Ambition in the society

I think ambition is important. It is what keeps you awake working hard for something. It is one of the reasons you persevere learning difficult things.

Interestingly, people don’t generally love to talk about their ambitions in front of others. It “felt materialistic”. The subject of ambition such as money, big goals, dreams are not as easy to talk about as what movies you watch, music, good food, etc. Generally, people with big ambitions would need to keep it to themselves or only share it to a small circle of people that matter, or other ambitious people that would understand.

I mean, some people wake up dreaming about how to change the world. Some people wake up thinking about what they want to do in the weekend. Indeed, there are a lot of people who work 5 days a week, 8 to 9 hours per day, to make enough money just to survive and do whatever everybody else do in the weekend.

Having a big ambition has costs. It is sometimes lonely, you will find yourself as a misfit to the general population, you don’t like to talk about people or events. You prefer to discuss about ideas, and about how to improve each other’s work.

Ambition has depression as a risk

This constant hard work and obsession can lead to depression. I personally have been through it. I have huge ambition, bigger than almost everyone I have ever met. I want to be a billionaire, and I will. I have never doubted for a second that I will be wealthy. I want to make a mark in the world. I want to contribute to the society and make a difference. I have succeeded in a lot of things, I have failed in a lot of things. When things are progressing to slow, it becomes frustrating. I think I just want to see progress and results every single day, it is a great satisfaction. This is me, you will find me a misfit, if you are not ambitious. You will like me, if you are crazy like me.

I am overcoming depression that comes with big ambition. And I would share in this blog about how to get through it.

Overcoming depression

I have friends with big goals and ambition that go through depression, because things just don’t go according to plan. But yeah, that is how life works. We thought our life is a constant one-straight-line gradual progress, but it is actually a very volatile progress curve. It sometimes feels like we are in the dip of hell. It sometimes feels like we are rising fast.

In order to overcome this, we need to understand the root of it.

Why are ambitious people depressed sometimes?

Ambitious people are result oriented. They are usually fast paced. They just want to see results and progress every single day. When things don’t go as planned, it feels really terrible. When ambitious man looks at a day, he sees 18 hours of time to produce results. Less ambitious man will see 8 hours of boring work. In short, ambitious people are insecure. They want things to be perfect, and they would even offend some people just to get things right. This is the attitude.

**Sometimes I heard something like “I am 22 and I have not achieved much yet.” (I actually have heard of it a lot, and I myself might have said it before. Then I start talking to more people and I found out that the general population do not even know what they want in their life when they are 22, shocking, but true, and interesting.**

So how do we overcome / control this?

**I use control because I understand that most ambitious people want things to happen as they want it, and in order to do that, they establish control (whether they realize it or not).**

First thing is, we need to understand that the world is not fully in our control. Things will go wrong sometimes, you can lose control. The idea is to establish better control in certain aspects that we are strong at, and to have other people to cover the rest. This is one of the reasons why I think we have to stick with like-minded people to actually help each other achieving our respective dreams and goals.

Second is to understand that we are taking the opportunity and the risk at the same time. We show courage to dream big, to question authority, to make better things. I mean, these are things that a lot of people do not have the courage to do yet, even if they really want to. By understanding this, we need to behave like a “warrior” in the front line of an expedition of humanity to discover a better world. We need to maintain courage and optimism, to not give up when things go wrong. Be proud and confident.

Conclusion

Overcoming depression comes from ultimate confidence in what we do. We know the end results will be great as what we want even if things go wrong now.

Gaining ultimate confidence:
1. Establish control in the areas we are really good at. Never let things go wrong. When things don’t go wrong, things go right.
2. Get the right people to establish control in areas we are lacking, and collaborate. Build a lion pack. We need them and they need us.
3. Maintain courage and be proud. Everybody is watching. Everybody else is waiting for us to succeed, everybody have expectation. Don’t feel pressured, feel honored and glad for that.

Hope this post relates to you enough, if it does, reach me at: vincent.huberta@gmail.com / vincent@uniklik.com