Have we confused ambition with drive?
Have we confused ambition with drive?
In a conversation with some like-minded folks the other day about what it takes to run a business, I declared that I didn't have any ambition - which perhaps makes me less successful as a business person and therefore a not-so-wise giver of business advice. In a follow up question (I cannot recall what it was now), I shared my plans for the future: stepping more fully into my role as an educator, doing less to do more, collaborating with others.
"Hahaha and you say you don't have ambition!" came the reply. I paused, thinking I'd contradicted myself. We laughed it off. But on the way home, I realised there was no contradiction at all.
Ambition comes from the Latin noun ambitio, which means "a going around". During Roman times, it described the practice of politicians canvassing the city to solicit votes and striving for popularity. Over time, the meaning tilted more positively - today we describe an ambitious person as someone who is motivated towards achieving one's goals. When we look at it more closely, ambition orients itself towards scale and comparison. In my case, I see being ambitious as having more clients, more revenue, more visibility. I see a scoreboard.
What I'd described to my friends wasn't on that scoreboard. It was me saying: I don't want to play the game that others are playing. What I described was doing the work more truly, whether or not it gets bigger, whether or not it gets counted as success. It was my drive speaking, not my ambition.
My friends' collective laugh wasn't wrong. We have all been conditioned to think that ambition is what one must have to succeed in this capitalistic world. They heard forward motion and future plans, and rightfully assumed it had to be ambition, because that's the only word most business cultures would have us use.
When we look at it philosophically - ambition asks "what will this get me?". Drive asks "where am I putting my energy towards?".
Peel at the layers and we will see that conflation isn't neutral. Say "I have no ambition" in a room of founders and it reads as false modesty. Nobody hears it as what it was: a description of the game I'm not playing.
So no, there was no contradiction. I just stopped needing a scoreboard to know I was moving.
I’m sure some of you share similar sentiments about what I am speaking to. It definitely took me a while to get to this point in my life, and I’m excited to see where my drive takes me next.
