Okay, no, not really. What I really want to do is talk about ambition and different definitions of success.
I talk a lot about priorities, and ultimately our priorities hinge on our own personal definitions of success. In order to set priorities that work for you, you have to know what you want. Sometimes this directive becomes more complicated than it sounds.
We have ideas imbedded by our culture as to what constitutes success, and there are different degrees of success as well. Money, power, recognition, advancement, and a stable career are all possibilities we recognize and mark as successful. In the personal realm, success is often associated with being a spouse, a parent, and a homeowner.
Of course, we can hit our own personal mark of success without ever having a lot of money, or a lot of power in the business world, or the same steady job for twenty-five years. Success is subjective. Our definitions of it change over time. And yet, we are often influenced by the cultural ethos of what success means.
Dr. Horrible has his own unique definition of success...
Ambition gets all twisted up in these definitions as well. When we are going for what we want, pursuing our own success, then we are being ambitious, but we often limit our thinking about ambition to apply only to career-related goals.
For me, success has never been so much about money as it has been about being able to spend my time on things I find valuable and fulfilling. This is why I have, in the past, chosen time to do what I choose over more money. Some of the things I find valuable and fulfilling involve the outside world: teaching, for example, and helping people. Some creative endeavors might or might not reach the outside world. And some things I find of real inherent value even though they are just for me.
We as a culture also tend to buy into the idea that success will cause happiness. Sometimes this works out; when we figure out what will actually make us happy and prioritize accordingly, happiness and success can come hand in hand. But sometimes we assume success will bring us happiness without figuring out what would make us happy in the first place, only to suffer a rude awakening and realize we’re caught in a cycle of always wanting more: if only I had a bigger house, if only I made senior VP, if only I made #1 on the NYT bestseller list. Finding happiness within achievement without getting trapped in what we haven’t yet achieved can be an uneasy balance.
There are no right answers here; we have to make individual decisions about what’s important and how to define success for ourselves. We have to discover what it is that brings us happiness and personal satisfaction. And if the answer doesn’t meet the cultural norm, then we have to decide what we care about more: following the marked, tried-and-true road map to find success in other people’s eyes or venturing off the beaten path and making our own way. Either choice comes with its own difficulties.
What does success mean to you? Do you consider yourself to be ambitious?
The Practical Free Spirit 
Great article Amy! It is so true that our definition of Success changes over time but what is most fulfilling will lead us to true peace and ultimately “Success”!
Thanks for writing this!
Yeah, I’m ambitious. There’s far too much to learn for me to finish up in one lifetime, so I expect only limited success in that regard, but I’ll consider it a total success if I manage to enjoy most of my time, spending a good bit of it with people I enjoy being around while learning what I can. It might not be the Men of Great Deeds version of success that much of Western society seems to be built up on, but then Great Deeds didn’t seem to get Ozymandius very far in the long run.
Great topic and good article, Amy.
Great post!!! I’m ambitious about the things that matter. Rather lazy and unorganized about the ones I don’t value. While helpful on the personal fulfillment scale, not always helpful in a crisis. LOL!
Good stuff! This plays well with the previous post on intelligent women… I feel like women in this culture are plagued by multiple competing ideas of “success”, AND penalized for seeming too “ambitious”. If you’re a man, you can be successful by succeeding at your career, and that’s good enough. It doesn’t matter if you don’t keep your house clean, if you ignore your children to play golf on the weekends, you’re still successful (you’re just kind of a jerk.) But for a woman to be successful, she has to be good at her job as well as meeting all these other criteria, or she is considered a “failure” and judged accordingly. The tradeoffs are much harder to make, and a lot of women wind up doing an OK job on all axes, rather than really excelling at one.
I agree with you, I think when one is trying to determine what will make them happy, they have to really consider how unhappy it will make them to ignore social conventions on the subject. Everyone has a different cost attached to interpersonal conflict. Some people can shrug off the dirty looks, other people can’t. Even if your dream is truly what makes you happy in isolation, it might not be worth it in terms of social cost.
I think the one univeral ambition everyone should have, but most people lack is the desire to improve oneself. Physically or mentally they find it too much effort and would rather just be lazy.
I also don’t believe anyone should strive to be rich (seems greedy), but almost everyone should strive to be not poor. I suppose there are rural self-sufficient farmers who are technically poor, but stable. When I think of poverty, I think of urban poverty where you live paycheck-to-paycheck or on welfare.
I would like the stability of a career, but I want to be something that gives me enjoyment and fulfillment. As long as it pays me enough to be able to do the things I want (and my tastes are not particularly expensive) and not worry if I can pay my bills each month that is good enough for me.