Ambition is an eager desire to succeed. Unfortunately, this formula doesn’t always work in reverse. Desire does not always translate into ambition. Desire is what you want for yourself: a bigger house, a better car, a fatter bank account, a better life. Ambition is how you get them.
Desire is sometimes healthy and sometimes unhealthy. Desire might lead you to want the tallest building in town. The destructive side of desire might urge you to tear down all of the other buildings. I (Jim Rohn) guess that’s one way to do it. You might get away with tearing down the first one, and maybe the second. But in your desire to tear them all down, sooner or later you’ll run into some guy standing in front of his building saying, “I’m on to you… get out of here.” And pretty soon, you’re no longer known as a builder. You’re known as a destroyer.
The second way to have the tallest building in town is to go through all of the steps to get there–you see it, dream it, plan it, put your team on it, and work on it. My advice is to do it right. Have the ambition to be the owner of the tallest building in town, and go through all of the right steps to get there. If you really want it, if you have the skills to do it and the patience to weather all of the storms, your ambition will lead you there.
Having the ambition to do what it takes to get you where you want to go is good. Ambition is creative and constructive. Ambition is an expression. It’s something inside of you that you want to express in a positive way.
I’m sure you have dreams of accomplishing great things. Are you ambitious enough to realize these dreams? Are your dreams strong enough to pull you toward your future? Are they vivid enough to enable you to see the end result? Are they worthy of doing what you need to do until you get there? What are your reasons for creating these dreams?
Reasons vary from person to person. I’ll bet that if you did a little soul-searching, you could come up with a fairly strong list of reasons. Why is it so important to achieve these dreams? What are you trying to express? These reasons for accomplishing great things are different for everybody.
There are some uniquely personal reasons. Some people do well because of the recognition. Some do well because of the way it makes them feel. They love the feeling of being a winner. And that is one of the best reasons.
I have some millionaire friends who keep working ten to twelve hours a day making more millions. They don’t do it because they need the money. They do it because of the joy, the pleasure, the satisfaction that comes to them from being a constant winner. To them, money is not their main drive. Rather, it’s the journey. It’s what they are becoming. They are always striving to become more.
Once in while, I hear someone say, “If I had a million dollars, I’d never work another day in my life.” Hey, that’s probably why the good Lord sees to it that he doesn’t get his million. Because he would just quit.
Family is another source of motivation for doing well. Some people do extremely well because of other people. And that’s a powerful reason. Sometimes we will do something for someone else that we would not do for ourselves.
I know a woman who was getting back on track from financial disaster. Even though she didn’t have much of anything left, her primary motivator was to keep her daughter in private school. It was an expensive school, one of the best in the country. Although her goal was to financially surpass where she was before her economic fall, her main reason to work all of those extra hours was to give her little girl the best possible education. As you can well imagine, wanting to do something for someone else led her to all sorts of other accomplishments, too.
What are your reasons for doing well? What’s at the core of your quest? What is the power behind your ambition? Think about it. Jot it down. Do something soul-searching. Define your reasons so they will work better for you.
* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn