Being ambitious isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, our author finds her ambition to be one of her greatest weaknesses. Here she tries to explain why.
Some people wish they had an ambitious partner by their side. Others proudly (and probably rightly so) advertise themselves and their ambitions in job interviews. In my personal relationship to ambition, something must have gone seriously wrong at some point. For me, ambition is one of the most unappealing, most dangerous, most unpleasant qualities of all. And by that I especially mean my own.
As soon as my ambition interferes with something, I stop enjoying that thing. My ambition means that I don’t feel joy when I succeed, but primarily pressure. Because I have the feeling that I have to at least maintain or repeat this success, but actually have to surpass it. And by that I mean must. Do not want. Must.
My ambition spoiled my favorite sport
One of the first things that ruined my ambition in this way was karate. When I started at the age of six or seven, I was immediately drawn to this sport. I had previously tried everything from tennis to ballet to track and field, none of which I enjoyed as much as karate. So I stuck with it, passed belt test after belt test and was happy. After a while I took part in a competition called the Advent Tournament and it was a small, regional event just for children. I didn’t do very well, but in the end all participants got an advent calendar. I was really happy about that. The fact that I hadn’t won a real prize didn’t bother me in the slightest, karate wasn’t something I could be better at than others at the time, nor was it better or the best be ever existed.
That changed abruptly the next year when I suddenly came second in the Advent tournament. In addition to the advent calendar, I now received a medal and applause while standing on the podium at the awards ceremony. The next competition was less than a year in coming and I was first. From about that point on, I no longer did karate for myself, but for success. My primary concern was to collect trophies and soon I had the most among the youngsters in my club.
For a few years I trained like crazy, went to courses or tournaments almost every weekend, was even part of the national team and took part in international competitions. When I was 14 or 15 it finally became too much for me and I gave up karate. Actually, I would have liked to continue without competing, but my ambition, which whispered to me that I had to be the best, didn’t allow it. In my usual environment, it would probably have been difficult to withdraw from competitions, but I think the main problem was my ambition.
As soon as I succeed, my ambition kicks in and destroys everything
Unfortunately he didn’t leave me alone after I stopped karate. On the contrary. As I have discovered over the course of my life, almost anything that can be measured or evaluated objectively can arouse my ambition: from nutrition and weight to grades and jogging distances to work pace and output. Especially when things are going well somewhere and I’m successful, my ambition overwhelms me like a tsunami and destroys everything. He takes my joy from what I do and gives me an extra dose of pressure. If I were a tire, that might be very useful. But as a person it sometimes (to often) pretty much (totally) exhausts me.
Ever since I recognized the problem, I’ve tried to stand up to my ambition when it wants to get involved again. And to build something for myself that cannot be easily destroyed by a tsunami of ambition. A good friend of mine recently gave me a lot of help when I spoke to him about ambition.
“What am I supposed to do with this document?”
This friend, who incidentally thinks he could be a little more ambitious, said something in our conversation that honestly impressed me, namely the following: When we went to school there were so-called national youth games once a year, where you was able to collect points in athletic disciplines in order to receive a winner’s or honorary certificate. My friend told me that at the time he never understood why he should work so hard for it, because: “What am I supposed to do with a certificate like that?” Wow. What a question. And why had I never asked it?
What was the point of collecting trophies when I could just have fun with karate? Why did I have to run 20 kilometers when my head was clear after ten and I was in a good mood? What’s the point of more output if it’s of no use to anyone? Why did I practice throwing in our garden as a child and calculate in advance how fast I had to run the 800 meters when the certificate of honor ended up in a drawer and was forgotten after two days? Why, all my life, have I jumped like a dog over every stick that was held out to me and then asked them to hold it a little higher?
How I treat my ambition today
I can’t (yet) answer these questions with absolute certainty, but I can already tell that it’s good for me to even ask them. I have a rough idea where my ambition comes from and roughly what its function in my life has been in the past. When I think about it again, I see very clearly that I really can no longer use my ambition in the form I know it. Because trophies mean nothing to me. To excel other people in anything means nothing to me. Keeping surpassing myself and trying to improve on something destroys me. I can hardly remember any of my successes, some of which I worked so hard for. What means even more to me are my friends, my family, my relationships with my dear colleagues. So many evenings together, experiences, conversations, moments with them that I will never forget. No achievement could ever be more fulfilling for me than the feeling of loving and being loved. Not for any achievement, but just because. Because I am who I am. For me this is unbelievable. Overwhelming. Incomprehensible. More valuable than anything I can imagine.
It will certainly take me a while to learn that I don’t have to be the best at anything I do, nor do I always have to get better at anything. The pattern is deep. But whenever I manage to break down somewhere where I pushed myself on principle in the past and ignore supposed success markers, I am quietly happy and celebrating. I want to fill my life with as much as possible that means something to me and makes me happy. And chasing any (!) successes doesn’t make me personally, I can say from experience, definitely not happy. Of course I’m willing to make an effort and achieve something, I always will be. But before I throw myself into something with all my might, I think of my friend and the national youth games and calmly ask myself: why?