Being Too Ambitious Is a Clever Form of Self-Sabotage

The popular narrative of ambition defines it as coming from a place of scarcity, and that leads to guilt over seeming thankless or wanting more than we have. True ambition ideally comes from a place of abundance, which means being ambitious in ‘doing’ and ‘being’ but being content in ‘having’.

Be ambitious about the process, not just the outcome. (To use my own hobby as an example, when I bake, I put on some good music, I take my time, I eat too much batter. That way, if the recipe implodes–like when I accidentally mixed up powdered sugar and flour–the whole thing isn’t a wash.)

Let more than one thing hold your ambition, or meaning. (Th... See more

I think of this like a personal Overton window (although I know the analogy doesn’t make perfect sense). A kind of private tunnel vision that rearranges our reality so that our highs and lows are defined by only the most immediate wins and losses, with everything else rendered irrelevant—the hard fought habits we’ve kept, the old lessons that stuck... See more

Objectives are well and good when they are sufficiently modest, but things get a lot more complicated when they’re more ambitious. In fact, objectives actually become obstacles towards more exciting achievements, like those involving discovery, creativity, invention, or innovation—or even achieving true happiness. In other words (and here is the pa... See more

I sense there is a shift happening where people are realizing that they are channeling an ambitious impulse - the desire to grow and evolve - into dumb goals. Rejecting legible ambitious might be the most ambitious thing you can do.

A shift from legible ambition (my parents can easily brag about me) to illegible ambition (no one, including me know

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