Unicorn-rarely) authentic, persistent truth. Most high-ambitioners grind themselves away on things they’d rather not being doing to get the rewards they offer. The rest, even when they like what they do, live in drowning saturation (think King Midas – in the beginning he loved gold more than anything, but at the end all he really wanted was a sandwich). Ambition of purpose and ambition of placement are rarely compatible with each other.
(2) Many claim that they can handle demanding tasks more easily and effectively than other people. That because of their superior ability they can effortlessly win at lots more things than others without it phasing them… the implication’s being they’re better than most.
Again, boulder-sized grain of salt here. When you look closer and learn more, you typically find they’re nowhere near as winning as they’re acting. They’re like a duck: calm on the surface, but furiously paddling underwater (which isn’t healthily sustainable). They front to make it look like they’re doing it all, but in reality they’re usually frenetically working on mostly one thing while paying dime-deep (if any) attention to the rest. They’re almost never as centered, well-rounded and in-control as they’re trying to appear. Remember: crushing it takes a lot, and human currency is limited.
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TO BE CLEAR – I am NOT trying to demean or condemn high-ambition pursuits or the people who pursue them. Wanting success isn’t a bad thing, and demonizing ambitious/successful people is stupid and achieves nothing.
What I’m trying to do is give perspective to the nature of ambition and achievement. Rather than being automatically impressed by and envious of the money and prestige of someone’s position, look at that success (and what it entails) more deeply. Realize that standout success is dearly-bought, and that there shouldn’t be an automatic respect for and worship of it. Ambitious, successful people make choices with their lives that, like any other choices, come with certain benefits… and certain drawbacks. They shouldn’t be seen as better or worse than average joes – only different.
What really matters is the quality and social grace with which we do our jobs. Whatever you do, do it well and make interaction with you easy and pleasant. Whether a barista or a lawyer, people should be always be respected and appreciated if they handle their responsibilities well and are pleasant to interact with. Period.
*** It’s the social, emotional value we give ambition of placement that’s at the heart of what keeps classism, wealth inequality, corruption and other lesserness alive and thriving. It’s why no political system has any chance of ever solving any of these problems without us first changing the way we think about and, more importantly, feel about money, status and achievement. ***
I want people to not just know, but understand it really IS our passions, our presence, and our connection to others that matter most. And that we have to not just know, but understand this in order to become better than we are.
In order to evolve.