Ambition for collective liberation
What do you picture when you hear the word ambition?
What images does your mind conjure up?
For better or worse, ambition has been imprinted in my mind to look something like this:
Our culture's version of ambition feels like striving, scaling, climbing and growing. It represents the endless desire to accomplish more and conquer all.
I was recently talking to a client who wants to leave their job and start their own business. They want more spaciousness in their days, more time between meetings, and more autonomy in determining what they work on. When we started to talk about them leaving their current role, their lizard brain objected. "Nicole, I want to leave my corporate job and start something new, but I don’t want to give up my ambition. I still want to work hard."
I've heard this one before, and its definitely one of my own blind spots. There's this idea that, if we move away from the conditioned view of what success looks like, then we lose our ambition. If we take our foot off the gas pedal, scale back, or give up an ounce of power, then we're not as ambitious as we once were. Only when we're consistently striving for more (money/status/land/clients) can we truly be working hard.
This impossible standard of exponential growth is getting in the way of creating the world we want to live in. The current mental model dictates that you need to push yourself at all times, and the outcome needs to look a certain type of way, in order for you to be “ambitious enough”. When we conceptualize ambition as the continuous pursuit of “more”, we exclude people on the margin who have limitations on how/where/how much/in what manner they exert themselves. We implicitly tell non able-bodied folx and people with chronic disease that their ambition is not enough.
Not only is this definition of ambition exclusionary and unimaginative, but it often doesn't deliver the results we’re looking for. We harness our ambition to get more of what society tells us we "should" want, hoping that the outcome will make us feel fulfilled, safe, secure, and confident. But in reality, none of these things alone yield sustainable results. As soon as we get the new title or uptick in followers, we're hungry for more. Figuring out what will *actually* fulfill these feelings is an inside job, and its a deeply personal experience that looks vastly different to everyone.
There is, of course, the reality that we live in a material world, and we are rewarded by society for harnessing our ambition to achieve external success. Better titles translate to more privilege and belonging, and to some extent, more money translates to more security. But in truth, the safety and contentment we derive from the externally-driven successes flatten out a certain point. The returns are diminishing, and the outcomes rarely deliver the lasting fulfillment we seek.
Most importantly, this framework for ambition--the relentless pursuit of more, no matter the cost--is killing us. We are tired and overworked. Our forests are burning. Wars are waging. Innocent civilians are dying. Ambition is often co-opted as a tool of the oppressor, destroying our planet, disconnecting us from our bodies, withering our self-trust, and perpetuating the myth of rugged individualism. We're using our precious ambition to serve oppressive systems, and as a result, we're moving further out of alignment with ourselves, our communities, and our humanity.
We cannot go on like this.
Let me be clear. I don't want us to give up our ambition. I'm not advocating for the complete eradication of working hard. Personally, I love my ambition. I feel like it makes me who I am, and I know a lot of high-achievers who feel the same way. Our ambition is an important part of our identity. It is not a character defect, or something to get rid of. And I wholeheartedly believe that we need forward motion, hard work, hope, and goal-setting to build fulfilling lives AND build a bridge to the world we want to create.
I do believe, however, that in order to create meaningful lives that we love, we need a complete overhaul of how we define ambition and how we orient our lives around it. If we truly want to create a more just and sustainable world, we need to revolutionize how we harness its power.
My friends, it's time to flip the script on ambition.
It's time to redefine ambition for ourselves.
Sometimes, I imagine what would be possible if we re-channeled our ambition towards creating a more equitable future for everyone, not just a select few at the top. Sometimes, I dream about what we’d be able to do if we took all that determination, hard work, and grit and put it towards our collective liberation.
Imagine what we could do and build and accomplish.
What if we oriented our ambition around what we really, truly value? What if our ambition was less motivated by fear and more motivated by curiosity and purpose? What if we rebranded ambition to be service-led versus ego-led? What if we moved away from individual ambition and move towards collective ambition?
What if we stopped using our ambition to prop up old crusty oppressive systems and instead used it towards building a world that can hold all of us?
If you were to get really honest with yourself, how would that change how you're living your life?
I want you to take a moment to think about what you value and how you want to feel. I want you to think about what you *actually* want our world to look like—for ourselves, for our kids, and for our future.
How can you reorient your ambition around these personal goals and dreams? How can you move away from using your ambition to pursue the dreams of someone else? How can you soften your sense of ambition to allow for rest, ease, and the complexity of being human?
My old definition of ambition was externally motivated. It was the desire to achieve a goal that the dominant culture told me was valuable (and in turn, where the achievement of that goal directly benefited the dominant culture). Typically, it involved chasing something that would result in more money or more bragging rights. It required determination, grit, and brute force. Ambition meant that I worked hard to get promoted on a specific timeline, make a ton of money, and keep advancing at a powerful company that would advance my status.
My new definition of ambition is internally motivated. Instead of orienting my hard work towards the external measures of success, my ambition is the relentless pursuit of what I want more of in the world. It is the desire to create something that aligns with my values. It still requires hard work, but it also incorporates rest, spaciousness, and serendipity. Ambition means that I work towards building financial freedom in a way that feels joyous and sustainable and serves others.
Feel the difference?
We can change the paradigm through which ambition operates.
We can still harness ambition to pursue growth, but in this new paradigm, growth takes on a slightly different meaning. Growth becomes less about endless scaling, climbing into perpetuity, and only worrying about ourselves. It becomes more about building authentic lives and harnessing out determination to create the world we want to live in. Growth becomes about taking care of ourselves and others. And in this new paradigm, everyone has a seat at the table.
We're still able to achieve the feelings we seek, like safety and fulfillment, but we find a route to those feelings in smaller, more authentic ways. And we don't need to sacrifice our integrity in the process.
Seems straightforward, but it's not easy. It takes consistent and intentional practice. As you embark on this journey, you might want to enlist the help of a coach or therapist to help you challenge and redefine your definition of ambition, to get clarity on what you want more of and what you want to leave behind. From there, you can begin to channel your ambition into the things you find fulfilling and gratifying, and do less of the things that you’re conditioned to believe are meaningful.
Remember: we get to define ambition for ourselves, and we get to decide what we use it for. It’s dynamic, and the speed and intensity at which is flows will ebb and flow alongside our own evolution.
Ambition is not one-dimensional.
Ambition moves at its own pace.
Ambition is not reserved for the capitalist patriarchal worldview.
Ambition is not gendered or ableist or fatphobic.
Ambition is collective. Ambition belongs to all of us.
Your challenge this week? Reflect on what ambition means to you. Think about what you want more of in the world and how you can channel your ambition to create that. Then identify one small step to move you in that direction.
Here's to being ambitious on our own terms.
Here’s to channeling its power to honor ourselves and alchemize our deepest desires.
Nicole is coach, business mentor, and entrepreneur living in the Pacific Northwest. She specializes in life coaching and business mentoring for individuals, entrepreneurs, and creatives.
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