Embracing Ambition

Throughout my life, I haven’t been known as the most ambitious person. In fact, I was often known as the smart kid who would do the bare minimum to get by. I played the games everyone put in front of me, but I was determined to not let that be my life.

I didn’t want much, only a comfortable salary that would let me survive. I put a target of getting a six figure salary in front of myself, and about 5 years into my career, I achieved that. But then what?

I remember having discussions with my manager about my future. “What do you want to do going forward?” The typical answer I put forth was something about leadership, but more technical than people. That’s where you go next right? Gotta keep climbing the ladder. But I didn’t really feel it, I just assumed that’s where things needed to go.

Then the world was thrust into Chaos, and a global pandemic happened.

At this point, two things felt very clear to me.

1. I could die at any point. I’m high risk for Covid. Former smoker, I struggle with my weight, and I’d been on antidepressants for years, which contributed to things being much harder.
2. I needed to do more for the world. One of the side effects of this extra time I had on my hands now that I worked remotely was that I got to spend more time seeing how the world was falling apart, and Covid made it very clear that things were extremely broken. Minimum wage employees, “essential”, but not paid what they were worth. They had to put their lives on the line for almost nothing. It wasn’t enough to live comfortably. It was barely enough to live at all, and frankly, they shouldn’t have to live on that low of an amount. It’s absurd, and it pissed me off. I wanted to change things.
   

That was the first hint of my ambition peeking through.

But see, I was raised Catholic and in a pretty conservative home. Catholic schools from preschool through high school. Certain ideas smashed home repeatedly.

And since I’m autistic, I absorbed those rules extremely deeply. A lot of that religion is based on guilt. Dude let himself get murdered in an incredibly brutal way because I am a fucking sinner. And I’m supposed to always remember that, have that at the forefront of my mind. Over time, that messaging wore on me, and as I got older, I saw the hypocrisy in a lot of the messages. So I rebelled from religion, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t affected.

Add that to living in a small town that isn’t ambitious at all. People are born here, they live here, they die here. The great irony is that my sisters did end up leaving. One still close, but in a city, and the other much farther away, also in a big city. But the majority stay here. There’s just not enough money to be able to leave easily. Everything this town was built on is crumbling, and it was hit hard. Watching my hometown decay over the years has been painful.

So I focused on keeping my head down. I drove over an hour each way to work, so I could at least make a decent living. I had two young kids, and ambition was nowhere near my mind, other than a slight yearning for that magical startup idea that would let me escape this prison.

It was a bit of a shock that even though I was able to grow my salary a good bit, I still wasn’t comfortable. Kids are expensive, and undiagnosed ADHD makes finances difficult at the best of times. So bills grew as my salary did. The finances grew tighter around me, and I was constantly trying to figure out how to get past this. I kept telling myself that eventually, the company I was at would take care of me, and I’d move up the ladder, and then I’d be comfortable finally. I’d be able to rest.

But the rest never came.

Until the pandemic. Because, for once in my life, I had space to think. My job was only taking me a couple of hours each day. Without the distractions of the office, and by being able to set up my work the way I wanted to, I made the space I needed.

Once I had the space, my ambition started to grow. I realized I could be doing more. And then it hit me. The idea I’d been waiting for my whole life. The spark of inspiration that showed me a different future than the one I’d imagined.

That spark began to change me. I was no longer satisfied with where I was or what I was doing. And when the company that employed me wasn’t willing to help me reach my ambitions, I left and set out on my own.

Thus began a several year journey full of ups and downs, as I discovered what it meant to be ambitious.

The lazy slacker from high school started working longer hours than ever, studying harder than he ever had before, and put everything into his work.

And yet, the world remained the same. As it turns out, the world does its best to resist change.

But I embraced the changes. For all the changes I tried to make externally, the real change was happening internally. For the first time in my life, I was getting forced to confront my insecurities, my weakness, my fears. And I started battling them, striking them down one by one, refusing to let them prevent me from succeeding in my goals.

My personal attempt at a startup failed, so I joined a startup. In that startup, I learned how a high performing team works. And I saw where I failed to have the impact I knew I could.

Unfortunately, once again, my ambition didn’t align with my employer, and in this case, I was fired.

And then the transformation became complete. Immediately, I knew I was a different person. I was lighter, more confident, more focused. I knew what needed to be done so I  started doing it.

People around me started commenting on the change.

“I’ve never seen you so happy.”

“You are a completely different person now. Your energy is so infectious.”

“Wow, you really seem to know yourself.”

It’s been three weeks since I was fired. In that time, I’ve started working on a book deal, flown myself out to SF to meet people, announced a new course and started recording it, built the new version of an app I’ve been working on, and I’ve never felt better.

After seeing the transformation in myself and where it has led me, I’ve started to ask myself, “What exactly is ambition?”

It’s something I’d always looked down on. But when I was able to try it on myself, I realized ambition isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I believe it’s rooted in desire, like so many other aspects of being human. Mostly, we see ambition as a desire for money or power, and that ambition feels dirty.

But ambition can also come out of a desire for change. That’s where mine was born from, and once I saw the changes that could occur, I knew I needed to do whatever I could to make those changes happen.

Can you impart change without accepting power? That’s a question I’ve been pondering as well. I don’t want power.

In the words of Lord Acton, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That’s a quote that lives in my head constantly. I think we already give up way too much of our own power to others, and I don’t want to perpetuate that cycle anymore. I’m tired of giving up my power to others, and I’ve seen what becomes possible when I embrace my power instead of giving it up.

Unfortunately, when you start changing things, people want to give you power over them. If you act like you understand when everyone else seems lost? They look to you for decisions, and in fact, if I’m the one with the best information, that makes sense.

But what if I’m really lost? What if this is just an act? What if I don’t know?

What happens if I lead them astray?

That’s the burden of leadership. You have to own that possibility.

And if possible, you should always offer people an out.

Choice is the antidote to power, so I want people to always have choices. If they always have a choice, that means anyone who follows me is there because they want to be, not because they have to be. And that should be taken as a sign I’m on the right path.

Ambition is also contagious, which can be good or bad, depending on the environment. But what I’ve found among my friends is that they are inspired by my ambition and letting themselves become more ambitious as well.

In the end, it turns out that changing the world starts with changing yourself. Then those around you see those changes, and start changing as well.

And the changes spread. One day, you open your eyes, and see that the world is a different place because you let yourself embrace ambition.

It all comes down to this:

What desire are you chasing with your ambition?

If you can answer that question honestly and fully, and you like the answer, there’s no problem with chasing your ambition.

Embrace it. Accept the change that it brings inside of you.

And let those changes spread.