Ambition — the need for success, achieving more, based on increased claims to life.
Often, ambitious goals and ideas are born when the “pockets are empty”, and the “head is full”, there are no resources, but there is hope that cardinal, qualitative changes will reveal new sources of their appearance. Not every goal gets the right to be called ambitious. Add to the usual goal a seeming unattainability, a dream, isolation from the current current state, a certain absurdity, paradoxicality, riskiness and the “portrait” of an ambitious goal is in general ready. An ambitious goal must get out of the general system of ordinary goals and send its creators to where they have not yet gone or been. Initially, she does not even assume on what means she will live; ideas of who will support her come later. Coco Chanel remarked: «If you want to have what you never had, you have to do what you never did.»
Only a person endowed with the ability to discern in the objects and phenomena of the outside world the potential for a sharp movement and development can become a generator of ambitious goals and plans. To do this, you need to be the owner of the appropriate personality trait — ambition.
Ambition as a personality trait is interpreted differently in Russian and English. In the dictionary of the Russian language by S. I. Ozhegov, who traditionally reveres modesty, it is negatively colored: 1) heightened pride, arrogance, swagger; 2) claims, claims for something (disapproved). At the same time, in Western countries, ambition is unequivocally ranked as a human virtue, implying the desire to achieve goals, the requirement of external signs of respect, honor. In the Anglo-Saxon transcription, the word «millionaire» has a positive meaning, while in Russian it causes envy and hatred. However, this is not a reason to attribute a negative interpretation to the concept of «millionaire».
“A mind without ambition is like a bird without wings,” said Salvador Dali. In the conditions of today’s realities, when we are approaching a happy capitalist future with leaps and bounds, the view of ambition has become more friendly and open. Domestic business looked at it with great curiosity as an undoubted virtue, provided it was adequate, solid and realistic. Business captivates self-confidence and professionalism, characteristic of this quality of personality. In a big business, underestimated ambition, timidity, shyness and self-doubt are not encouraged. A person with a lack of ambition, as a rule, is an outcast for big politics, sports and business. Success involves passion, enthusiasm and energy. A person without ambition is a «living corpse» for business. Bernard Shaw once said, as if implying the slogan of reasonable ambition: «Achieve what you want, or you will have to be content with what you have.»
The ability to generate and solve ambitious goals seems to be one of the most important personality traits that contribute to success. Reasonable ambition presupposes two-facedness in unity: the ability to want and to be able. “I want” without “I can” turns into a fiction, and “I can” without “I want” into an unguided projectile. Practically it turns out, as in a joke. The woman was asked: “How to call a man who wants, but cannot” — “Impotent” — “And who can, but does not want” — “Bastard”. In this context, Raul Gonzalez remarked: “Ambition is what you cannot do without to climb to the top, and ability is what you cannot do without.”
When ambitiousness, having taken stubbornness, voluntarism, frivolity and unjustified audacity as allies, “goes over the limit” of the permissible limits of reasonableness and rationality, it turns into a harmful utopia capable of “sinking” any good undertaking. Excessive, inflated ambition with an unjustified, unrealizable level of claims can make a lot of noise and bring tangible harm to the cause in which it is involved.
Unlike ambition, which is usually aimed at solving one’s individual, personal goals, ambition is mainly associated with solving corporate, collective, group or public tasks. Therefore, the negative consequences of unbridled ambition are much more painful and widespread.
There is an African proverb: «The smaller the lizard, the more it hopes to become a crocodile.» Excessive ambition is a consequence of overestimated self-esteem, a discrepancy between the position held and the level of one’s own ambitions. It is quite simply diagnosed by other accompanying personality traits. Close friends of such ambitiousness are constant dissatisfaction, excessive pretentiousness, quarrelsomeness, capriciousness and fastidiousness. Painful pride does not allow her to be wrong and therefore she blames others for all her failures. Exaggerating its capabilities, it cannot objectively weigh the complexity of the task. When the need for competent assistance becomes obvious, overstated ambition will stubbornly prove to everyone that it can handle itself. Well, when everything collapses, she will step aside, pretending that she is here from the side of the burn. Constant failures, fiascos and life «defaults» make her touchy, irritable and unbearable. In dealing with presumptuous ambition, you need to remember every minute about her extraordinary envy, which extends to the success of even close people. But without rest and sleep, she is ready to listen about her genius, originality and insight. An ambitious person recognizes only the stronger and more successful. She is devoid of sympathy, instead she cultivates causticity, categoricalness and maximalism in herself.
Before the implementation of ambitious plans, it is always not superfluous to ask questions: “Why do we need to do this?”, “What will happen next?”
One day, a businessman stood on a pier in a small village and watched a fisherman sitting in a flimsy boat as he caught a huge tuna. The businessman congratulated the fisherman on his luck and asked how long it takes to catch such a fish. “A couple of hours, no more,” replied the fisherman. “Why didn’t you stay at sea longer and catch a few more of these fish?” the businessman was surprised. “One fish is enough for my family to live tomorrow,” he replied. «But what do you do the rest of the day?» the businessman did not let up. “I sleep until dinner, then I go fishing for a couple of hours, then I play with my children, after that my wife and I have a siesta for ourselves, then I go for a walk in the village, I drink wine in the evening and play guitar with my friends. You see, I enjoy life,” the fisherman explained. “I am a Harvard graduate,” the businessman said, “I will help you, you are doing everything wrong.” You have to fish all day and then buy yourself a big boat. — What happened next? the fisherman asked. “Then you will catch even more fish, and you will be able to buy yourself several boats, even ships, and one day you will have a whole flotilla. — And then? “Then, instead of selling the fish to an intermediary, you will bring the fish directly to the factory, and after increasing the profits, you will open your own factory. — And then? “Then you will leave this godforsaken village and move to a big city, and maybe one day you will be able to open a huge office and be the director there. “And how long will all this take?” — Years 15–20. — And then what? “And then,” the businessman laughed, “then the most pleasant thing will come. You can sell your company for a few million and become very rich. — And then? — Then you can stop working, you will move to a small village on the coast, you will sleep until dinner, fish a little, play with children, have a siesta with your wife, walk around the village, drink wine in the evenings and play guitar with your friends …