Ambition is good. Define it on your terms.
I recently had someone say to me, “Wow, Kathy, you’re ambitious!” It came across as a judgment, not a compliment or encouragement. What I heard was: “Why are you pushing so hard? Why are you striving? Where are you trying to get to? Slow down.”
Women often get denounced for being ambitious. Look at Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. How dare they want to be President or Vice President?
But I don’t think that’s why this person, another woman, said what she said. What was going on there? There could be a number of different explanations. Perhaps ambition makes some people uncomfortable or seeing it in others stresses them out. I don’t want to be judgmental about it. As I start to research ambition more, I’m learning that to be human is to be ambitious, and the level of ambition can vary from person to person, from task to task, and from life stage to life stage. It’s not something we should feel ashamed about regardless of its level of intensity.
Why? Because ambition takes a dialing in. I’m starting to frame this idea that there is a “right level” of ambition and energy (think Goldilocks here)—too much has downsides (research has shown it can lead to lower levels of happiness and health over time). Too little and you can feel like you are stagnating or languishing. What’s the right focus? Our ambition can change if we find the right goal or topic that lights us up. What’s right for you at a particular time in your life? We can be just as ambitious about family as we are about work. And, we’re not all wired the same. Our level of ambition might not look like someone else’s. (More to come on the topic of “right ambition.”)
But let’s step back, why is ambition often viewed negatively? To simplify here, it’s because of definitions such as this: “ambition is an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power.”
How do I define ambition in a way that I think is positive and helpful?
The dictionary definition that is more positive reads:
a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work
a desire and determination to achieve success
My working definition is: the focus, determination, and energy put towards a self-defined worthy, meaningful goal.
What I champion here at Sustainable Ambition is to define our own ambition and to be sure to even ask ourselves the question. Many of us don’t reflect on our ambition—What do I really want to accomplish if I define it for myself? What is a worthy, meaningful goal? What would I do if I could? What is worth putting my focus, determination, and energy into? How good do I even want to be and at what?
When defining this, it’s important to attune to yourself and what you want. Sustainable Ambition is about defining ambition and success on your terms, attuning to you to make life+work personally rewarding. When our ambitions are motivated from outside of us, they can go sour. They are not sustainable.
Another aspect of Sustainable Ambition that is critical to me is for it to be a no-judgment zone. I don’t want to be judged for my ambitions, just as I shouldn’t judge another person’s ambitions. Are one person’s ambitions more worthy than another? Is one’s ambition around his career more worthy than his ambition around his family?
Finally, what I also don’t want to accept is putting a negative spin on ambition, going back to where I started. If people didn’t embrace ambition, we wouldn’t have:
Martin Luther King Jr. having championed civil rights.
President Kennedy setting forth the goal to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth.
Art from any famous or non-famous artist that expresses our culture and our world.
And so on.
I was able to ask in an informal survey how people feel their ambition serves them. Here’s what they said:
Finding purpose
Living with conviction
Motivation and energy to keep engaged and moving forward in life
Wanting to be successful
Being goal-driven
Being audacious and taking bold risks
Growth and learning
Making an impact in the world
Being able to help others through one’s work
Providing resources and knowledge to others
As we start to get to the midpoint of this year, it’s a good time to step back and use the early summer months to slow down and reflect on your own ambition. Here I offer 6 questions to do so:
How would you rate your level of ambition right now on your terms? Too high (I’m in danger!), just right (I’m loving it!), too low (I’m languishing)?
In what area(s) of your life do you want to put your focus and be ambitious?
At what pace do you want to be operating at right now (fast, medium, slow)?
What is a worthy, meaningful goal you can define that gets you energized and motivated (dare I say ambitious!)?
In the next 6 months, how good do you want to be (good, very good, the best) and at what?
Around your goals, where can you pause or not act such that it would actually help propel you forward?
But here I’ll also leave you with the prompt that I put in the survey: What is a positive way that you view your own ambition? In what way is your own personal ambition a good thing to you?
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Sustainable Ambition™ is about crafting a fulfilling career to support your life from decade to decade.
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