Accepting Your Version Of Ambition
Lately, I’ve seen the anti-hustle mentality start to creep into the mainstream, with articles in national press like Red magazine and the New Statesman. But something about the framing of these articles bothered me; in fact triggered a kind of angry defensiveness in me. Rather than talk about ‘hustle’ or unsustainable working hours, the problem, these articles decided, was ambition.
My first thought was, ‘what’s ambition got to do with it?’ Well actually that’s a lie, my first thought was ‘nope, no, no, don’t you dare start to pick on ambition’ – because for me, ambition is a lot of the driving force behind my purpose. If I’m not ambitious, I’m not getting things done, I’m not running this business, I’m not, ultimately, living the life I want to live. So yes, I had a slight panic that now ambition was the new modern vice for us to all let go of. But when I settled down and began to think on the pieces, I realised that what they were describing didn’t seem like my kind of ambition at all.
What was being described was ‘ambition at all costs’, ‘ambition to achieve something because it’s the thing others are aiming for’, ‘working extra hours and sacrificing life for ambition’. For me, those things are hustling, and hustle and ambition are not the same thing.
The dictionary definition of ‘ambition’ is ‘a strong desire to do or achieve something’. For me, ambition is intrinsically linked to purpose – the two work together to push and pull you along like two horses side by side at the front of the carriage of your life. When you have a strong purpose, ambition helps you fulfil it; when you feel ambitious, you’re more likely to enact your purpose.
I find the conflation of hustle and ambition worrying. I also find it worrying that articles downgrading the value of ambition will make women give up on their dreams – either by giving them permission to not to do the scary thing, or making them feel guilty for displaying such an undesirable trait (I definitely felt the latter). Surely the last thing we need in this world is for women to hide their lights and put away their ambitions?
As with many things on the internet at the moment (and one of my biggest bugbears with it), this has become a binary issue. You can either be a 24/7 hustler committed to monetising every inch of your existence, or you forego ambition altogether. Those are the only options, and you’ve got to pick which side you’re on. There’s no room for that sweet spot in the middle, where ambition is healthy and a beneficial force in your life, but still you wake up late, go for long walks or leave the office on time.
What we really need is a more nuanced version of ambition. One where, rather than reject it as a concept, we reject what the world has turned it into. Ours is an ambition of defining new successes, of making tiny improvements to the world, of following what makes us fulfilled, of stepping into our light and seizing our own versions of freedom.
I’m ambitious, I’ve always been ambitious. As a child most of my daydreams were taken up with what my future career would be, who I was going to be someone in the world. Ambition is an important part of what makes me who I am… I’m just not ambitious for most of the things other people are.
I don’t want to climb a corporate ladder, I don’t want a corner office, I don’t want my boss’ job in five years time – I don’t want a boss! I don’t want big brand names on my CV, I don’t want to lead a team or a department. These are all the things I used to think I was ambitious for, they were all things I wanted to tick off in my career. But really, the pursuit of doing so left me hollow.
Now my ambition drives me to create things that will help other people work towards finding freedom through business. It makes me want to reach more people with my podcast and my words here. It makes me think about writing a book, and it gives me ideas on long train journeys.
What it doesn’t do is make me work more than five hours a day, or wake up before 10am, or work Mondays. Because the life around the work is as much part of the ambition – not getting up at 7am is as much an ambition as reaching a financial goal.
So if you’ve seen anything that made you feel guilty for your ambition, or you have also found yourself seeing hustle and ambition as the same thing, my invitation to you is to take back control of that definition. To embrace the truth of what your ambition is driving you to achieve, even (especially!) if that thing is not what others would strive for. To see the balance inherent in that ambition, once you let go of the need for it to be ‘at all costs’. Let’s start an ambition revolution.
