Towards a more conscious form of ambition

Ambition is an inner yearning and drive to reach a future state that is different from today and challenging to reach.

This future state won't just happen by itself; you need to work for it.

Ambition has fuelled humanity's innovations and advancements and is in itself not bad.

The reality, however, is that it can often take on a life of its own.

You can very quickly fall in the trap of having blinders on. Of focusing on the wrong things. Then suddenly having a wake-up call and realise that the outcomes in your life are not what you wanted them to be.

I spent 6 years researching ambition and found that everyone struggles with their ambition.

By some accounts, 60% of ambitious people struggle to balance the various areas of their lives. And 4 out of 10 ambitious people doubt whether their hard efforts will be worth it in the end.

Even those who appear like they have a perfect life struggle beneath the surface, not only with self-doubt and insecurities but also with the very real challenge of trying to balance it all.

It can lead to burnout and a midlife crisis.

At its extreme, you keep running like this your whole life and never find peace.

Those who tell you that you can balance everything, all the time, either have not worked in extreme high pressure environments, or they're not aware of the trade-offs that they're actually making in their lives.

A concept you've probably heard of is work-life balance.

This concept is woefully outdated, however. The roots of the theory go back more than 100 years and was from a time when workers predominantly worked in factories. Work rarely served as a way to self-actualise and it made sense to make a boundary between work and life.

Today we have much more agency in terms of where we work, when we work, how much we work, what type of work we do, and who we work with.

And with this shift comes new expectations about what our life should look and feel like.

Instead of work-life balance, you need to balance 3 areas on an ongoing basis: achievement, growth, and well-being. These 3 areas were consistent themes in my conversations and interviews with highly ambitious individuals.

Set a high bar for each one.

As you read the nuances of each element below, reflect on how you're doing on a scale of 1-10 on each dimension.

If you're ambitious, your professional aspirations go beyond just having a job and paying the bills. You want to spend your time on something that is important to you. Make a positive difference in the world. Leave a legacy. You might even see it as a calling or higher purpose.

If you don't feel like you're on the right professional path, chances are that you feel frustrated until you make a change.

Over time, it is important to have self-set goals rather than goals that are set by others that you need to follow.

You need to balance short term aspirations with longer term objectives.

Furthermore, being a 10 out of 10 entails regularly being at your "best", utilising your strengths and often being in flow, in the "zone" of peak performance.

Note that achievement does not have to come from work. For ambitious people it often comes from sporting achievements, learning a language or new skill, or other hobbies.

The key is to have meaningful achievements in your life, whatever they might be for you.

Your well-being includes physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

It starts with foundational basic needs such as having a roof over your head, being physically safe, and not having to stress about money.

Physical well-being has to do with feeling energised, strong, and healthy. It is impossible to achieve this without a proper diet, sufficient sleep, and regular exercise.

Beyond that you need to be able to understand and manage (not suppress) your emotions, practice self-care, and have strong, supportive and loving relationships.

You need to be able to manage the different commitments you have in your life and avoid feeling overworked or stressed.

Ensure that you are carving out time for hobbies or leisure activities.

Life should feel light, fun, and free flowing.

Ensure that you know your values and are living in accordance with them.

At a deeper level, you need to be in touch with your inner self and experience a sense of meaning in your life, where ever you derive meaning from.

When ambitious people feel like "something" is off in their lives, it's typically because one of the three elements is missing.

• A low well-being is often the easiest problem to recognise, either because you have lower than usual energy and or diminished mental clarity. But it can also show up in more subtle ways, for example through feelings of loneliness, hopelessness and cynicism. You might even start to question what the point of everything is.
• If you're not growing you typically feel bored. You don't feel like you are reaching your full potential in life. You might also feel like others are advancing more quickly or easily than you.
• A low achievement score can make you feel like you are moving in the wrong direction in life or wasting your time. Contrary to what you might see online, a life of leisure and sandy beaches quickly gets old. Everyone wants to feel like they're contributing value to the world.

While you might tolerate an imbalance over a short period of time, over time it catches up with you.

The key is to realise this before it's too late.

Let's be real for a moment: You can't have it all, at least not at the same time.

Life is about choices and trade-offs.

Every decision has an opportunity cost.

And that's the beauty of life. You get to decide in each moment what you choose to focus on (at least relatively speaking), and create your most desired future.

If it was all possible, it would all be meaningless. What makes something special, like attending your child's piano practice, or running a personal best marathon race, or finally getting that promotion at work is exactly because you have given up many other things to make that specific moment possible.

Stop harbouring unrealistic expectations and start focusing on what matters to you.

Success is totally subjective anyway. No one can tell you that it's better or worse to prioritise work, family, or personal hobbies, as long as you are being honest with yourself about what's really important to you.

You can only control the decisions you make and then accept the trade-offs and consequences.

Decide for yourself what's important and choose accordingly.

Balancing the different aspects of achievement, growth, and well-being and managing the trade-offs in your life requires awareness at different levels.

• Level 0 awareness is when you're not aware at all and are living on autopilot.
• Level 1 awareness is when you are aware of the 3 categories, but not making conscious decisions about where to spend your time.
• Level 2 awareness is when you've taken an elevated perspective of your life and chosen what's important to you and started to prioritise.
• And level 3 awareness is when you start taking action and make adjustments in real time, in the moment, on a day to day basis.

Remember, you take hundreds of decisions each day, and the more you are able to make them from an inner knowing of what is right for you, the more you will find that life starts to flow.

You'll never know ahead of time if the decision was the right one.

But the whole point of personal development and increasing your level of awareness is to increase the chances of making the right decisions on topics that are important to you.

Make the unconscious conscious.

See the intricacies of how the dimensions interact.

That's where the power comes in.

You might choose to give up one dimension for another. For example, you might trade some well-being to enhance achievement for a period of time. Or the opposite. That's ok, as long as it's a deliberate decision.

• Score yourself out of 10 on each of the 3 dimensions
• Ask yourself what your aspirations are for each one
• Identify where you can make quick improvements already today, that won't cost you anything
• Pick one area to focus on consistently for the coming 1-3 months
• Repeat this reflection each week
• Take a deeper look at the dimensions of your life every 3 months

Over time you'll find that you start adjusting your expectations and priorities and begin to score highly across all 3 dimensions on a consistent basis.

Instead of feeling like there's never enough time for everything, you'll start realising that time is abundant if it's spent deliberately.

Rather than trying to be ambitious about everything or the wrong things, you'll start being ambitious about the things that matter.

That's when you know you're living in the present, without regrets, and with eyes wide open each day.