Conscious Ambition Tips: Living into ambiguous ambitions
What most people want when going through times of change or standing at an inflection point and wondering what’s next is CLARITY.
That’s natural and normal. Why? Because we’re human. And energetically it’s costly not to know. And yet, what I’ve come to learn is that clarity is often illusive. Instead, I think we can benefit from learning how to live in and through ambiguity. To see ambiguous ambitions as not dark and dangerous, but rather brilliant explorations.
Learning to live in ambiguity won’t feel comfortable for many of us. Yes, because of our desire for clarity, but also because some of us are simply wired to not deal as well with ambiguity. If I’m honest, that’s me. And yet, over the years, I’m getting better at living in not knowing.
I share a few strategies below to help find a way forward in case you’re like me. But honestly, my guess is we can all benefit from practicing living with not knowing and living into our answers.
I also shared some of these tips in my recent podcast episode, if you’d prefer to listen (you can find it here on my website or listen here on your favorite podcast player.)
Ambiguity doesn’t have to be painful. With reframing and practice, we can learn to live our answers day by day.
What answer will you live today and this week?
Conscious Ambition Tips: Gentler Ambition
Three Strategies for Right Ambition:
Let this be it. We might feel ambivalent about a goal we are pursuing. What I appreciated from this article on the concept of ambivalence is that it explains that ambivalence does not mean indifference. No. Rather it means that we see both positive and negative aspects around a topic, a choice, etc. With this view, perhaps we find some peace by choosing to step into the positive view and choosing for now that “this is it” rather than continually search for something new.
Learn into your ambitions. We won’t always know. And more likely we won’t until we experiment and try new areas of curiosity. To create more ease, step into such innovation practices such as prototyping to allow ourselves to get inspired, learn, and adapt.
Make your goals resonant. I’ve learned that certain phrasing of a goal can turn me off and push me away (e.g., build my business) rather than motivate me and pull me toward it (e.g., step into my becoming). The language that would motivate you is likely different, too. I think it’s helpful to play with this and control how we craft the meaning of our ambitions and goals so they resonate with us.
I was inspired watching the show Julia on Max where in one episode Julia Child says to her husband Paul that he reminded her: “We don’t control what the things we do mean, only what we want them to mean.” I love this! Very Sustainable Ambition! For me, it relates to this concept. What do you want your goals to mean?
A Strategy for Right Time:
Live into questions. I loved this insight that I first heard from poet Maggie Smith in a conversation with Adam Grant: “Maybe it's the poet in me. I've gotten comfortable with sort of living questions fully and not always expecting a clear answer. And I honestly am much more in love with things that I don’t understand fully than I am by the things that I do.”
We don’t have to know the answer right now. Living into questions and reframing uncertainty toward there being all kinds of possibility can be more empowering.
I also saw the idea of living questions called out by Maria Popova in the Marginalian where she featured Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian poet and novelist, writing to a young poet and cadet: “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Two Strategies for Right Effort:
Get calm to think clearly. Oftentimes when we navigate ambiguous ambitions, we’re dealing with what are called wicked problems, ones that have no clear answer. Sometimes such new and complex problems are exciting. Other times they cause stress and trigger our sympathetic nervous system. The challenge is that when we’re triggered we’re not in the best state to ideate and develop solutions. What’s helpful is to take actions like deep breaths and taking a break that can move us into our parasympathetic nervous system, the part that allows us to come to rest and create the space to allow us to think more clearly. Creating some calm space can help, as Pico Iyer nicely articulates: “But it’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it.”
Be satisfied. Take the easier path by following the strategy of satisficing. Choose the first option that meets your criteria, as opposed to continuing to search and search and search hoping to find the best option.
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