Episode 74. What Does Your Ambition Serve

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “What Does Your Ambition Serve.”

It seems like there's some amount of value we assign to having the quality of being ambitious, at least in the United States. People advertise that they are ambitious on resumes and profiles and public forums, so apparently being ambitious is a good thing, but why? People say they wanna be successful because they are ambitious, but what does that even mean?

Why would someone want success for no other reason than being successful without a purpose? Ambition seems to me more likely to  represent a craving for status or insecurity in who you are. Otherwise, why would we care so much to be the best of the best or the most successful? You could argue that they want to test themselves, but if that's the case, is it really ambition, ambition's, almost always associated with the outcome?

I wanna be the best. I wanna be rich. I want to be successful. Never have I ever heard it associated with a love of the process to get there. I believe there is no inherent value in being ambitious. Being the best of the best generally serves no one unless perhaps being the best of the best means you are able to offer something unique to the world that no one else is able to match.

Being the best of the best stockbroker might benefit you and your clients, but it doesn't really offer the world that much. There are some places where ambition serves the world, but so many more where it doesn't,  if you remove the best football player or basketball player from the game, nothing would really happen.

Some other star athlete would become the new best and our attention would shift to them. As athletes retire, we get to watch this in real time. Not to say that's not fun to watch the greatest of all time play a game, but it doesn't necessarily bring that much value to the world. Only in certain arenas does being the best seem to make any  positive impact at all.

And often the people in those places are not primarily driven by ambition. Science, for example, is possibly the best example. If your discoveries happen to cure cancer that matters. The best of the best in many other arenas have far less of an impact. When someone now tells me that they're ambitious, the first thought that runs through my head is for what purpose?

I think employers sometimes like to hear that a person is ambitious if only because it  implies they might be able to take advantage of it to get more work out of the same person for the same price as a less ambitious person. But employers are not out there looking for people they can help along in their career.

They're looking for people that can help them out, and if they can take advantage of ambition, then that's all the better. Once upon a time I described myself as ambitious, and honestly, I still do describe myself that way sometimes. The difference today is that it's now driven by purpose. When I was younger, the source of my ambition came primarily from a desire to elevate myself above others.

It's embarrassing to me when I think of how much effort I expended for nothing more than the desire to be better than other people. It feels shallow because it is. I think sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that the world needs us to make lots of money because we think somehow. Us having lots of money will  make the world better for everyone else, and I don't begrudge anyone wanting to make lots of money.

Money makes everything more comfortable, but more specifically, I'm talking about the person that relies on that money to validate their existence and ties their value to it. There are people that spend their whole lives trying to climb the ladders of power and influence. So often they will do whatever it takes in order to reach the next level.

All while thinking that the means justify the end, and that somehow when they get to the  top, they will have the capacity to make everything better for everyone. But it's precisely that attitude that begins to permeate organizations and bogs them down in petty power grabs and an emphasis on appearance over performance.

I used to work in a large organization and I went into it thinking that executives were always the best and the brightest. But along the way, I found myself being dumbfounded at the efforts made to hide bad news from the boss and to  shift blame. The amount of wasted time and money spent to satisfy egos and to avoid blame in large organizations is astounding.

I once worked on a plan for the rollout of stores in a particular metro. When we presented our strategy to the executive that ran our division, he tore us to pieces and he made us make a whole bunch of changes. And of course, that was his right to do, and maybe he knew something we didn't know.  Well, we made the changes and came back to him with what he wanted.

He then proceeded to tear into the revamp. And instructed us to make changes that would've brought us almost exactly in line with the first plan that we presented. But of course, we couldn't point this out without risking our employment or our future opportunities. So often our ambition keeps us from telling people what they need to know.

And in some cases I completely understand that it may not be ambition, but rather ] self-preservation that keeps us from calling out our bosses. But it is a pity what so many of us will find ourselves doing. For the sake of ambition, what does sitting on top of the world do for us? I think primarily it strokes our egos and keeps our insecure fears at bay.

I hope that instead of allowing ambition to be our guiding star, we can fall in love with the pursuit of excellence. Instead, there's a joy to be found in mastery of certain things, but there's no joy to be  found in sitting on top of the world unless there's a real purpose that drives that. The attainment of our ambitious desires rewards us with temporary happiness that is bound to fade.

It also rewards us with the incredible fear of loss. If the acquisition of those ambitions was the very purpose in your pursuit of those things, then it would stand to reason that the loss of those things would shake you to your core. Unlike the purpose driven person, a  purpose driven person is part of an ongoing dance.

Regardless of the wins or the losses, the purpose stays the same, so it's not quite so dependent on success to drive it forward. When you're motivated by purpose over ambition, your sense of success comes from your persistence and the pursuit of that purpose, and is far less dependent on success. This is why a purpose driven person will strive the hardest and endure the longest. 

Ambition without a purpose driving it is like running on a hamster wheel. You may accomplish some things in life, but they're not going to satisfy the source of your ambition. If they did, your ambition would end. Too many of us act without knowing why we are striving for something, but we do not know what.

Maybe it really is as simple as a desire to be better than everyone else, but that is not a winnable battle and hiding behind the desire to be better than is a place of  feeling less than. When an ambitious person finds a purpose they care about, their capacity increases dramatically because the drive comes from someplace higher than simply seeking to fill our voids.

The ambitious people of the world are the fools that the smart people prey on. They have no guiding star so they can be manipulated to channel that ambitious energy into the meaningless pursuits of the people. Smart enough to string them along by teasing  them with hopes and dreams. Life gets better when that ambition gets turned into passion.

Once we find purpose in our pursuits, this is Skipping Stones - “What Does Your Ambition Serve.” You can find this podcast  anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit skippingstonessr.com. And if you enjoyed the show, please like or subscribe. If there is a topic you would like me to speak on, please feel free to  email me at info@skippingstonessr.com. New episodes will be released weekly every Monday.