Ambitious.
The easiest way to get ahead in any medium is to be ambitious, take risks, and be okay with failing. All success is the product of ambition, the other traits are a byproduct. You’re either born ambitious or you learn through the act of discipline.
Discipline creates the space for ambition to grow, and eventually thrive. The reason it’s incredibly hard to be ambitious or maintain ambition when it starts to dwindle, is because to be disciplined requires sacrifice. Many people don’t want to sacrifice what they have now for what could be eventually. Ambitious people realize that, at some point, the activities/people that aren’t aligned with their goals, will be sacrificed. Change and results aren’t guaranteed, that’s why the road less traveled is the way it is. Resulting in the loss of discipline and ultimately ambition.
How does one stay disciplined? Often it’s the result of finding a passion in the pursuit of bettering one’s position. Whether that be physically, mentally, or socially, finding something that lights an initial interest. Devoting yourself to that activity for an extended period to develop the habit, and using discipline to generate ambition.
Discipline is a contract you sign with yourself which is non-negotiable. The journey discipline teaches is that the results don’t matter and often are a distraction to the ultimate goal. Ambition is the byproduct of winning small goals during the journey. Risks come from trusting your ability to perform at the greatest capacity of what your discipline offers. Failing is when you’re stepping out of the comfort of your training and enduring the hardship of the unknown. This is where we tend to shake it off, or go back to the road that is well traveled. Rinse and repeat, success is inevitable.
Why aren’t more people ambitious? Comfort and fear hold people back from trying to pursue their interests. Whether that be judgment from others, feeling like an imposter, or lack of skills. I think it’s because society is a lot more predictable than it used to be. We don’t have wrenches thrown into the system that are absolute disruptors (lack of food, shelter, medicine). This comes at a cost, mostly the mental health of every individual that occupies modern society. You are associated with material goods, categorized by beliefs and opinions, and ostracized because of your fundamental truths. As you step out of this space and realize it is completely fabricated, you feel isolated from where you once were, and where you’d eventually like to be.
As we’ve taken entropy out of society we’ve become more accustomed to instant gratification. Hence lack of disruptors. As a result we’ve started putting toxic waste into our system, which means that we judge people more than we ever used to. Even if that’s not necessarily true, it feels true, and that’s far worse. Without a predicated path, you look and may even be told you’re living the life of a looney tune. That’s a hard place to be when we are trying to be ambitious, often killing it before we even experience what it really is.
How to fix it? There are many ways the easiest is to take on less ambitious goals and prove to yourself you’re capable of more. An easy one, and often the one that is a chain reaction of growth is to workout. In doing so, you see progress almost instantly. Whether that be a pump at the gym, running a mile longer than you did last time you went, holding a plank on a Pilates machine for longer than you did in the last class. Small wins = discipline paying off. When you workout you are creating a state of entropy, each day depending on how you prepared your body, will result in different outcomes while working out. Meaning it’s easier to be disciplined because you win enough to see results, even if the stack may be against you.
Another is to pick a medium that is entirely unrelated to making money. My mom started painting, her work is amazing, that’s because she doesn’t tie it to any material outcome. She does it for the sake of the activity, often looking at something that inspires her and then works on it just because she can. Idea turns to interest, interest turns to discipline, and eventually ambitions. She wants to highlight other people’s art in her community and host a pop up gallery. It is that simple, we often over complicate it by doing too much. Trying to be someone we are not for the sake of how other people may feel about us, versus doing it just because we want to.
Ambitious people aren’t all born with it. We can learn it, use it, and feel fulfilled because of it. Hope this helps.
Thanks for reading.
With love,
Kai
Weekly Poem:
A dance is the expression of movement to melody
A dance is best expressed when we feel comfortable
Let’s make the people feel more comfortable and get the world dancing again
