Can Ambition be dangerous? — The downside to striving for success
Ambitious people are driven to achieve but it is a commonality for their goals to be unrealistic. While ambition is an essential trait for anyone who would like to be successful in life, it can be detrimental in certain instances.
How can ambition be dangerous?
- Working towards perfection, instead of striving for productivity
The motivation behind ambition is different for each person. Many ambitious individuals are driven by the need to feel like they have achieved something or to compensate for feeling inadequate in some area of their life, be it personal or professional. Throwing themselves into their work and striving for perfection in order to get recognition and satisfaction.
Trying to achieve perfection is a doomed exercise.
Perfection, as with success, is a loose definition for something which differs from person to person. Therefore, in a sense what you are striving for is unattainable. It also comes at the cost of productivity. The importance of perfection is inherently task dependent but spending hours obsessing over unnecessary or unimportant details can prevent you from completing a larger quantity of work which effectively makes you inefficient and unproductive.
2. Handle criticism negatively
Ambitious people can be sensitive to criticism and failure. You put blood sweat and tears into your work and as a result develop an attachment with what you do. While not necessarily being a bad thing it can make it difficult to look at what you have done from an objective viewpoint.
Criticism can easily be taken as a personal attack instead of being constructive and can lead to negative emotions and a hit to your confidence.
When you hold yourself to high standards, criticism can feel as though you are not good enough. These negative emotions can manifest themselves in the form of viewing situations in a distortedly negative light. This can lead to questioning your self-worth as you define yourself based off your achievements, further compounding the problem. The impact on your self-confidence may cause you to withdraw and affect your moods in social situations.
3. Struggle to build and maintain personal relationships
A characteristic of a truly ambitions person is the ability to make sacrifices in order to achieve their goals. This characteristic carries a lot of merits but can be negative when it comes at the detriment of relationships. Ambition can cause you to push people away through not investing enough time into a relationship or not being ‘present’ when in their presence.
It’s hard for ambitious people to ‘turn off’ and put work completely out of their minds when they are not at work. While this can have a number of significant negative effects on you it can also prevent you from being present when spending time with people. It is hard not to let your mind be consumed by thoughts and ideas relating to your work, it is unfortunately much easier for someone to pick up on you if you are not fully invested in the conversation or distracted. Although not the intention, this can come across as being disinterested and do more damage than not physically being there.
4. Self-Neglect
Part of the challenge for ambitious people is knowing when to put themselves first. They often have the tendency to neglect their personal down time, getting sufficient sleep and knowing when to simply relax. Although driven people can become engulfed on a task they’re working on, failing to take a break and relax can actually affect one’s creativity.
Taking a break and relaxing the mind may instead lead to new ideas and creative solutions.
Written by,
Mariam A-El and Ryan Orkin
