Ambition Is Not A Passion

I often see ambitious people fall into a dangerous mistake. They know that there is something inside them, something strong and powerful, that is screaming for more. They know that they should, not follow, but chase their dreams with all their forces. There is something inside these people, but they don’t know what. They just know that, if they don’t follow it, it will consume them.

What ends up happening to some of them is that they end up chasing their dreams with no purpose, just fear of falling behind. It is ambition and not passion that fuels them.

We can clearly see this happening with people that compete and just for the prize. They know that competing feels right and that they must invest their time in it, but don’t know why. And, lacking a real answer, they use the prize to fill in their holes.

These people are passionate about being ambitious, and ambition by itself leads nowhere. Ambition is a tool, actually, to me, is more like a feeling or work ethic. Ambition makes you find and stay on track, but it is not your track. Ambition is here to take you somewhere, but it is not the destination.

It is very common, especially in America and other countries that have a more holistic approach to college admission, to see students joining a thousand clubs and organizations just to build their resume. These kids, when they finally finish the colleges that they worked so hard to enter, don’t know what to do with their lives. This is an epidemic, and can you really blame them? We are told our whole lives that our “job” as a kid and teenager is to study and get into a good college. This is what we are pressured and programmed to do.

With colleges getting more expensive every year, and the pressure to be “successful” getting stronger thanks to social media, the wave of lost young-adults is getting bigger, and it doesn’t look like it is going to stop. No one told us we should have a passion, and by passion I mean a genuine one, not one just to put on your college essay.

You should be ambitious about your passion, and not be passionate about ambition. You should be ambitious about something you love and believe, and not believe and love being ambitious.

Empty ambitions take people nowhere. When things get hard, when the storm comes, ambition by itself doesn’t resist. You need a reason to be ambitious. You need a why. You need a purpose.

I am not saying that renouncing things today, like time and pleasure, aiming to build a better future, is a bad thing. Actually, I believe that this is how you create the life that you want. However, doing this without a purpose, a passion, doing this just searching for a reward might be destructive. A life without purpose is a life without meaning.

My purpose might change, but my principles don’t. If I am doing something, I will do it with intention.

And maybe, you should too.