Embracing Ambition

I’m an ambitious person. I’ve started a business, I’ve written a book, and I’m raising two small kids. I want my work to grow and flourish, and I know that effort and commitment are necessary for that to happen. Ambition can feel empowering, exciting, and slightly scary, in a good way.

And yet, it can also be a kind of trap. It seems to tell me that where I am right now is not enough. It tends to focus on results that may not really be up to me. And it can turn into an endless yearning for more and better and bigger that will never be satisfied.

So how do we tap into the creativity and energy of ambition without getting swallowed up by negativity, greed and delusion? For me, the key has been to lean into ambition and then, over and over again, release any attachment to the outcome.

We practice this in meditation, when we apply that gentle effort to bring our attention to the breath, but release the sense of having a goal. In the same way, we can bring our heart, our excitement, our whole self to whatever challenge is at hand, even if it's BIG and AMBITIOUS, and then release the outcome.

That moment of surrender – while not easy – is a kind of realistic humility. We know that we’re never in full control of how things unfold. We are always partners with a zillion other people and forces in each moment. That humility doesn’t mean we have to curtail our desire or creativity; it just means we have to cede the results, again and again.

There are examples of this everywhere. Gardeners apply great effort to their plots of land, clearing weeds, preparing soil, planting seeds, making sure there is access to water and light. And then they wait. The seed itself needs to crack open and sprout. The sun needs to shine. The entire universe needs to work together for the garden to grow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it is always a partnership between the gardener and the world. What if you thought of your ambition the same way?

Or, to share a more personal example, when I went into labor with my son, I started doing all the birthing-class moves, the stretches, the massages that I had learned for just that moment. And then at some point, all the tools stopped working. The pain was too great. About 22 hours in, I surrendered something I didn’t even know I was holding on to. Suddenly, at the height of each contraction, I found myself going completely silent. It felt like I dove underneath the surface of the pain and completely let go into it. My body, the baby, and life itself just took over the process. Within one hour of this bizarre, amazing, strange experience, my son burst forth into the world.

Through this process, I learned something about how the birth of anything works. There is effort. There is energy. And then, there is a big step back and letting go.

What’s amazing is that most parents, gardeners, and artists will tell you that life has a way of offering gifts far greater than our human-level ambitions and plans could ever fathom. Being partners with life means sometimes, life has the better ideas.

Not always, of course. Sometimes, we do our part and yet the conditions for birth, or success, or flowers, aren’t there. We don’t get what we want. The garden doesn’t bloom. We experience failure, devastation, and loss.

How should we spend our days, knowing this? What should we do with our ambitions? I think we follow our excitement and energy. We plant the seed, we set the conditions for growth. And then we unclench and let go, again and again and again.